It was a clear for a while. This shouldn't be a shock.
Russ wants to be great. He doesn't care as much if the team is great.
This isn't even that uncommon. A few people I knew worked with NFL QBs and shared with me personally that more QBs care about going to the HOF than winning a SB.
The big tell for me was when he set a goal of having a certain % completion rate for the season. You can see where there are a number of in-game moments where throwing the ball incomplete or with lower % could benefit the team while still hurting that goal. It was a weird goal to have, honestly.
BUT He does want to be great. And he is exceptionally talented/skilled. You can ride that to wins. But you need to be adept at handling that. Carroll used to be exceptional at this kind of thing. But his impact wears off over time. (Sort of like Wilson in that respect)
Again, the biggest error in this whole thing was Pete deciding to give the keys to his QB.
Understand why he did it, the NFL is pushing every advantage to the QB. You won't be able to win without a top-tier QB soon enough. Playing and winning the old way won't work.
We had Lynch and the LOB. We WOULD have ridden that to another 2 if not 3 SBs by focusing on that. But instead, we raced to put Wilson in the driver's seat. And he literally warned us, 'the separation is in the preparation'. We knew damned well that as soon as all the extraneous things that tug at a star QB's shirt happened, his production would go down too. Lynch and the LOB wouldn't have lasted forever, but 2-3 more years of them with Wilson would have gotten us 1 or 2 more SBs.
Now, I think Wilson knows this. He might be full of himself but he wants to be great. And that means he needs a coaching structure that facilitates his production, that allows him to prosper. Someone like a Reid, instead of a Carroll.
Wilson, in the right hands, is a HOF talent even now. He throws well on the run, has incredible accuracy on long passes, great ability to diagnose the defense post-snap, and seems to harden under pressure. But he is a home run hitter, not a guy that hits for average.
Carroll is a loyal guy. He wanted to support Wilson. But he wanted to support Wilson playing the way Carroll wanted. Carroll could not adapt to the new NFL. That was always the problem. The old way won't work anymore.
Both Carroll and Wilson are weirdly flawed in some of the same ways, but Wilson needed an offensive guru and Carroll wasn't one.
