This is a genuine shocker.
It remains to be seen if the Seattle Seahawks will deeply regret their decision Tuesday to move on from Russell Wilson.
Let’s be brutally honest, history isn’t on their side. Most of the time, teams end up regretting these kind of bombshell trades.
I was honestly surprised by Wilson’s trade to Denver. I really figured the Seahawks and Wilson had reached a grudging accord to accommodate each other, much like Green Bay and Aaron Rodgers.
I know nothing for a fact, but it certainly appears that the relationship between Wilson and coach Pete Carroll was no longer sustainable. Wilson has been clearly frustrated with the Seahawks’ poor offensive line and Carroll’s insistence on utilizing a 1970s “We’re going to run it down your throat” offense for some time. I fully expected the Seahawks to move on from Carroll and keep Wilson around a few more years.
Drew Lock appears to have some potential, but he’s only started 21 games for his career and is 4-12 over his past 16 games as a starter. They also got a slew of high draft picks for Wilson.
Still, this feels like a massively risky move by the Seahawks.
I hope the Seahawks know what they’re doing because genuinely good quarterbacks are pretty hard to find. When you get a top five guy like Wilson, you hang on to him as long as you can.
Wilson is not only a Hall of Famer, he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He will finish with more than 50,000 yards passing and more than 400 touchdown passes. I’ve never seen a quarterback with such an ability to bring his team back from huge deficits. No lead ever feels safe against this guy.
I’ve been a lifelong 49ers fan and since the 49ers unceremoniously dumped a decent quarterback, Jeff Garcia, in 2003 in a dumb salary cap move, here is a partial list of their starting quarterbacks over the past 19 years: Tim Rattay, J.T. O’Sullivan, Trent Dilfer, Alex Smith, Troy Smith, Shaun Hill, Colin Kaepernick, Blaine Gabbert, Bobby Hoyer, Nick Mullens, C.J. Beathard and Jimmy Garoppolo. Alex Smith had the most starts (75) and the most yardage (14,280) in those 19 years.
There’s at least four or five other quarterbacks during that time who started for the 49ers. I either can’t remember their names or I don’t want to remember them. And next year will be another new quarterback for San Francisco.
That kind of quarterback instability is actually somewhat typical for about half the teams in the NFL. Look at Denver since Peyton Manning retired. They’ve been even more of a train wreck than the 49ers at quarterback.
Wilson will be treated like a conquering hero in that city. And for good reason. Honestly, I don’t think more than 10 or 12 teams in the NFL right now have a genuinely stable quarterbacking situation over the next two or three years.
That’s a lot to turn your back on.
Nothing lasts forever in sports. I remember the shocking trades in the 1990s and 2000s of Ken Griffey Jr., Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton. Griffey in particular left everyone stunned.
When that day comes when things change, and change big, it still feels like a punch in the gut. And it feels like a big step backward for the Seahawks franchise.
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Sports Editor Pierre LaBossiere can be contacted at plabossiere@ peninsuladailynews.com.
