Skins fan, here is the story on Russel.
Preseason game 2 was against Denver and Matt Flynn did not look great. Pete put in Willson at the helm on the third preseason game against Kansas City and he looked expectacular. You have to remember that at that point of the season we thought both teams were about middle of the pack comparable, not the best and worst teams in the league respectively. I often wonder what would have happened if they had played in opposite order...
In any case Pete could start Matt Flynn and if it did not work out have one more year to turn the franchise around, or bet it all on Willson and have to explain to the owner why he threw away ten million dollars of his money. In all likelihood a Wilson flop would mean Pete would have joined the black Monday crowd last week, probably never to coach again. Ballsy move to start the rookie.
So Pete went with the rookie but decided to play it safe. Have the kid be a game manager and Marshawn lynch carry the football team. In the first few games there were almost no passing plays, worst passing offense on the league. This is not a case of training wheels like you have heard in other posts, this was a case of not being able to afford a QB failure and playing accordingly.
You know already from seeing RGIII, but there is a fire inside these rookie QBs. First week out on the loss to Arizona they put the ball on his hand four times in the last minute of the games, four failures. What does he do? he makes redzone completions his mantra for the entire second week, practices the failed passes again and again, he did not miss clutch throws like that for the rest of the season. Every game he fixates into fixing something that did not work the previous game, he never lets failures pull him down, he makes them drive him.
RGIII hit the NFL running, your coach basically installed his college offense and made everybody else adjust. Willson left his two college experiences behind and learned a new one, then he looked at RGIII and copied that too. People who compare RGIII numbers to Willson and claim that they are similar but that your QB is ahead forget that Wilson was so much worse in the beginning of the year. Think about what that must mean for comparisons that take only the second half of the season.
Good luck on Sunday