Mike Purcell chews out Russell Wilson on sideline

Broncos suffer worst loss of a bad season with no rock bottom vs. Panthers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. >> Losing his everloving mind, sick of losing, and screaming at his quarter-billion dollar bust of a quarterback to do something about it, big bad Mike Purcell spoke for all us in Broncos Country.

It’s about time somebody took off the velvet gloves and told Russell Wilson where to go.

Would it be too much trouble for Mr. Unlimited to get Denver’s offense in the end zone more than once a game? If that’s too difficult for Dangeruss, he can take his rockstar lifestyle and go straight to H-E- …

“Frustration,” Purcell said Sunday, explaining his spitting-mad sideline outburst at Wilson during the fourth quarter of Denver’s 2310 loss to the wretched Carolina Panthers, a new low of a season where there is no bottom. “We’ve got to get a spark somewhere.”

Wilson got an earful of frustration that has been building for 11 games, not only in the Denver locker room, but throughout Broncos Country.

You didn’t have to be a lipreader to understand the salty tone of Purcell’s message.

“He was (ticked) off,” Wilson recalled. “He just said, ‘You got to go!’ And I agreed.”

The brief but heated verbal confrontation between Purcell and Wilson was caught by television cameras for the all the NFL world to see and occurred distinctly within shouting distance of Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett, who stood wearing sunglasses and a headset right next to where a 328-pound defensive lineman and his star quarterback exchanged unpleasantries.

And yet someway, somehow, Hackett was oblivious to the ruckus happening right behind his back.

“I didn’t see it,” Hackett said. “I know they’re both competitors. I know Mike wants to win and he’s going to do whatever he can to get the team fired up. But … I’m not sure … We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

In the history of the Broncos franchise, has there ever been a coach so pathetically unaware of the disintegration of a team around him? It’s no longer a question of if Hackett gets fired, but when. Wilson recorded the 300th touchdown pass of his NFL career, but not until he connected with Brandon Johnson for a one-yard strike that was much too little and far too late in the final minutes of a game that encapsulated everything wrong with the most hopelessly inept Broncos team I’ve seen since arriving in Colorado back in 1983.

“We’ve got to get the losing out of our system,” Wilson said. “Winning is a habit. Losing can be, too.”