As I am sure it is with a lot of Seattle fans, I have a fairly complex view on Russell Wilson. Throughout most of his tenure in Seattle, he was my favorite Seahawk player since Cortez Kennedy. In fact, he and Kennedy are the only Seahawks who’s jerseys I have ever purchased and worn.

I became a huge fan of Russell Wilson in his rookie year when sports radio sorts laughed about him, and fans wanted Pete Carroll fired for starting him over Matt Flynn. When I watched him throw a go ahead game winning bomb to Sidney Rice against the Patriots, I decided, come hell or high water, Russ was going to be my guy.

The last two years of him in Seattle were rough on me as a fan, though. I felt myself in a weird place of defending his diminished play, and then sort of gutted with disappointment that he wanted Pete Carroll and John Schneider fired in order to stay in Seattle. When I got wind of that, my thought was simply “trade his ass.” I was ready to move on.

I just don’t want any player on the team I root for to have that kind of power and control. I don’t think that works in football like it can work in the smaller rostered teams of the NBA. In fact, I think that’s pretty poisonous, and look what it did for Denver in Russ’s first year.

Players on that team started tuning him out and quit on him. They saw through the ego and the weird entourage. It became a total laughing stock situation across the league.

I don’t believe Sean Payton was hired to “fix” Russell Wilson. I think he was hired to push back on him and his agent. I think the new ownership group in Denver that wasn’t involved with the trade probably decided last offseason that they needed to move on from Russell Wilson, and they needed a forceful proven head coach who would put him in his place, and set a new standard for the team.

You can love that, or hate it, be impressed with it, or disgusted with it, but I believe that was everything going on there. I also think that organizationally, they have no fucking idea what they are doing in this process.

Why on Earth would they go to Russell Wilson to attempt to get him to rescind his injury guarantees in his contract weeks ago, and then still have him play meaningful games risking injury? It doesn’t make sense, and what were they expecting his response was going to be?

If this is all true about what they asked him to do last month, then they have no idea how to run a professional football team, and if they had any sense of how Russ’s agent operates, they had to know all of this was going to get leaked after his benching, and then turn into an absolute PR shit show for them to deal with. So, yeah, I think the Denver Broncos are the perfect clown show organization of the league right now.

But I also understand why they want to move away from Russell Wilson. They should have never have traded for him and gave away that sort of haul to Seattle in the first place. They should have never granted him and his agent that sort of initial control. They never asked the question as to why Seattle would ever be willing to deal him in the first place, and that was their fatal flaw from their previous ownership.

The new ownership just decided to crap all over themselves asking him to rescind the details of his current contract. That’s their fatal flaw and it is going to take them a long time to publicly live that down. They better draft a great quarterback next Spring.

Seattle fans may not want to hear this, but I honestly think Michael Penix Junior would be an ideal fit for what Sean Payton wants to do. He might be their QB1, and they will be in better position to draft him than Seattle will.

From a Seattle point of view, benching Russ likely helps us get a higher third round pick from Denver next Spring that could turn into a starting guard or linebacker, and that’s a nice plus. It also unanimously shows the World which team ultimately won the blockbuster trade. The Seahawks destroyed the Broncos in that deal. It was stealing candy from a special needs child.

Moving forward, Russ will be released in March and will be a free agent. I don’t suspect he will have a big market. This is a deep quarterback draft class coming up, and teams are finding ways to win with guys who have been largely backup quarterbacks, and or marginal starters.

Why pay over $30 Million annually for a 35 year old short quarterback who is going to force your offense into a run first approach in order to maximize his abilities?

Yes, he absolutely has had a bounce back year in 2023, but that only occurred once Sean Payton accepted the fact that he had to adopt the old Pete Carroll Seahawk run on first and second down offense in order to get efficient production out of him. Pete Carroll now runs a more opened up offense in Seattle than he ever did with Russ. He actually trusts Geno Smith more than he did Russell Wilson.

What this all tells the league is that Russ is a very good play action quarterback in a run heavy offense, and that is it. A lot of quarterbacks in this league are good at play action in run heavy attacks. Geno Smith is very good at it. Derek Carr can be good at it. So can Baker Mayfield, and so forth, and so on. This is the group that Russell Wilson falls under, nice 2023 stats not withstanding.

I know some fans are going to wonder about whether a return to Seattle could happen for him. I do not see a future where Russell Wilson comes back to Seattle to play again. I know former players have returned to this organization to play for Pete Carroll again, but I don’t think this one will. I think too much damage was done.

I think that his future with the team ended after he stepped into Jody Allen’s office and requested that she either fire Pete Carroll and John Schneider or trade him away. Even if Carroll and Schneider move on, I think that act of Russ and his agent has probably left an extremely soured taste in Jody’s mouth. As acting owner, I don’t suspect that she would want to work with them again, and if she should sell to Jeff Bezos, I don’t suspect he would want to entertain that, either.

That is the truly sad thing about Russ that stays with me all through this. His willingness to back stab his bosses because of the entitlement that bore out of his lofty status as Seattle’s franchise quarterback. He wanted so much to be Tom Brady and Lebron James that he lost sight of the plucky Dudley Do Right he was when he first got here and just wanted to do everything right.

With Super Bowls came celebrity and a celebrity wife and crazy ambitions on and off the field, and then a hyper unrealistic view of who and what he is as a player. That’s his story in Seattle. That’s his legacy along with Super Bowls and playoffs and pro bowls. It is all wrapped up into one incredibly complicated package, and I am not so sure I would want this team to entertain a reunion with him if they even did (they won’t).

What I expect is that after getting cut in March, he will have some teams probably sniff around. His stats were good again this year, and he proved he can play in a very run centric approach.

Atlanta with their spendy owner might sniff around. The Raiders could show interest. Maybe Carolina to help groom Bryce Young, or maybe Tampa, but I suspect they would rather stay with Baker Mayfield. Maybe Minnesota if they move on from Cousins, but why wouldn’t they just stay with Cousins?

I also see a lot of things potentially working against him on the market. A lot of teams are going to be interested in one of the many talented quarterbacks who could be in this draft. Other teams will have their own middling starter or a franchise guy in place. Why make a lateral move for Russell Wilson?

It’s possible that Russ could sit a long time on the open market before he signs somewhere like it was for Cam Newton a few years back when he was released by Carolina. We might get into training camp and when it is clear a team doesn’t have a good starter then he gets an offer he will accept.

I think either a team gets desperate in free agency early with him and offers him a short term deal with a decent amount of money up front, or the market is cold, and he will be forced to wait it out into training camp and accept a low ball deal to come in and compete in a bad quarterback situation. I don’t think there will be middle ground. Either way, I don’t think he will see another big time contract again. Those days are over, and recent history is too damning.

Whenever he ends up, I wish the best for him. I would like to see him have some success again. As someone who used to be one of his biggest fans, I don’t want to see his storyline falter further.

However, also as a Seattle Seahawk fan, I don’t really want to see him back here. I would rather hang with Geno Smith a bit longer, and see this team draft the next franchise quarterback to take over.

For me the gold ticket is to get a young talented passer on a salary cap friendly contract to beef the roster up around. Russell Wilson gave me this model, after all.

Go Hawks.