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- Mar 20, 2019
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Until Russell Wilson takes the first snaps of the season for the Seattle Seahawks, the question of whether he will be playing for someone else instead next season will continue to persist.
Wilson has used the offseason to express some level of frustration with the team regarding how much he’s been hit and saying he wants to be involved in more aspects of the team, including the hiring of its new offensive coordinator, Shane Waldron.
Recently retired tight end Greg Olsen spent last season with the Seahawks and spoke about how he sees the relationship between Wilson, the team and Pete Carroll, the reasons Wilson feels the way he does and is now expressing himself more, and if he sees Wilson playing somewhere else next season in a podcast appearance with Colin Cowherd.
Olsen ultimately believes the two sides will find the right path to move forward together.
“I think that’s pie in the sky,” Olsen said of the chances of Wilson playing elsewhere. “I don’t think Seattle… You can’t take those odds. If you’re taking the odds today, he’s back in Seattle. They fix the things that they both agree on that needs to get better to push the organization forward.”
So what does Olsen make of Wilson’s decision to be more vocal this offseason and attempt to leverage the Seahawks in certain directions? He thinks that Wilson is beginning to feel his football mortality a little bit and that the urgency for him is ramping up to win another Super Bowl and show he can do it without a dominant defense and rushing attack leading the way.
“He has every right to say what he feels he needs to be the player and to be at the Tom Brady level, the Peyton Manning level,” Olsen said. I know that’s what he strives to be. That’s how he views himself. And right now, he knows his career, you know, he’s almost at double digits now. He can say what he wants, ‘I’m gonna play 20 [years].’ That sounds great. That’s hard to guarantee. He knows he’s in the meat of his career, his window of winning is now, and there’s things that he knows he needs in order to achieve what he set out to achieve and I don’t blame him.
“Russ knows that if he wants to enter into that category that I believe he is already in, he needs to win more Super Bowls. And he needs to now. It’s not the Legion of Boom. it’s not the days of old where now he wants that weight on his shoulders, he wants it to be an offensively driven philosophy and team. Are they willing to allow him to operate the Seattle Seahawks in that manner? I think that’s the crossroads they’re at right now. After being there a year. I’m not exactly sure, which path they take. … “He’s the most professional, high-level guy maybe I’ve ever been been a part of regardless of position. But his legacy matters to him, and I don’t blame him. He’s a one-time, Super Bowl champ, one-time Super Bowl loser. That matters to him. He wants to win three, four, multiple Super Bowls, and he wants it to be on his back because that’s the type of competitor that he is. Will the Seattle Seahawks ever just say, ‘here are the keys, go win us the Super Bowl offensively.’ I’m not sure.”
But Olsen also said that Carroll and the Seahawks have every right, given their success and track record, to believe that the way they have approached the game is a pretty good one as well.
“And I don’t blame him,” Olsen said of Carroll. “He’s one of the most impressive people running an organization I’ve ever been around. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything, disagree… He runs a football team incredibly efficient, attention to detail, situations, coaching. His team meeting is 35 minutes and you sit there the entire time on the edge of your seat because it’s not just wasted fluff. So I get it. Both guys know that they’re capable of being amongst the all-time best. They just have a little bit of different philosophy on how it’s done.
“We won 12 games last year. Right? I think people take we lost in the first round of the playoffs we lost to L.A. and, you know, they didn’t have their quarterback and all that. At the end of the day, no one has won more games than Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks to start a guy’s career, right. So success there has also made them a little, you know, it’s almost spoiled them a little bit. If they don’t win the Super Bowl it’s a massive failure, yes. But most organizations, they’d cut off their leg to win 12 games a year, right, so i think they’re lucky in that regard. They’ve set such a high mark that it’s Super Bowl or bust, which is awesome.”