RENTON – What once seemed like the least fathomable thing to ever happen in Seattle sport – Russell Wilson playing for another team – will soon become a stark reality in full view of what have been its most ardent fans for 10 years.
And as Wilson takes the field as a Denver Bronco for the first time Monday night on the same Lumen Field turf where he led the Seahawks to their greatest heights, the question will ring again: How did we get to this point?
It’s a development that even those who have experienced much of the drama up close still find it difficult to process.
“I never thought Russell would leave this team,” former Seahawk Michael Bennett said recently. “I thought Russell would be a fixture in this town forever. I think he represents everything that is good about this sport and everything that’s good about humanity, his passion and the way he cares about things and his dedication, so it’s heartbreaking to see he’s gone.”
But as the Seahawks buyers said the day the trade was made, they said the reason for the trade was simple: Wilson wanted out.
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“Russell made it clear he wanted this change,” team president Jody Allen said in a statement on the day the transaction was officially announced on March 16.
Why Wilson might want to leave is a topic that was inevitably refreshed this week with an awkward reunion at hand, where each retelling seemed to contain a bunch of small reasons that piled up over the years and eventually became big ones — with the importance from one of those myriad reasons that seem to depend on the source.
To know:
Wilson grew to coach Pete Carroll’s insistence on a run-game and defensive philosophy, despite two offensive coordinator changes since 2017. It was a complaint that first surfaced after a 2018 wildcard playoff loss in Dallas, which saw Wilson’s side the team did not trust him until it was too late. As well described, Wilson’s unease with the offensive philosophy rose to its greatest heights at the end of the 2020 season, when Carroll decided to rein in the passing game midway through the season after three losses in four games in which Wilson had 10 turnovers.
— Wilson wished the team had done more over the years to bolster the team’s offensive line and give him more support overall, while also wishing he had more say in staff movements. And as Wilson alluded to this week, hearing that the team planned to move forward with Bobby Wagner and Duane Brown helped convince him that maybe it was time for him to move on too, since Wilson wasn’t sure if the team would be in a difficult situation. position to quickly get back to a Super Bowl.
Wilson was annoyed that the Seahawks seemed to be exploring other options at quarterback, such as scouting Josh Allen who came out of the draft in 2018, and as reported this week by ESPN, when he approached Cleveland about a deal for the No. 1 pick in 2018 (which became Baker Mayfield) and as reported this week by Pro Football Talk, who apparently approached Arizona about a similar deal in 2019 for the pick that became Kyler Murray.
But the fraying of the relationship was far from one-sided.
The Seahawks were increasingly fed up with the drama — setting a contract deadline in 2019, or Wilson’s complaints about the offensive line and wanting more of a say in decision-making after Seattle fired Brian Schottenheimer as offensive coordinator and Shane Waldron had taken on as his replacement.
But as a source close to the situation said this week, the emphasis on some of the more lecherous details may obscure the biggest reason for the transaction.
“This was really just a football decision,” said one person with knowledge of it. Much more, he said, than people might want to accept.
After trading Wilson, Seahawks general manager John Schneider said one of the reasons is that the team was under the impression that Wilson would not sign another long-term deal.
But would Seattle have wanted to offer one? It’s a question without an answer, as the Seahawks would not have approached Wilson about it until after the 2022 season.
As an ESPN story emerged this week, some in the Seahawks organization are wondering how good Wilson’s play and the mobility that has always distinguished him will age when the quarterback turns 34 in November.
ESPN quoted an unnamed Seahawks front office member as saying, “He’s not as mobile as he used to be.”
The Seahawks aren’t the only ones wondering if Wilson’s crazy days are a thing of the past.
Wrote Football Outsiders in his assessment of Wilson, noting that his hasty attempts per game (3.1) and yards per attempt (4.3) were both low in his career by wide margins: “Wilson is now 33 years old and no longer walks like he did before, so at least we have to consider the possibility that he peaked at the end of 2010.”
The Broncos don’t seem worried, signing Wilson earlier this month to a five-year deal worth up to $245 million until the 2028 season, when he’ll be 40 (although he won’t have guaranteed money for the last three years).
But the comments the Seahawks have made since the trade are telling, such as Carroll’s view that quarterbacks are like point guards.
“You need a guy who plays the game and moves the football to the guys who are open,” said Carroll. “Do all the things that run the game so we can play great football because we’re going to win with defense, we’re going to win with how we play in special teams, we’re going to run football to make it fit.”
That was a philosophy the Seahawks used in the three games Wilson missed in 2021 due to his finger injury to remain competitive – two last-minute losses to the Saints and Steelers and a blowout to the Jaguars – with Geno Smith at QB. Smith had a 5-to-1 TD-to-interception ratio and a passer rating of 103.1 which was on par with Wilson’s 103.0 for the season.
A source close to the situation this week said the Seahawks may have simply decided “it didn’t make sense to spend a lot of money on a quarterback if the quarterback isn’t the center of the system.”
And that may help explain why the Seahawks explored trading options for Wilson — something Wilson admitted this week, saying he knew the team had tried to trade him “a few times” — in previous years for young QBs who would have been on rookie. contracts.
Wilson did the Broncos something of a favor in his new contract, by backloading the cap hits. He counts for just 7.7% and 9.8% of Denver’s salary cap in 2022 and 2023 and 13.8% in 2024 compared to 15.5% and 17.5% in his last two years in Seattle as part of the four-year contract he signed in 2019. made him the highest-paid player in NFL history at the time at $35 million a year (and remember that Wilson’s $26 million dead cap hit for the Seahawks this year means he’s counting for about 12% of Seattle’s cap for nothing for them to play ).
So while the frayed relationship played a part, Seattle may also have just made a business calculation that Wilson wouldn’t be worth it over the years, and the Seahawks would be better off selling high.
The no-trade clause Wilson was given in 2019, meanwhile, assured that he could choose where he wanted to go – with Denver the only option he preferred from teams that had legitimate interests.
And Wilson, whose move from the state of North Carolina to Wisconsin for his senior year of college turned out to be a pivotal moment in his career, eventually just made a business decision of his own.
Cold business decisions maybe.
But yeah, the NFL is full of them and Seattle had made them with most of the other major players of the LOB era.
In the end, Wilson proved no different, hard as that was to believe at the time.
Which side is right?
Does Wilson have years of elite play left worthy of a paycheck at the top of the QB scale, as his side believes?
Can the Seahawks find another QB with a smaller contract and build around him the kind of powerhouse they did around Wilson in 2012?
That will take a few years to figure out, and will depend largely on the players Seattle pulls out of its Denver trek.
However, any party will be more than happy to get a little instant gratification Monday night.
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