Background: I have not followed the NFL since I moved to Europe several years ago. I was a casual fan when I lived in Seattle, and I watched the Seahawks semi-regularly. But when I came to Europe, I found that American football has almost no media presence here, and I stopped paying attention. (There are occasional games on some of the sport-oriented channels, often time-delayed, but they typically air with commentary in German and my language skills aren’t good enough to follow.)
When I was in Seattle, Russell Wilson was the Seahawks quarterback. He was intermittently frustrating in his over-reliance on improvisatory scrambling, but he was definitely better than the several QBs who preceded him, and he was occasionally very good indeed, as his Superbowl seasons attest.
But then, as noted, I left the U.S. and my awareness fell to near zero. I did see the headlines when he went to Denver a couple of years ago, and I thought that was interesting, but didn’t much look into it at the time. I guess I just assumed it was a combo of the Broncos struggling to figure out the QB position after Manning and a financial decision by Seattle. I remember some of my friends back home being upset, but due to distance and time I didn’t think a lot about it.
Now I see the headlines that the Broncos have benched Wilson. That piqued my curiosity, so I did some more reading, and I see that Wilson has not measured up to expectations in Denver.
My question is, why? He’s underperforming, but for what reason, or reasons?
I skimmed through a bunch of pundit-type articles, both professional and amateur, and I don’t see any consistent agreement on the cause for Wilson’s struggles. There is a fair amount of statistical information about his performance, which was, apparently, less than satisfactory more or less right away, a situation which contributed to the replacement of the head coach. But there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on why he’s floundering.
The professional pundits seem to be split between (a) suggesting that accumulating injuries are catching up with him and (b) arguing that there’s a cultural mismatch on the team which undermines his effectiveness. The fan blogs have some of this, but also throw in a variety of personal criticisms, like Wilson doesn’t care about the Broncos and isn’t putting in the effort because he’s getting paid no matter what, or that he’s distracted by off-field celebrity stuff and his head isn’t in the game, the usual kind of sniping you get from the bleachers. And there are even some writers who contend that Wilson isn’t actually bad at all and the perception of his underperformance is not backed up by the numbers. There seems to be general agreement that the team around Wilson isn’t very good, but the unanimity ends there.
So, what’s the deal? Is he as bad as his benching would suggest, or is he getting an unfair share of the blame for a poor team? Are the Broncos giving up on him as an athlete because they believe his problems, whatever they might be, are unfixable, or are they just looking for an excuse to get out from under as much of his contract as they can?
And, my core question — to whatever extent he really is struggling, why is he having trouble?
) are the only 0-4 Super Bowl teams.