The Denver Broncos’ decision to bench Russell Wilson might have cost Sean Payton his locker room.

Multiple Broncos players spoke out against the decision in interviews with ESPN’s Jeff Legwold.

“Pissed for Russ. Just pissed for Russ, a lot of us,” one player said of the attitude when Payton announced Wilson’s benching.

Another player pointed out the timing of the decision frustrated the locker room.

“We just won five in a row. We’re all going to support [Jarrett Stidham], but Russ was giving everything he had,” the second player said.

Payton’s decision to move forward with Stidham did not yield any positive offensive results, as the Broncos scored just 30 points in their final two games. Stidham performed worse than Wilson by comparison in nearly every statistical category on a per-game basis as well.

While Wilson was far from perfect in his first year under Payton, it was a vast improvement from his nightmare 2022. Wilson threw for 3,070 yards and 26 touchdowns against eight interceptions while adding 341 yards and three touchdowns as a rusher. His completion percentage rose nearly six points under Payton (from 60.5 percent to 66.4 percent), and his quarterback rating nearly topped 100 for the eighth time in his career.

Even if Wilson did not perform at franchise quarterback levels, he was certainly an average or slightly below-average NFL starter. That’s likely more than what the Broncos will be able to land in free agency if they move on from Wilson as expected.

If anything, benching Wilson may be the beginning of a full-scale rebuild under Payton—the precise opposite of what management expected when they traded for Wilson in 2022 and hired Payton last offseason.