Russell Wilson enjoyed a level of offensive coordinator stability that most other fullbacks do not offer. During nine seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, Darrell Bevell and Brian Schottenheimer are the only OCs he has ever known, but with Schotty and ten years in the creep, he wants input on the next lease.
“I think this is crucial,” Wilson told reporters at Zoom’s press conference on Thursday (via Seattle PI). ‘It’s critical, it’s extremely important that I’m part of the process. Coach and I definitely talked about it. John (Schneider) too. We had some very long dialogues about the thought process we want and the kind of idea of a leader, thought process, innovator, all the different things you want.
“I think it’s an extremely critical thing at this point in my career to be able to (be involved).”
It is not surprising that Wilson revealed during the printing press that he is not in favor of dismissing Schottenheimer and largely praises his praise. I do not think there was ever an idea from Russ that he wanted to move on from Schotty, so the move was clearly the call from Pete Carroll.
“I think he’s going to be a great coach for someone else, so hopefully for another team here,” Wilson said (via ESPN). “I think he’s going to be a head coach. I think he has that type of leadership ability. Unfortunately, we think it was a bit of time in Coach’s eyes to see if we could make a change. We were the best footballers in the first middle part of the season. He was a big part of it. ”
By the way, stop me if you’ve heard it before:
Russell Wilson: “We have to do everything right … we have to be able to throw it off the field,” and throw shorter, and screens, and the ball runs, and at a faster pace.
“I want to do it all right.”
– Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) 14 January 2021
You may have noticed that the Seahawks seemingly let their offense run into gear with enough time left on the game clock to the more familiar environment to repeatedly send it down to 0 by the end of the season. Wilson has apparently been a proponent of a faster pace offense for years and Seattle has been in the top-half in situation-neutral pace just once in his career. Darrell Bevell casually fired immediately.
Wilson has three more seasons left on his contract and by the end of the 2021 campaign he will be 33. This is indeed a critical point for Wilson’s career and the length of the Seahawks title. ‘Philosophical differences’ between Pete and Schotty are the reason why the latter was canned, but one can only wonder how serious the philosophical differences between Wilson and Carroll are.