What's wrong with Russ?
That might be the wrong question. Perhaps everyone overlooked what was right for him about Seattle because five games into this season, the grass does not appear to be greener in Denver.
I didn’t believe anyone was going to benefit from the divorce. I thought Seattle would suffer more in the short-term, and I doubted Russell Wilson would benefit in the long-term. I was convinced both would ultimately be less successful for having parted ways. I did not, however, expect that to be this evident, this early or to be hearing people wonder openly if the Seahawks were better off in the short-term for having traded Wilson to Denver.
But 20211 is wild, man, and after the whole country groaned and groused its way through that Thursday night game in which neither team scored a touchdown, I wanted to point out what it says about Carroll: Maybe he’s not as dumb as some people thought.
You know the people talking about. The ones who believed he was being stubborn about the run game. Antiquated even. That he was refusing to give his franchise quarterback the control that is commensurate with his skill because with every game Wilson plays it’s harder and harder to argue that it was Carroll or his offense that was holding him back. That’s the subject for Friday’s newsletter, but first, I wanted to include a link to a feature that I wrote for Seattle Magazine. This was published back in August, but wasn’t initially posted online. I spent three days following Carroll through the mandatory minicamp back in June, and while I did not the headline, it has my endorsement as an absolutely awful awesome pun:
The Pete of the Moment | By Danny O’Neil
OK, now on to the newsletter:
Players do not tend to improve after they play for Pete Carroll.
This is a fact that tends to get overlooked especially now when it’s easier to shake your fist about the way he uses his timeouts, his desire to run the ball or Seattle’s inability to play competent defense in the first two months of a season.
Players have a habit of playing the very best football of their lives while they’re a part of Carroll’s team, and that fact is casting the biggest shadow over Russell Wilson’s performance in these first five games in Denver.
Name some guys who’ve really blossomed when they’ve gotten outside the confines of Carroll’s supposedly old-fashioned and restrictive approach to the game. Hell, name one guy.