scutterhawk":kxh5qli1 said:
pacific101":kxh5qli1 said:
Its NFL football folks, you play, you get banged up. One observation I made early on this year was the fact that Russell wasn't taking any more abuse out there this season than he had in the past, in fact less because our Online was and continues to improve in their efforts to protect him.
A lot of folks are immediately assuming that Russell's increased vulnerability to injury, is the blame of the Oline, instead of what my suspicions have been all along, and what I still suspect might be the real culprit. No not Darell
Bevell's play calling, lol, that is where everyone who doesn't blame the Oline goes next, when I believe the blame falls squarely on Russell's shoulders.
You can BS yourself, and try to shift blame and accountability elsewhere, but at the end of the day the truth is the truth, and until you own that and do what you have to, to fix it, your just going to keep getting more of the same.
I know I can be a wordy SOG (son of a gun), so I'll try and simple this down so I make my point and minimize boring you to death in the process. I've mentioned in a few of my post that I spent a good many years of my life coaching boxers, and with some good success, also having boxed some myself over the years. One thing that a boxer or a boxing coach will tell you separates boxing from most other physically demanding sports, is that at the end of the day, when you win you get all the credit, when you loose you do too.
Over the years of training fighters I had kids, who had no more skill or even toughness than any other kid in the gym. The ones who excelled, were the ones who pushed themselves to physical extremes that the others would not. I would see a lot of fighters do just enough to convince the coaches and themse!lives that they were in good enough shape to fight and win.
The ones who started out with this mentality would generally win their first few bouts, but then as they started getting matched tougher, they would start getting injured and beat. The ones who pushed themselves and who allowed their coaches to push them to greater extremes, were the ones who went on to win the local, state, regional, and national competitions.
The ones that always frustrated me as a coach, were the ones who had made the sacrifices and pushed themselves to these extremes to achieve greatness, and then, start listening to others around them, convince them that there were softer and easier ways to get to and remain at that level, which was simply not true. If they drank that koolaid and followed along down that path, it was not to long before it started to evidence itself out.
One of my first clues was when a fighter, who previously had demonstrated this type of work ethic, and had achieved that level of physical and mental toughness that had allowed them to compete at high levels of competition without injury, or at very least no injury, that they did not recover from quickly, start getting injured, hopefully in the gym before it found its way into actual bouts, where an injury can lead to even greater vulnerabilities and more serious injury.
Now long story as short as I can make it. I am a huge Russell Wilson fan, and a major reasoning behind my admiration for him, is my belief that he was one of these types of "fighters" I just described, who pushed himself to physical and mental extremes to get to where he is today. I think somewhere along the line over the past year or so, some of those who have been involved in his sports medicine or coaching has convinced him of a softer and easier way to aquire that same level of physical and mental toughness that got him where he was, and in drinking that flavor of koolaid, he has made himself, once again, near mediocre and increasingly vulnerable to injury.
I fear that if Russell doesn't wake up and smell the coffee, quit kidding himself, go back and start doing those things that got him where he is and kept him there up and until this past year, that we are only going to see more of the same with him, eventually sustaining an injury that removes him from the field of play and finding himself being replaced with a young gun who hasn't lost sight of what got them there, and haven't been induced in to drinking the softer easier way brand of koolaid.
We have all heard him in press conferences this year talking about how he has implicit faith in his rehab handlers, who are doing a great job of patching up all of his injuries, but not really addressing the real problem which is why he is now suddenly vulnerable to all the I juries he historically been able to avoid.
I'm not saying he should ignore the sports medicine people helping him recover from his injuries. What I am suggesting, Russell, is that you quit BS'ing yourself, make the decision to go back and start making those same sacrifices you made all the years prior to getting here, and get yourself back on your game. Otherwise I suspect that in the not to distant future your going to be reading articles about yourself where the are referring to you as a one time bright falling star. I truly hope not, for your sake and the sake of the Seattle Seahawks.
No time for editing this morning, hopefully spellcheck covered most of my errors, and you were able to make sense of what I'm trying to relay here. Sorry about being so wordy, its just who I am, never been able to keep it short and sweet on paper.
There's one aspect of your Boxing to Football analogy that doesn't correlate..... as a fighter in the ring, you yourself are responsible for keeping your guard up and not doing so means that you are going to sustain a LOT of unnecessary punishment, whereas, being a Quarterback, your Offensive Line IS your "Guard Up", in fact, they are designated as...Right Guard, and Left Guard.
It would be like tying your non-punching hand behind your back, and no amount of conditioning will get your body to withstand an non-defensed beating.
Its a good analogy, but the point I was making is that an athlete, like Russell for instance, who is admittedly smaller than most NFL quarterbacks who have achieved real greatness, and based on the exceptional work ethic that Russell and those around him touted to the public upon his entry into the NFL felt that he was able to compete at on a level equal to or exceeding many of his peers playing that same position in the NFL.
I believe that it was his phenomenal mental and physical obsession and conditioning practices that allowed him to ahieve greatness as a rookie and that allowed him to play pretty much injury free the first couple of years.
Then came the big money, there was a clear change in him, he started popping up in high dollar suites after the games to do press conferences.
He went through some pretty serious relationship ups and downs, the past few years. He had a much bigger demand put on himself by the media, and I feel that somewhere in all of that he decided he could devote just enough of his time to conditioning so that he could play the game of football, hoping his talent would carry the day, but slacked off increasingly, from that same levels of conditioning that got him to the top.
Maybe he started believing all the hype, that he was God gifted with all kinds of super natural talent, and started thinking that would be enough to carry the day, and I'm concerned that its proving not to be true.
If Russell is doing what a lot of mediocre players do for practice and conditioning, then he himself has become mediocre in his conditioning and has left him vulnerable to these increasing injuries, that he used to be able to get up and walk away from, but that are now starting to cripple him us and making it increasingly difficult on himself to be the player he knows and we believe that he can be and has been. .
If Russell wants to realize his dreams of being a star NFL Quarterback with records and rings like those worn by Elway, Manning etc.. he better wake up, smell the coffee quick,.
He needs to get his butt back in the kind of shape he was in before all the fame and fortune came his way. He can say it didn't change him all day long, we all saw a notable change in him after he signed on the dotted line, and it's expected to a point, but I wonder if he didn't loose some of his incentive to be that great QB he dreamed of being all through highschool and college.
if that is the case, take the big money he was paid to become this five star quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, and ride off in to the sunset, unaccomplished, and let the next gunslinger grab the ball and pick up where he left off,. Boykin could very well be our man. I see a lot of the young Russell Wilson in him, and he could learn a lot from Russell if he doesn't make some changes fast. My guess in all of this anyways.
