Able-bodied Wilson once again showing rare ability for Seahawks

Published 4:30 pm Saturday, November 26, 2016

TAMPA, Fla. — Now that he’s finally healthy, Russell Wilson can get back to playing like he has before.

For the Tri-City Dust Devils and the Asheville Tourists, that is.

Seattle’s franchise quarterback enters Sunday’s game between the NFC West-leading Seahawks (7-2-1) and Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5-5) looking like his wondrous, improvisational self again. Last weekend against Philadelphia, Wilson showed his sprained right ankle, sprained left knee and right pectoral injury were in the past.

On his most wowing play he scrambled left, ran up to the line of scrimmage, twisted his body back to the right and zipped an off-balance pass to Jimmy Graham for a 15-yard touchdown. Seattle took the lead for good in a 26-15 win.

“It’s an amazing play. It’s a very unusual throw to make, with all the momentum he had going to his left and to flick it back in,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said.

“A beautiful play.”

One that had Wilson back looking like a second baseman for one of the first times of his injury-filled season.

“I think that a lot of that comes from baseball, playing middle infield and all of that. Being able to throw at different angles,” he said. “I think it’s also practice, too. ‘Tater,’ (quarterbacks) coach Carl Smith, we always practice on our game. And you have to find ways in this game to make throws and make completions and give guys chances, like Jimmy the other day.”

Seahawks top receiver Doug Baldwin marveled at how much — or little — core strength Wilson must have to make such throws.

“He has a fantastic base. You can’t tell by looking at him, but he also has a pretty strong core,” Baldwin said.

“We always joke around about his ab routine — or lack thereof.”

About a decade ago Wilson was about to graduate from The Collegiate School in Richmond, Virginia. He was a shortstop with a .467 batting average and a quarterback with 3,009 yards and 34 touchdown passes as a senior. North Carolina State offered him scholarships in football and baseball.

The Baltimore Orioles drafted Wilson in the 41st round of baseball’s draft out of high school but he chose to play three seasons of football and baseball at N.C. State. In that time the Colorado Rockies drafted Wilson in the fourth round in 2010. That summer Wilson played infield for the Tri-City Dust Devils in Pasco, in the Northwest League, then returned to N.C. State for his junior season of football.

After he graduated from N.C. State with one season of football eligibility remaining Wilson played one more season of professional baseball, for the Class-A Asheville Tourists in North Carolina. He gave up baseball in June 2011 after hitting .229 with 118 strikeouts in 315 at-bats, then played his fifth-year senior season of football at Wisconsin.

Wilson quarterbacked the Badgers to the 2012 Rose Bowl. The Seahawks drafted him a few months later in the third round of the 2012 NFL draft. And that was the end of Wilson’s baseball career — aside from a couple one-day visits to the Texas Rangers’ spring-training camp as a uniformed “guest” in recent years. Wilson still occasionally wears a Rangers team hoodie around Seahawks headquarters.

But Wilson, now 28, says his wild, across-the-body flicks like an infielder began way before his competitive baseball career began.

“I’ve done that ever since I was little,” he said. “I think about when I was young, playing in the snow in Virginia, playing at my friends’ houses and stuff like that. Playing at recess, doing all that stuff, you practice all those kinds of things. Also, like I said from baseball, fielding different balls from all different angles, having to throw it to first, second, whatever. I think also the early mornings with my dad, early in the morning just practicing the game.

“Like I said, I attribute a lot of that to coach Carl Smith, too. It’s how we practice and we do a lot of different things, especially in training camp and the beginning of practices, just to throw different balls.”

The problem for the Buccaneers’ 26th-ranked defense that allows 26 points per game, the Panthers next week and the rest of Seattle’s opponents this season is that Wilson being healthy again means he can get back to being his improvisational, unlikely best. His 2,714 yards passing — with 11 touchdowns and just two interceptions — has him on pace to break by more than 300 yards the Seahawks franchise passing record for a single season of 4,024. He set that last season.

He’s often most accurate when his throws are most unconventional. When protection breaks down. When defenses don’t know if he’s going to run or pass.

“Savvy, instincts, confidence, timing, all of those things come into play,” Carroll said. “The quarterback position is such a difficult spot to play, but the way he does it, and there are a few guys who play like this, they just call on marvelous sense and timing and feel and all that.”

As if his baseball background and crazy throws weren’t enough to prove his unique athletic skills, Wilson ran out of the left side of the formation and became the first Seahawks quarterback to catch a touchdown pass last weekend. That was from Baldwin in the second half against the Eagles.

“He’s an extraordinary and natural athlete. He can do everything,” Carroll said. “He can throw and catch, and I’m sure he can hit a golf ball and can shoot some hoops. He can just do everything.

“There was a comment I heard about some baseball stuff, in reference to the kinds of throws you have to make as a second baseman where you catch the ball and have to throw the ball over here, that kind of action and ability to separate your lower body from your upper body and do that. It was kind of what that throw was all about. He’s running this way and he throws the ball back in here with accuracy and finesse and all of that.

“A lot of those things, you can’t coach those and teach those.

“The guys can either do it. Or they can’t.”