Nobody’s wrong.
That’s the hottest take I could come up with after reading The Athletic’s deep dive into the deteriorating relationship between the Seahawks and star quarterback Russell Wilson.
The piece is required reading for any sicko out there who loves this kind of drama — weirdly, Seahawks Twitter seems to be enjoying this as much as anyone — but here’s the TL;DR: Russell Wilson wants to be known as one of the greatest players in NFL history and he feels Pete Carroll’s conservative philosophical approach and the front office’s inability to build him a good offensive line is preventing him from winning enough to be considered one.
Wilson isn’t wrong.
Carroll’s run-first mentality has cost Seattle games. The front office has never really built a *good* offensive line for him. And he really has no reason to put anyone else’s interests ahead of his own. It’s his career, after all, and he’s earned the ability to put this kind of pressure on the team if he feels it’s necessary. He clearly does.
The Seahawks aren’t wrong, either.
Wilson creates a lot of his own issues when it comes to protection, so investing more into the offensive line might not be as fruitful as it would for other teams. And, the team has been at its most successful when running and defense were the clear strengths — though, that probably had more to do with the defense being really freaking good than the run-first philosophy did — and the ‘Let Russ Cook’ philosophy crashed and burned this season in the ways many Football Guys predicted it would.
Now, that doesn’t mean either side is right. There is a bit of a delusion clouding judgment on both sides:
- Carroll is clinging to another era and hanging onto past success that he believes validates his philosophy, ignoring the reality that it was superior talent carrying him to many of the wins in Seattle and back at USC.
- Wilson, meanwhile, is stuck on being Tom Brady and Drew Brees when he’s just not that type of quarterback. That doesn’t mean he can’t be as effective as those two were; he just goes about it in a different way, which is fine.
During a post-Super Bowl interview with Dan Patrick, Wilson mentioned the protection Brady had received during the game, implying he’d like the Seahawks to provide him with that same level of protection. He failed to recognize that good protection has pretty much followed Brady everywhere he’s been and it’s largely the result of Brady’s next-level understanding of protections and ability to get rid of the ball in a hurry, neither of which are features of Wilson’s game.
This quote from an anonymous coach stands out from The Atheltic piece:
“That whole ‘Let Russ Cook’ thing, he is better when they can run the ball and they play off that, there is no question. No one likes that because they want him to be Dan Marino. Well, he is not Dan Marino. You are who you are.”
As we learned over the course of the second half, the kind of offense that suits a Brady or Brees might not be what’s best for Wilson, whose brilliance is largely based on his ability to consistently produce in the most volatile of circumstances, as Pro Football Focus’ Seth Galina wrote last month:
Wilson has been so good for so long that we forget how much of his game is things that are unstable for other quarterbacks. He does not target the middle of the field, he scrambles to make plays downfield a lot and he hits an absurd number of deep go routes. We take these aspects of his game for granted because it works for him.
But most quarterbacks can’t live in such a world.
Now, there is merit to the argument that the Seahawks haven’t gotten the most out of their quarterback in terms of team success. Getting to an NFC title game shouldn’t be this difficult with one of the three best quarterbacks in the league. It’s also fair to point out that Carroll’s philosophy and John Schneider’s questionable use of draft capital have held Seattle back at times. And because wins and success-based awards like the MVP are the foundation of a quarterback’s legacy, that, in turn, has prevented Wilson from building the kind of resume that could stack up against that of the greats.
At the same time, it’s hard to believe that any other franchise would have gotten more out of Wilson in terms of his individual development as a quarterback. The Seahawks have maxed out Russell Wilson the quarterback.
But now that the development has already taken place, Wilson has evolved past the point of needing the Seahawks. They don’t have anything to offer him that, say, the Dolphins can’t also offer him outside of the ability for him to say he spent his entire career in one city. But that means more to the city than it does the player. In other words, Seattle needs Russ a lot more than Russ needs Seattle. That gives him the edge in any argument.
I opened this blog by saying that neither side is wrong. But one side has to come out on top. Smart money is on the elite NFL quarterback.
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