Russell Wilson Belongs in the Hall of Fame — And Seahawks Fans Should Support Him
If this is the end of Wilson's playing career, Seattle should call a truce for the greater good
Over a 10-year career in Seattle, Russell Wilson proved over and over again why he is the best quarterback in the history of the Seahawks, as well as a legendary draft steal who belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Unfortunately, it took a lot less time than that for Wilson to make people forget how special of a player he used to be and to tarnish that legacy because of the manner in which he forced his way out of Seattle and how immediate the career crash out followed after the trade.
But Seahawks fans need to set their differences with Wilson aside and be champions of the good times because we know from experience how little credit he (and seemingly anyone who succeeds in Seattle) gets for what he accomplished in the face of unprecedented national skepticism as it pertains to a quarterback consistently winning 10 games and reaching the playoffs every year.
A Super Bowl winner, a 10-time Pro Bowler, and a trailblazer for quarterbacks who would have been told “you’re too short” (Baker Mayfield, Bryce Young, Kyler Murray) if not for a SEAHAWKS quarterback.
It’s not about how you feel about Russell Wilson the person. It’s about Wilson being the only quarterback in the 50-year history of the Seahawks to even warrant a Hall of Fame debate* and as much as I wish it was appropriate to get ahead of ourselves with Sam Darnold after one season, this opportunity may not come again in any of our lifetimes.
As Wilson contemplates retirement at age 37, telling The Post that he has an offer from the Jets and opportunities in broadcasting, it’s not too soon to lay out breadcrumbs for a potential Hall of Fame bid in 2031.
*the seahawks were just a pit stop for warren moon after his hall of fame resume was complete
Over the last few years, the floodgates were open to trash talk Wilson and remind rival fans just how fleeced the Denver Broncos were in that trade—mostly because people kept saying at the time that the Seahawks were the ones getting fleeced.
But soon it’ll be time to put a temporary hold on digs at Wilson; it doesn’t have to be a permanent ban, just wait until after he’s in Canton.
It’s sort of like you’re an A-list actor who knows your new movie sucks but you can’t admit that during the actual press tour. You need to wait until you’re on someone’s podcast in a few years and then you can own up to the fact that you were in something rotten.
We can all agree that the way Wilson left Seattle was bad, bad, bad. After years of failing to get past the second round of the playoffs, Wilson threw Pete Carroll, the front office, and teammates under the bus in 2021, telling Dan Patrick that he gets sacked too many times and should be able to help Pete and John Schneider pick players for the roster next time.
Much of what was reported about Wilson towards the end turned his career legacy into a dual-threat contradiction: The same quarterback who “only cares about winning” also desperately wanted to be the MVP, was constantly trying to get a new contract whenever the market adjusted, and may have compelled Pete to let him throw a pass at the goal line of Super Bowl XLIX in a bid to win Super Bowl MVP.
“Afterward, according to a source who spoke with the quarterback, Wilson was livid at how Carroll had taken his foot off the gas (in 2019), believing it had cost him a chance to grab hold of the MVP race.”
Even though I think Wilson is a far better fit for the NFL game than Cam Newton (who was a much more dominant player in college obviously), I can almost respect Cam more for the fact that I’ve always considered him to be openly selfish.
Wilson, as any player, is allowed to be selfish and a Hall of Famer. It’s when the person’s actions vs. words start to feel duplicitous that resentment takes over the narrative and that’s also a big part of what prompted Seattle’s front office to look for a trade, as ESPN’s Brady Henderson detailed a few years ago:
One of Wilson’s seven interceptions in that stretch came in a loss at the Los Angeles Rams in Week 10. Trailing by a touchdown, he scrambled to his right and had a massive swath of empty turf in front of him. He bypassed the rushing yards, uncorking a deep heave back across the field that was picked off in the end zone.
“What are we doing here?” one source in the Seahawks’ front office remembers thinking at the time. “Are we trying to win games or are we trying to win MVP?”
In some ways, I want to absolve Wilson of some of the blame for this mindset and his personal frustrations. After all, he wasn’t the one who came up with the “Let Russ Cook” slogan (that responsibility falls to a single Seahawks fan on Twitter in 2020) and if he had just stayed silent the majority of the fanbase was blaming the offensive line for all the sacks he had taken* for YEARS.
(*Many of which, he was to blame for.)
It didn’t feel like Wilson was inventing these complaints about his supporting cast or his lack of power in the franchise hierarchy on his own, he was just repeating what the loudest fans were saying on the Internet. You’ve heard of a yes man…well, this is just like a “Yes fan”. Wilson surrounded himself with too many yes fans.
The toothpaste couldn’t go back in the tube after Wilson’s comments in 2021, but his contract made a trade impossible until 2022.
That awkward final year led to Wilson’s worst season as a Seahawk, but to his credit — and getting back to why he’s a Hall of Famer — he was still one of the best quarterbacks in the league in 2021, even when it was clear that Seattle’s playoff bid was past closing time.
Over the last 7 games of 2021, Wilson had 15 touchdowns, 3 interceptions, and he was fourth in the NFL with a passer rating of 104.7. The only quarterback with a higher TD% in the second half of that season was MVP Aaron Rodgers. The Seahawks scored 89 points in their last two games with the playoffs out of reach.
He could have packed it in and protected his health knowing that he was going to negotiate a new contract after the season, but by playing out the season and leaving on a HIGH NOTE, Wilson had to have increased Denver’s trade package to Seattle to facilitate a trade.
Two first round picks and two second round picks that directly led to drafting core players on the Seahawks’ Super Bowl roster for 2025.
For that alone, I’ll vote for Wilson to be a Hall of Famer.
Is Wilson a Hall of Famer actually?
To lay out the entire debate for Russell Wilson’s Hall of Fame bid if he retires right now would necessitate a much longer article (a series of posts, really) than the last few paragraphs I’m going to dedicate to this newsletter now. That day will come eventually.
Instead, I’ll just point out that…
It’s not enough to say that Wilson belongs because as a quarterback he won a lot of games, consistently went to the playoffs over 10 years with the same team, and won a Super Bowl. Because the same could be said about Joe Flaccco.
It’s not enough to say that Wilson reinvented the meaning of “passing efficiency” with record-setting TD:INT and Y/A ratios during his Seahawks tenure, including seven 100+ passer rating seasons and better than 3:1 TD to INT. Because that legacy is tarnished from so many less talented quarterbacks ranking near the top of the career passer rating leaderboard like Jimmy Garoppolo, Deshaun Watson, and Kirk Cousins.
It’s not enough to say that Wilson won a Super Bowl and lost a Super Bowl, which used to be a very compelling case. Because now Jalen Hurts has done that. And the very last memory that anyone has of Wilson in the playoffs, let alone the Super Bowl, is a game-losing interception.
However, what if we combine all these factors into one player and he’s a quarterback?
121 wins (12th most by a QB in history and every eligible QB ranked above him is in the HOF)
.601 career win% (same as Drew Brees, better than Kurt Warner and Troy Aikman)
353 career touchdown passes (12th-most ever and 2nd-most ever for a QB drafted third round or later behind only Tom Brady)
9 playoff wins (tied with 5 Hall of Fame QBs, more than Steve Young and Dan Marino)
5,568 career rushing yards (4th most all time by a QB)
Led the RPO revolution of the NFL (although Seattle was just borrowing from what RGIII-Shanahan was doing in Washington in 2012, Wilson was the quarterback who stayed healthy and proved it could be done for a decade if the quarterback was also an accurate deep ball passer and knew how to gain rushing yards without taking bad hits)
That last one could be the most important because Hall of Fame voters don’t just want stats and they’ve already discredited Wilson’s Super Bowls because of the Legion of Boom. What they can’t deny is that Russell Wilson evolved the league more than he did adapt to what was already changing in front of him. He is at least partly responsible for the NFL’s QB evolution over the last 20 years from the “pocket passer” to the “dual threat” by proving that he could have success in either role depending on what was needed at any given time.
And were it not for Russell Wilson, the number one picks of the 2018, 2019, and 2023 drafts could have all been different players than what they ended up being.
If Wilson had come after someone like Russell Wilson, he’s probably the second pick of the 2012 draft instead of the 75th.
Lucky for the Seahawks, he was the first — and still the only — real Russell Wilson. He paved the way for under 6’ quarterbacks who are nowhere near as good as he used to be with Seattle.
So even though Wilson managed to turn many of his fans into the same doubters who we used to have to defend him against, he is still the best — and quite possibly could always be the best — quarterback in the history of the Seahawks. They never wanted him to be in the Pro Bowl, let alone the Hall of Fame.
Don’t give them the satisfaction of shoving another great Seattle athlete into the corner as if that’s the only thing the northwest is good for.