Wilson, his agent has been at pains to point out, has not officially demanded a trade from Seattle, but he has – in a delightfully passive-aggressive, Wilson-esque way – made it clear to the team’s decision-makers that he is unhappy with the direction of the franchise and that he would prefer to leave.
According to a detailed report in The Athletic, Wilson is unhappy with the team’s roster construction, the style of head coach/chief decision-maker Pete Carroll, and the Seahawks’ offensive system.
Carroll is an old-school, pound-the-run, play-solid-defense, don’t-turn-the-ball-over, coach. That served Wilson and the Seahawks well during the early years of the duo’s partnership. Behind an all-time defense, a bulldozing run-game led by Marshawn Lynch, and the playmaking brilliance of Wilson, the team went to back-to-back Super Bowls, winning one and losing the other. But as Wilson matured into one of the most well-rounded quarterbacks in the game and the roster around him disintegrated, Carroll did not evolve. He freed up the scheme and catered the system to Wilson in part, but the foundations remained run-first and risk-averse.
Whereas Wilson looked in the mirror and saw Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning – quarterbacks with the freedom to change the play at the line of scrimmage and who had near-complete autonomy over the system – Carroll looked at his quarterback and saw a fantastic cog in his machine. The scheme still won out. All the while, Wilson was taking a beating – no quarterback has been hit more since he entered the league, and no quarterback has been hit at the same rate over a three-year span as Wilson has between 2018-2021.
There was a change in philosophy last season though. After a three-year drum beat of #LetRussCook, an online movement that began to infiltrate the locker room – shorthand for Let Russell Wilson Pass More – Carroll handed Wilson the reins to the offense.
Still: the quarterback was seen as a player, not a collaborator. He was not offered the kind of quarterback-coach partnership that Rodgers, Manning and Brady had at the peak of their powers, the kind that Wilson believes he has earned over nine years. “I know that I’m a great football player,” Wilson said last season. “I know I’ve been great, I know I will be great, and I know I’ll continue to be great.”
And Wilson was great at the start of the 2020 season. Behind’s Wilson’s excellence, Seattle averaged four-and-a-half touchdowns per game over the first half of the season, the kind of total matched only by the Brady led Patriots of 2007, Manning’s 2013 Broncos, and the 2000 Rams – widely regarded as the best offensive teams of this century.
It was a stunning rebuke of the Carroll doctrine. Wilson had finally been allowed to cook, and he proved to be the best chef in the game. Through eight weeks, he topped the MVP charts; even Mahomes could not keep pace. Wilson was able to maintain all of the efficiency that has defined his game with even more explosiveness.
And then he cratered. After his best start to a season, Wilson flatlined over the final eight weeks. For the first time in his career, he finished outside the top 10 in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric, a measure of a quarterback’s down-to-down efficiency (Wilson has been a demigod of DVOA over the span of his career). In a blink, Carroll returned to the Seahawks’ style of old. When Wilson tried to offer some input into the gameplan in the middle of last season’s decline, he was rebuffed by the coaching staff. Wilson stormed out of the meeting.
Like any great drama, Wilson’s real beef is not about how the team does things. It’s about respect. He wants to be a partner, a part of a decision-making board, not an employee. “The most important people in the building,” Seahawks general manager John Schneider told reporters back in 2018, “are the head coach and the quarterback.” Wilson wants to hold him to that.
[ed. If the Hawks let Russ slip away I'll never forgive them. Do whatever it takes.]
