Russell Wilson has battled perception his whole career. Whether that’s meant proving that he could play quarterback at 5-foot-11, that he could function in structure as more than just a sandlot playmaker, that he was more than just the beneficiary of a legendary defense, that he wasn’t propped up by a dominant run game, or that he could lead an offense without leaning too much on his legs—the 30-year-old Seahawk has fought a two-front war since coming into the league: one against opposing defenses, and another against a bevy of heavily dug-in narratives.
That’s made assessing Wilson’s career an ongoing challenge. On some level, after winning a Super Bowl ring and making four Pro Bowl appearances, everyone knows that he’s one of the league’s premier passers. But Wilson’s place in the pantheon of NFL quarterbacks is still often debated. Some see Wilson as an elite passer, capable of carrying a team; for others, he falls into the category of a glorified game manager. Even former teammate Richard Sherman downplayed Wilson’s four-touchdown performance against the 49ers last Sunday, a game in which the Seahawks QB had, at one point, thrown three touchdowns on five attempts. “He played well,” said Sherman, who then offered a backhanded follow-up. “I think he threw for 160 or 170 [yards] or so [it was 185]. Their running game is really effective and they let him get to his spots and kept the game plan simple.”
Sherman may not have been too impressed, but Wilson’s incredibly efficient season is taking the subjectivity out of the evaluation. By just about any measure, he’s playing the best football of his career, smashing a few more preconceived notions along the way. In what was supposed to be a rebuilding season, the seventh-year pro has elevated a stripped-down Seahawks team and led them back into playoff contention. In Brian Schottenheimer’s archaic, run-heavy offense, he’s reached a new level of sophistication as a passer.
Of course, Sherman wasn’t wrong in saying that the Seahawks game plan was simple. Stripped down, Seattle’s basic offensive strategy comes down to two simple tenets: run the ball down the defense’s throat and throw it over their head.
Seattle has certainly accomplished the former. The Seahawks lead the league in rushing yards per game (148.8) and have thumbed their noses at the notion of modern offense, as they’re the only team in the NFL with more rush attempts (380) than pass attempts (326). Without the latter, though, Seattle’s offense would be nothing more than a bunch of smashmouth bluster: Wilson has been exceedingly surgical throwing downfield, attacking defenses with a salvo of bombs while racking up 881 yards on passes of 20-plus yards, per Pro Football Focus. Those deep throws account for nearly one-third of his total passing yardage and he has the third-most yardage on deep passes league-wide, behind just Patrick Mahomes II and Aaron Rodgers. Wilson has connected on 13 touchdowns (tied for most) and just one pick on those throws, collecting a deep passer rating of 128.1, second only to Drew Brees. Pushing the scope out past 20 yards, Seattle has 12 completions of 40-plus yards this year, tied for fourth in the NFL with the Chiefs, behind only the Packers, Steelers, and Air Raid–running Buccaneers. Oh, and each of those teams has thrown the football at least 100 times more than the Seahawks this year.
The two pillars of Seattle’s scheme are symbiotic—as Sherman noted, the passing attack benefits the ground game, and vice versa—sort of like nature’s most famous partnership, the shark and the pilot fish. In this metaphor, though, let’s be clear: Wilson is the shark. Seattle’s run-heavy tack wouldn’t survive long without the protection the passing game provides—it’d just be too easy to stack the box and sell out to stop Chris Carson and Co. But Seattle’s bruising ground game pairs perfectly with Wilson’s talents, keeping him clean and keeping defenses guessing on nearly every play. Wilson showed he can function without a rushing attack, and put together an MVP-caliber performance in 2017 without one, accounting for an unreal 86 percent of the Seahawks’ total scrimmage yards (3,983 pass yards and 586 rush yards) and 37 of the team’s 38 offensive touchdowns. With one, Seattle’s unlocked the way to make Wilson even more dangerous.
Wilson is back to playing with the type of swagger we saw early in his career. He’s even conjuring memories of the guy who posted 33 touchdowns and a then-NCAA record 191.8 passer rating at the helm of a power-running, deep-passing offense at Wisconsin. Wilson’s at his absolute best in an aggressive downfield-attacking scheme, where his accuracy and ability to throw on the run can be featured. Wilson’s thrown off play-action on 30.6 percent of his dropbacks since Week 3 (when Seattle rededicated itself to a balanced approach), fifth-most league-wide. In that stretch, he’s thrown six touchdowns and one pick on play-action, completing 70.7 percent of his passes for 749 yards and a 118.4 passer rating (eighth). Seattle utilizes heavy formations and the threat of a wide-zone run to manipulate defenders into false steps, giving receivers a boost in getting behind the last line of defense.
These plays give receivers time to work downfield and give Wilson the chance to set up and loft accurate passes.
But, as useful a tool as play-action’s been for Seattle, Wilson has thrived without it this year, too. Since Week 3, Wilson’s posted a league-best 124.5 passer rating on non-play-action throws, per PFF, with 18 touchdowns and just one interception. Those numbers reflect the area Wilson has made the biggest stride in this season: his feel in the pocket.
Despite his reputation as a too-short-to-see-over-his-line type of quarterback, Wilson’s numbers passing from the pocket have always been strong. But his ability to move, reset, and climb up into a muddied pocket when the first read isn’t there was still a major work in progress coming into the season. Playing behind a series of terrible pass-blocking offensive lines over the past couple of seasons, Wilson developed a few pretty bad habits. Far too often, Wilson bailed from clean pockets at the slightest hint of pressure, dropping his eyes in the face of oncoming pass rushers or spinning away right into an edge defender. This year, with the help of a retooled offensive line under new offensive line coach Mike Solari, Wilson’s taken huge steps in that critical area. Wilson still takes a few too many sacks, but he’s done a good job of stifling his first instinct to escape. After scrambling a league-high 55 times in 2017, Wilson’s bailed on just 23 dropbacks this year (tied for 12th league-wide). The desperation spinouts are few and far between, and Wilson’s clearly become more comfortable manipulating the pocket to give himself the best chance to make a throw downfield. The hidden value in the pass plays that never turned into scrambles has been a big key for this year’s Seahawks.
Against San Francisco on Sunday, Wilson used that newfound discipline to connect on a pair of touchdown passes. On the first, he felt the rush closing in on both sides and dropped straight back, staying engaged in the play’s design to find Jaron Brown in the corner of the end zone. On the second, Wilson eluded an edge rusher and stepped up into the pocket, buying himself the extra beat needed to let Tyler Lockett get open downfield on a slow-developing crossing route.
Those weren’t just one-off plays against a bad defense, either. On a couple of key throws against the Panthers a week earlier, Wilson showed off the ability to slide horizontally, keep his eyes downfield, the ball at the ready, and his feet balanced underneath him. Apart from a pump-fake on the second throw, you see little wasted movement. The way he moves almost makes him look like Brees.
That quick, balanced footwork was apparent on big throws against the Lions and Chargers, too.
These subtle-but-important pocket movements open up throwing lanes and allow him to hang behind the line just a little bit longer. Wilson made a living on the “scramble drill” early in his career; on those plays, like this touchdown throw against the Rams in Week 5, when Wilson breaks the pocket, each receiver had a designated secondary post-play role—whether that’s to come back to the ball, go over the middle, or go deep down the sideline (or just run around until they’re open). That provides a little bit of structure for Wilson’s Houdini act, but it’s still mostly improvisational.
With so many bodies moving around downfield it’s harder to keep track of defenders, making these plays pretty risky. But by refining his technique when it comes to extending time in the pocket, Wilson is keeping his second or third options open, giving the designed play a better chance to work.
Perhaps more important than the improvements he’s made playing from the pocket this season, though, are the steps Wilson’s made before the snap. As Pete Carroll said on Monday, Wilson’s in better control of what’s going on up front, both in the running game and with protections. “He and [center] Justin Britt are doing a really good job of working things out, figuring things out, how to put us in the right spots,” said Carroll. “His overall command of what we’re trying to get done, communication wise, has really helped other guys play well.” Wilson has developed in the pre-snap phase, recognizing defensive looks, setting the correct protections, communicating with everyone on the field, and executing the right checks and audibles to avoid the rush.
That showed up in Week 11 against the Packers. Trailing late in the game, Wilson faced a big third-and-9 from the Packers’ 15-yard line. He used a hard count to get Green Bay to betray its intentions, and when he saw that a slot-corner blitz was on, Wilson knew the safety over the top would be moving over to take the slot receiver. At the snap, he quickly dumped it to his tight end up the seam, who ran right to the spot that the safety had vacated. This was a touchdown before the ball was snapped. It also proved to be the game-winning score.
With a greater focus on the pre-snap phase and his in-the-pocket passing game, Wilson’s largely been phased out of the team’s rushing attack. Seattle still uses what looks like a read option as the foundation of its ground game, but Wilson rarely keeps the ball and runs it himself. Wilson is averaging a career-low 3.8 rush attempts per game this year (and over half of those are scrambles)—and the team has reserved his ability to run as a sort of ace up its sleeve, only to be played when defenses really start cheating in on the running back, or when the Seahawks absolutely need a crucial first down. For example, take this game-sealing play later in that Green Bay game.
Wilson’s not quite as explosive a runner as he used to be—though he can still do some damage with his legs at key moments—but he’s proving that what used to be a major part of his game is no longer all that important. That’s big, both now and for his longer-term future in the league.
Like every quarterback in the league, Wilson’s always working to iron out the wrinkles in his game. He takes too many sacks, the combination of an unwillingness to throw the ball away (he always seems to think he can make something out of nothing) and a Carroll-ingrained focus on avoiding turnovers (he’d rather take a sack than throw it into tight coverage, which to be fair is usually a good decision). He still misses throws occasionally, too: He overthrew Doug Baldwin in the end zone in back-to-back weeks, and missed Brown on what would’ve been a touchdown against the Chargers. Two of his five interceptions this year were of the back-breaking pick-six variety. Add in his relatively average counting stats—he’s 18th in passing yards this year (2,716), for example—and it’s easy to see why Wilson still gets underrated.
But Wilson hasn’t let the lack of volume in Seattle’s pass offense keep him out of the end zone: Despite ranking 24th in pass attempts this year (326), Wilson is fourth in touchdown passes (29). He’s helping redefine what it means to be efficient, tallying a touchdown rate of 8.9 percent—second only to Mahomes and on pace to finish as fifth-highest mark since the merger. And in typical Wilson form, he’s gotten better as the year’s gone on: In the past 10 weeks, he’s thrown 24 touchdowns and just two interceptions, posting league bests in passer rating (122.6) and adjusted yards per attempt (10.05) in that stretch.
For me, Wilson’s performance this year—how he’s evolved as a passer and shed some of the labels he was stuck with early in his career—has cemented his spot in the league’s top quarterback tier. He has always been one of the league’s best passers, but there’s little doubt now he’s one of those rare quarterbacks who can take a stripped-down roster almost completely devoid of star power and turn it into a playoff contender.
