Why afternoon links, you ask? Well this morning I was busy blabbing away on Sports Radio 950 KJR with Jerry Brewer for a couple of hours. We talked some Mariners, Seahawks, World Cup and more. If you want to hear me awkwardly try to navigate a different medium of sports media, you can listen to podcasts of the show here.
At 6 p.m. this evening the NFL Network will continue its countdown of the league’s top 100 players, and Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson will be one of three Seahawks ranking between 11-20 on today’s show.
And obviously if Wilson is one of the top 20 players in the game, he’s also one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL, right? Well not so fast, say some. While Wilson is beloved by Seahawks teammates, coaches, fans, etc., a panel of experts at NFL.com say he’s not in the upper echelon of NFL signal callers, at least not yet.
ESPN’s Mike Sando talked to a bunch of NFL insiders to rank QBs, and Wilson isn’t in the top tier according to who he talked to as well. This is an insider piece, so you’ll have to log in to read the whole thing, but Wilson is tied for eighth in this ranking.
So what do these varying opinions of Wilson mean? Well beside the fact that it’s a reminder that this is a very slow time for NFL news, so it’s a time to rank and debate come up with other ways to generate content, it doesn’t mean much of anything. Wilson can basically say, “scoreboard” and point to his Super Bowl ring if he actually wanted to get himself into this debate, but there’s no way he would bother doing so, and the Seahawks opinion of Wilson is very high and not about to be swayed by what others think. Is it possible that Seattle’s executives might try to point to these mixed opinions in contract negotiations a year from now? Perhaps, but if Wilson leads the Seahawks to another successful season or perhaps even a repeat championship, he’ll be getting a massive contract no matter what ESPN or NFL.com experts or anonymous NFL insiders say about him.
Ultimately, the knocks on Wilson are really less about him and more about the good things he has around him. Wilson hasn’t put up big numbers or had to win a ton of games without help because the Seahawks are a complete and balance team. He has, however, shown the ability to take over games when the team needs him too, and if there comes a time the Seahawks need him to put up bigger numbers in the passing game, I have a hard time believing anyone around that team doubts he could do so.
And finally, with Marshawn Lynch appearing in ESPN the magazine’s “Body Issue” he talked to the magazine about a few topic, including his skills as a swimmer, MMA training, and yes, his body.
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