Russell Wilson says he’s ‘very critical’ he’s involved in finding Seahawks offensive coordinator

Russell Wilson enjoyed a level of offensive coordinator stability that is not offered to most other quarterbacks. In nine seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, Darrell Bevell and Brian Schottenheimer are the only OCs he’s ever known, but with Schotty gone and the tenth year creeping up, he wants to make the next hire.

“I think it’s vital,” Wilson told reporters at Thursday’s Zoom press conference (via Seattle PI). “It is essential, obviously very important, that I be part of this process. Coach and I definitely talked about it. John (Schneider) too. We’ve had really long dialogues about the thinking process of who we want and this idea of ​​leader, thinking process, innovator, all that different kind of stuff you want.

“I think it’s an extremely critical thing at this point in my career to be able (to be involved).”

Unsurprisingly, Wilson revealed during that squeeze that he was not in favor of Schottenheimer’s dismissal and sang his praises greatly. I don’t think there was ever any idea from Russ that he wanted to leave Schotty, so this move was clearly Pete Carroll’s call.

“I think he’s going to be an amazing coach for someone else, for another team here, so I hope,” Wilson said (via ESPN). “I think he’s going to be a head coach. I think he has that kind of leadership ability. Unfortunately for us, I think in Coach’s eyes it was time to see if we could make a change. We were the best attack in football for the first half of the season. He played a major role in this.

By the way, stop me if you’ve heard this before:

You may have noticed that the Seahawks have gone from starting their offense with plenty of time left on the game clock to a more familiar setting of repeatedly sending it to 0 near the end of the season. . Wilson has been a supporter of a faster tempo attack for years, and Seattle has only been in the top half at neutral pace once in his career. Darrell Bevell was fired right after that happened, by the way.

Wilson still has three seasons on his contract and by the time we reach the final stages of the 2021 campaign, he will be 33. This is indeed a critical time for Wilson’s career and the length of the Seahawks’ title contention window. The “philosophical differences” between Pete and Schotty explain why the latter was canned, but one can only wonder how serious the philosophical differences between Wilson and Carroll are.