SEATTLE — OK, Seattle Seahawks fans, it’s safe to take your hands away from the panic button. The real Russell Wilson is back and functioning properly again.
Whatever affliction Seattle’s quarterback suffered last weekend has been fixed. The gears that had been catching have been lubricated. The radar has been re-calibrated.
The clanking and clunking in the machinery of Wilson’s right arm in last Sunday’s blowout loss to the Green Bay Packers was silenced, and Wilson was back running smoothly Thursday night in the Seahawks’ 24-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams at CenturyLink Field.
Maybe it was the “action green” uniforms the Seahawks wore — which looked like they’d been dipped in the Hanford nuclear waste tanks — that shocked Wilson’s system back online. But whatever the reason, Wilson had an important response to his five-interception debacle in Seattle’s 38-10 loss at Green Bay four days earlier.
“You have to have amnesia,” Wilson said following Thursday’s game. “I didn’t hang over too long or anything like that. I know and believe in who I am. I know and believe in how our football team is and what we’re capable of. Unfortunately, it didn’t go our way that day, but today it did, and I think it’s always keeping perspective on where we are and the chances that we have. Like I’ve always said, you want to stay even keeled.”
It’s understandable if the fans were unable to match Wilson’s steadfastness. The concern was that something in Wilson may have been broken following the game against the Packers. Wilson, in the type of display rarely seen from Seattle’s usually dependable quarterback, was wilder than Fernando Rodney at his worst. Not only did he throw the five interceptions, he also missed open receivers behind the defense and threw into the turf toward open receivers in front of it.
It would have been easy to write it off as a one-time thing, except that Wilson had an equally miserable outing two weeks before that in Seattle’s 14-5 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, when his passer rating of 38.8 was even worse than his 43.7 against the Packers — those were two of the three worst passer ratings of his five-year career. And over the course of the previous three games Wilson threw eight interceptions after throwing just two in his prior 10 outings. The puzzling aspect was that the inaccuracy corresponded with Wilson finally getting his legs healthy following early-season injuries to his ankle and knee. Were his legs somehow sapping the power to his arm?
But after some fine tuning in the first half Thursday, Wilson had everything back at full power in the second half. The moment that confirmed it came on the second play of the fourth quarter. On third-and-11 from the Seattle 43 Wilson decided to go for it all, throwing deep toward Tyler Lockett heading for the right corner. Lockett took the ball in stride for a 57-yard touchdown pass that was the final piece of evidence that Wilson’s targeting function was once again operating at maximum capacity.
“Russell is a phenomenal dude, a great quarterback at that,” said Lockett, who was Wilson’s primary target with seven catches for 130 yards. “He does a tremendous job mentally, he mentally prepares himself, especially in the offseason. I was around him in the offseason being able to see that. He trains himself that if he throws an interception it’s as if it didn’t even happen.”
Wilson finished the game 19-for-26 for 229 yards and three touchdowns with one interception. His passer rating jumped 78.4 points from Green Bay to 122.1 against the Rams. All the readings on Wilson’s display were back at normal again.
“I thought it was a nice bounce-back night for Russ,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “He came back with a good night. It was too bad the one throw was nuts, the last one, but other than that he played a really good football game. I know everybody was wondering what happened last week. He showed you who he is and what he’s all about once again.”
Carroll alluded to the one moment late in the fourth quarter that was reminiscent of last Sunday’s malfunctioning. On his last throw of the game Wilson, while under pressure, heaved a ball up for grabs that was intercepted by Rams linebacker Alec Ogletree at the goal line. So it seems those gears will need another dose of oil prior to next week’s game against the Arizona Cardinals.
But the most important thing is Wilson did what he needed to show that last week was the aberration rather than the new norm, and as a result he and the Seahawks’ offense are once again functioning correctly.
For more on the Seattle sports scene, check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at www.heraldnet.com/tag/seattle-sidelines, or follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.
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