Do you believe this about Russell Wilson?

[BlueTalon]

CYNICISM is an underrated virtue, your tagline is perfect for this thread. I think Payton didn't like Russ, and did everything he could do to run him out of town. Maybe he doesn't relate to black QB's? Whatever it was in Denver, it was personal.

This isn't whatever-year-Warren-Moon-wasn't-drafted any more. I don't think Payton gives a crap about his QB's skin color. He's far more concerned about how his offense is run (or not run, as the case may be.)

But yeah, cynicism. Everyone should have some.

 

[jeremiah]

I just threw out the racist angle, it is the new thing. Payton didn't thank RW, he didn't praise his record and talk of his past glories. HE DESTROYED HIM, now who does that? Someone with a bias, a hatred. It is no skin off of his teeth to throw in some softening rhetoric. The man who had much success with Greg Williams "rip the head off of Peyton Manning", He took his mask off and showed his fangs. What kind of man does that?

 

[warden]

Russel was great at the read option, complety froze the defense for a split second. Did he give the ball to Lynch or did he keep it?

Russell was great at extending the play with his legs. He was one of the very best a throwing the ball while running. Once again froze the defense for a spit second, is he going to throw or run?

Russell throws a very nice deep ball.

Russell sucks at quick developing plays, cannot do a three step drop ball is gone play. Tried that in the second superbowl and we all cried about how that worked out. One could question if he could even do a five step consistently

Once Russell lost his legs or the desire to use his legs, it was over. Pretty standard for most running QBs. Problem is Russell developed an unrealistic perception on how good he was making himself hard to coach. Lost what made him great and didn’t have what was necessary to overcome that

He has become an easy QB to defend against

 

[Kamcussionator]

I just threw out the racist angle, it is the new thing. Payton didn't thank RW, he didn't praise his record and talk of his past glories. HE DESTROYED HIM, now who does that? Someone with a bias, a hatred. It is no skin off of his teeth to throw in some softening rhetoric. The man who had much success with Greg Williams "rip the head off of Peyton Manning", He took his mask off and showed his fangs. What kind of man does that?

Hackett and Pete treated RW with kid gloves and they got walked on.

Russell's mindset was that he was management. He referred to him and Hackett as 'partners'.

And who can forget: "Who you go to for advice?"
"People think it it's Pete Carroll, but sorry, it's Mr.Unliiiiiiimited!"

So no, it's not bias or hatred, Payton was acting as a HC and not a 'buddy'. Russ is going to have to show he can be coached or Tomlin will cut him. Russ didn't get destroyed, he got a wakeup call. Now we'll see if he can grow up.

 

[Lagartixa]

I just threw out the racist angle, it is the new thing. Payton didn't thank RW, he didn't praise his record and talk of his past glories. HE DESTROYED HIM, now who does that? Someone with a bias, a hatred. It is no skin off of his teeth to throw in some softening rhetoric. The man who had much success with Greg Williams "rip the head off of Peyton Manning", He took his mask off and showed his fangs. What kind of man does that?

What was he s'posed to say?

"Uh, thanks Mr. Wilson for coming in here and destroying what had been a team on the rise. Thanks for wasting a truly great performance by our defense in 2022 with your bottom-three-in-the-league suckitude. Thanks for being so bad that you got the head coach fired and scared away the defensive coördinator. What I'm saying is... thanks for being so bad you got me this job. One of the things I was asked to do when I was brought here was to try to wring some value out of the worst trade and worst contract extension in the team's history. It is in that context that I thank you so much for being either unwilling or unable to run my offense. Thank you for being so bad that all the decision makers involved ended up getting on board with cutting bait on your contract and getting out having paid 'just' $62M per year for one year of sub-replacement-level performance and one year of minimizing-the-damage-you-could-do-to-us short passing. $85M of dead money on our salary cap makes our front office and coaching staff's jobs really tough for the next two seasons, so thanks for being so bad that we would rather work around that than try to work around your on-the-field limitations."

 

[toffee]

What was he s'posed to say?

"Uh, thanks Mr. Wilson for coming in here and destroying what had been a team on the rise. Thanks for wasting a truly great performance by our defense in 2022 with your bottom-three-in-the-league suckitude. Thanks for being so bad that you got the head coach fired and scared away the defensive coördinator. What I'm saying is... thanks for being so bad you got me this job. One of the things I was asked to do when I was brought here was to try to wring some value out of the worst trade and worst contract extension in the team's history. It is in that context that I thank you so much for being either unwilling or unable to run my offense. Thank you for being so bad that all the decision makers involved ended up getting on board with cutting bait on your contract and getting out having paid 'just' $62M per year for one year of sub-replacement-level performance and one year of minimizing-the-damage-you-could-do-to-us short passing. $85M of dead money on our salary cap makes our front office and coaching staff's jobs really tough for the next two seasons, so thanks for being so bad that we would rather work around that than try to work around your on-the-field limitations."

The sword could be double-edged, in case Wilson and the Steelers go beyond the first round of the playoff and the Broncos again fail to have a winning season.

How much effort Payton spent on working with Wilson, or his agenda was to get rid of Wilson? These two never had a honeymoon period.

 

[Spin Doctor]

The sword could be double-edged, in case Wilson and the Steelers go beyond the first round of the playoff and the Broncos again fail to have a winning season.

How much effort Payton spent on working with Wilson, or his agenda was to get rid of Wilson? These two never had a honeymoon period.

Russell Wilson’s skillset never fit what Sean Payton wanted to do on offense. The two were a mismatch from day one. Payton essentially recycled the old Seahawks offense.

In addition to this, Wilson’s conduct towards Pete and Hackett was less than stellar. Wilson was acting like he was the coach of the franchise. Wilson was allowing his “team 3” to run the place under Hackett.

Given Wilson’s conduct and slump in his play that had lasted since the back half of 2020, yeah I wouldn’t be too pleased either if I was tied to that guy. A player mind you that was incapable of running Payton’s system.

Wilsons issue is he is very bad at the procedural elements of football. His play adjustments have always been questionable, he’s very slow to diagnose the defense, and his short passing game, quite frankly sucks.

In addition to this, Wilson hamstrung the broncos from a salary cap and draft capital standpoint. He was a serious problem for them. I don’t blame Payton one bit for what he did.

 

[BlueTalon]

The sword could be double-edged, in case Wilson and the Steelers go beyond the first round of the playoff and the Broncos again fail to have a winning season.

How much effort Payton spent on working with Wilson, or his agenda was to get rid of Wilson? These two never had a honeymoon period.

It didn't start well. One of the very first things Payton had to do was put the kibosh on Russ's personal office and staff in the team facilities. Probably not something he expected to have to do.

 

[BlueTalon]

Regarding Payton, I'm wondering if the same who-carried-who conversation will begin to emerge regarding Payton & Drew Breese that has emerged about Russ & Pete, and Brady & Belichick.

 

[toffee]

Regarding Payton, I'm wondering if the same who-carried-who conversation will begin to emerge regarding Payton & Drew Breese that has emerged about Russ & Pete, and Brady & Belichick.

From everything I have read, Russell Wilson was very eager to work under Payton. Remember the rumored petitioning to replace Pete with Payton, and dinner with Montana and Ciara. I am under the impression that Wilson believed in Payton, maybe that was a one-sided love affair.

 

[RiverDog]

I don't recall that test being timed as if you were playing QB,I may be wrong tbf.
I just think he has a slow processor, not able to do more than 2 reads before it all
goes off script and I have no doubt this pissed SP off because your not running the complete play(s) as designed.
All 22 showed guys open in Seattle ,Denver and here he is sand lotting it out.

It's timed. You have 12 minutes to answer 50 questions.

As I said earlier, that's one of the tricks to taking it. Don't waste time on complicated math questions. Move on and answer the gimmes, of which there are a number of them scattered throughout the test, then return to the unanswered questions if you have time. But you don't want to "leave points on the field" when time runs out.

Whether or not it has any relevance to the quarterback position is debatable. What isn't debatable is the fact that the NFL has been using it for years.

 

[RiverDog]

The test was designed to weed out job applicants. So, I assume that it holds value in showing that the prospect put some effort into their studies and prepared for the draft.

Personally, I don't think it holds much value to evaluate someone's ability to quickly process a play call, though. Performance seems heavily dependent on your general knowledge and experience with that style of problem-solving. Given that Wonderlic doesn't go beyond basic algebra and logic, the score will scale with practice (as you noted) more than anything. And how much do those topics transfer to learning a playbook and regurgitating it in games? Probably not that much. One relies primarily on pattern recognition, while the other focuses on language, memory, and communication.

That doesn't mean Russ is dumb or anything (if this is the case). Some people just struggle with different tasks. My wife is a good example of this. She could easily score high on the Wonderlic-style test but couldn't find her way home from work without a GPS (slight exaggeration).

Good post, and I agree completely.

All I am saying is that Russ's very good Wonderlic score is evidence that the article in the OP is false. I would find it surprising that he would be as stupid as what is being portrayed given what we know about his intelligence and work ethic.

Off topic, but your comment about your wife's navigation skills reminded me of something. I once read that men and women differ in how they navigate. Men are more likely to use dead reckoning: "I know that it's this direction." Women are more likely to navigate by landmarks: "I know that it's near the 7-11 store." I have no idea if there is any truth to that.

 

[nanomoz]

I believe Wilson has OK instinct, but a slow or small processor. The more time Wilson spent in the film room, or reading up plays, the extra data exposed his slow/small processor. Last season, Wilson truly tried to learn Payton's system, well, we knew the result.

Wilson was created by football God to play Peteball, which is simple, and took weights off QB.

The Steelers would thrilled to get 29 tds and 13 tos from their qb.

 

[Rat]

Not surprising. I thought it was well-known that he plays much more on instinct, and isn't a "student of the game" type. We might see him on a pre-game show someday, but I doubt he'll even consider coaching. I think he would struggle to impart what he knows because it's something that comes naturally to him.

 

[Palmegranite]

"... slump in his play that had lasted since the back half of 2020.."

The Seahawks were 12-4 and won the division in 2020. One of the most successful seasons in their history.

Who knows what was going on with Sean Payton last season.

But when your QB takes you on a 5 game win streak, including beating the eventual SB champions, it has to be more than

"he's not winning the right way",

 

[toffee]

Not surprising. I thought it was well-known that he plays much more on instinct, and isn't a "student of the game" type. We might see him on a pre-game show someday, but I doubt he'll even consider coaching. I think he would struggle to impart what he knows because it's something that comes naturally to him.

you nailed it.

 

[Ostatehawk]

The opening line of that article is ridiculous. Russ signing with Pittsburgh wasn't a notable seismic event.

What I don't understand about Russ's situation is that we've heard he has an elite work ethic—first in, last out. What the heck is he doing with his time at team facilities if not studying plays and learning verbiage? I could understand failing to read defenses or seeing over the line in games. But not knowing play calls? Does he have a learning disability? Or is his work ethic actually an issue, and we've been spoonfed a lie for a decade?

High Knees? Maybe he was doing High Knees?

 

[IndyHawk]

It's timed. You have 12 minutes to answer 50 questions.

As I said earlier, that's one of the tricks to taking it. Don't waste time on complicated math questions. Move on and answer the gimmes, of which there are a number of them scattered throughout the test, then return to the unanswered questions if you have time. But you don't want to "leave points on the field" when time runs out.

Whether or not it has any relevance to the quarterback position is debatable. What isn't debatable is the fact that the NFL has been using it for years.

I know it's timed but it's not going to show you have a fast processer just because you scored ok on it.
My point was you got seconds as a QB to read, react and seeing how he's slow to get the ball out it should be obvious what his issue is.

The test doesn't really mean much seeing how Stroud did and he scored pretty bad.

 

[RiverDog]

The opening line of that article is ridiculous. Russ signing with Pittsburgh wasn't a notable seismic event.

What I don't understand about Russ's situation is that we've heard he has an elite work ethic—first in, last out. What the heck is he doing with his time at team facilities if not studying plays and learning verbiage? I could understand failing to read defenses or seeing over the line in games. But not knowing play calls? Does he have a learning disability? Or is his work ethic actually an issue, and we've been spoonfed a lie for a decade?

Back before our SB appearance in 2014, our local newspaper here ran an article on Russell Wilson. One summer, he played baseball here in the Tri Cities for our Class A minor league team and stayed with a host family along with a couple other teammates. The lady said that the other guys would go out when they didn't have a game the next day, but that Russell would stay at home. She said that one night, she got up at 3am and found Russell in their living room studying his "North Carolina (State) stuff", meaning their playbook.

In 3 successive seasons, Russell had to learn 3 different playbooks: NC State, Wisconsin, and the Hawks. Contrast that with Cam Newton. In Newton's second full season with the Pats, he had trouble learning the playbook and a rookie QB named Mac Jones had to help him out. The Pats cut Newton and gave the job to Jones.

My point is that I don't think that there is any question that Russell was both smart enough to learn playbooks and had the work ethic required to quickly master them. That doesn't mean that the present-day Russell has changed, only that at the very least, he was a smart, hardworking QB early in his career.

 

[RiverDog]

I know it's timed but it's not going to show you have a fast processer just because you scored ok on it.
My point was you got seconds as a QB to read, react and seeing how he's slow to get the ball out it should be obvious what his issue is.

The test doesn't really mean much seeing how Stroud did and he scored pretty bad.

I understand and agree. The part of the article I was disagreeing with, and using the Wonderlic as evidence that it was false, was the part that said that Russell couldn't call his own plays, that they had to dumb it down, had to make him wear a wrist band, et al. That doesn't have anything to do with reading defenses or audibling at the LOS.

Again, a little off topic, but they've come up with a cognition test called the S2 that is supposed to measure what you're talking about, that apparently Brock Purdy aced:

"Purdy landed in the mid-90s on something called the S2 Cognition test, a score you might consider Drew Brees-like," wrote Barrows. "Which is to say, it's elite. The S2 isn't an intelligence test like the 50-question Wonderlic exam but rather measures how quickly and accurately athletes process information. It's like the 40-yard dash for the brain."