Russ Retires
Couldn’t let the origin of my entire Tiny QB running gag get out the door without at least one last zinger.
The 24th comic I ever made was about Russell Wilson. The first time (I’m pretty sure) that I ever drew him as a tiny guy was on comic 126. Here we are at comic #1700 and we sit at the retirement of Russell Wilson. The Draw Play has now officially lasted longer than his NFL career. What a weird career it was.
Russ was an outstanding college QB who got overlooked by everyone prior to the draft as he stood below their sightline. While we all got smitten by Andrew Luck or RGIII, here was this little guy from Wisconsin who went in the third round. His girlfriend at the time made a funny face when he got the call. He was a different kind of corny then. He wore baggy Hawaiian shirts and had extreme Dad-core energy. It would be a little while before he went celebrity Russ and became a fashionista married to a singer. I miss the more openly dorky Russ. It always felt like that was closer to who he actually is as a person. The stylish celebrity Russ has always felt like kind of a brand management persona. He is extremely aware of how he wants to be perceived and it can come across as phony.
The Hawks had given Matt Flynn an absurd contract from his one good game in Green Bay, and Flynn couldn’t even outplay Russ in training camp/Preseason. Pete Carroll deserves credit for recognizing who he had right from the get go. Russ was an immediate sensation. Peak Russ in those early years was one of the most exciting players I’d ever watched. It was absolutely infuriating how he could slip out of sacks like a chicken covered in baby oil. Then he’d run around for another ten seconds, chuck a moonball that appeared to hang in the air for 10 minutes, and yet somehow come down exactly where it needed to go. Russell Wilson breaking free of the pocket felt like a death sentence for the other team.
Russ broke the mold for tiny guys. Drew Brees (who was slightly taller) had been an exception to the rule, but Russ ironically broke through the ceiling. Without Russ, we likely don’t have Kyler Murray/Bryce Young going first overall. Russ proved smaller guys could do the job just fine, even be elite.
He rode those skills to a Super Bowl win, multiple classic playoff games, and a ton of regular-season wins. Yeah, he was deeply corny, saying “Go Hawks” constantly like he was a spokesman in a commercial. Russ was probably on track to be a hall of famer in those first 5-6 years. But things would degrade over time.
His early career success seemed to be bolstered by a strong running game, and when Seattle’s run game evaporated and the o-line deteriorated, Russ was not able to cook as well as expected. The other problem was injuries began to mount up, and as they did, the limits of his game started to become more obvious.
His height really is a factor. Russ was able to compensate for that with his athleticism. If he couldn’t see a passing lane over his 6’5 school bus lineman, he’d make one. He’d buy himself time. But as his mobility worsened and his protection broke down quicker, he took more sacks. He fumbled more. He couldn’t get out of danger. He was questionable at mid-range and his ability to read a defense wasn’t improving. His game devolved pretty much entirely to moonballs and dumpoffs, and you need Randy Moss to make that a sustainable offense. He didn’t seem to realize it either, as he seemed to be more into doing whatever it is he wanted to do rather than what the offense required of him. Heroball.
By 2021, when he broke his finger, DangeRuss was more like CautionRuss. There was a contingent of Seattle fans who understood he was declining and they wanted to move on. Most of us could see the flaws, but ignored them. Russ won a Super Bowl. He was still good. Right? Well, Denver decided to test that idea.
In what would end up being one of the worst trades and contracts of all time, Denver traded for Russ and they proceeded to have an absolute disaster of a season. That first year finally saw Russ start to genuinely face the critics that had been popping up, but still most of the blame went to Nathaniel Hackett. Russ took more sacks and hurt his knee that season just to top it all off. By this point, his corniness had also become a meme, and people relentlessly mocked his “Lets Ride” crap and his woefully cringe attempt to brand himself as “Mr Unlimited”. He also had a shitty subway sandwich, although that really isn’t his fault, Subway is bad. He also did high-knees on the plane, because people who actually perform the Grindset Mindset are dweebs. Richard Sherman and a few other teammates publicly complained about him too, but Sherman beefs with everyone so take it with a grain of salt.
Any goodwill/benefit of the doubt Russ had left vanished under Sean Payton. Payton is a good coach, with a good offensive system. Russ couldn’t do it. Russ was so bad the Broncos bit down on an entire magazine of bullets and cut him, record-breaking dead money be damned. He would go to Pittsburgh, where he did nothing of value. Then he would go to a Giants team desperate for a QB and make it three disappointing games before getting benched for the rookie. Every single team got better at QB after he left. Seattle briefly found success under Geno with a worse roster than with late Russ. The Broncos, despite half their salary cap being tied up to a guy who wasn’t on the team, managed to build a playoff contender and then a Super Bowl contender with Bo Nix. The Steelers made it slightly farther with washed-up Aaron Rodgers. The Giants offense became watchable once Dart went in.
It appears he ran out of potential suitors. It probably took him till now to retire because he was trying to find any team to kick his tires and none bit. Thus ends the NFL career of Russell Wilson. He faded out as most former stars do.
He’s going to be great on TV. He’s good on camera, and CBS isn’t the internet, where authenticity matters as much. He can slot into a talking head role and do wonderfully. He was a guest on the first Manningcast and I remember being genuinely impressed at how good he was at just casually talking ball. I’m actually interested to see what he brings to the table.
Does Russ belong in the Hall of Fame? Probably not. Despite a lot of Pro Bowls, one Super Bowl, a Walter Payton award, and some good stats during the Seattle years, I think he played himself out of it. At this stage, half of his career is mid at best, and he’s spent the last few seasons as a joke no one respects. I think he’s a guy who will always skirt around the outside, flirting with making the final cuts, but never do it.
I will miss Russ. He made the NFL more fun. His weird cringe dad vibe was a needed contrast to some of the other typical NFL personality types. Russ was never anything but professional: he took all his lumps and benchings without any outcry. He was John Cena levels of generous with his time visiting sick kids in the hospital everywhere he went. His efforts there really should not go unappreciated; he’s a saint for how much time he spends supporting folks in the hospital, and I don’t think that is a brand management act. I think he genuinely cares; his mother was a nurse. Russ is a corny man, but he’s not a bad one.
Godspeed on TV you slippery little bugger. Thanks for the years of chaos you brought to the league.
It’s crazy to me how many detractors he has for his personality. Within the Seattle fanbase, or just online football discourse in general
But it’s also kind of in keeping with a pretty common trend. Even though we’ve got celebrities who drive drunk, assault their partners, all sorts of awful things, somehow it seems that “being fake” is the one thing that the general public can’t forgive
I think it just comes down to relatability. Most of us, hopefully, don’t interact daily with people who have done truly heinous things. But we all know that one guy who just pisses us off by being phony. And that’s when, when see a celebrity do that too, it’s easy to remember to hate them for it
I think you are wrong to compare the hate Russ gets for being fake to the players who do actually heinous stuff. It’s a bit more apples to oranges. Russ is just annoying. Other guys are genuinely bad. Russ’s persona and brand gets pushed to the forefront of everything he does, whereas DUIs or partner abuse tends to get buried. Another point is that those things tend to be single instances, and are more easily forgotten/forgiven. The guys with repeated patterns of bad behavior do get hate, but it’s a different kind of hate. Russ is fun to clown on because he’s corny, Tyreek Hill isn’t fun to clown on because he’s evil. The players who do worse get more genuine disgust, and it makes people not want to talk about them. Russ is fun to talk about.
It’s also a case of objectivity. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about people like Adrian Peterson lashing his son, because I think we all more or less agreed that, yea, beating a child with a switch is a BAD thing. It’s objectively bad. Punching your girlfriend in an elevator, driving drunk, murdering your neighbors. All objectively bad. There’s no discussion to really have about them specifically beyond, “Holy shit, this is bad, this person should be locked up.”
Someone like Russ has TONS of room for *subjective* hate. Was he a bad teammate? Did his antics tear apart locker rooms? Was he too short? There’s no cut and dried easy answer, so you have people screaming at each other about it. Hell, I’m guilty of it. I will admit, maybe not instantaneously, but I *WILL* admit that Aaron Rodgers isn’t as foul a beast as Ben Shitburger. Or Ray Rice. But I spend FAR more time complaining about him because there’s room to move. “Big Ben should have his nuts cut off for hanging around college parties and taking advantage of drunk teenagers and then paying them off to avoid rape charges.” That’s it. That’s the thought. Where do we go from there, other than breaking out the rusty pruning shears to actually do it? (I’m in, btw, once we agree to do that.)
But a narcissist like Rodgers, it’s not cut and dry. There’s pushback from the three people who still like him, there’s crevices in a discussion of HOW bad each terrible part of him really is, and yea, it helps when those crevices connect to on-the-field issues. Russ fell into ALL of those subjective crevices, so the conversation has legs in ways that the man himself does not.
Same with Vrabel and Russinni. We can talk about that til the cows come home and find nuance in football issues, in ways that “My quarterback is a &#$ Trump supporter and needs a few more hits to the head” can’t.
Weeks ago there were reports that Russ was deciding between one season with the Jets or just retiring to do TV broadcasting. I am happy he went with the safe and just decision.
I sports hate Russell Wilson. I respect that in real life, in the ways that actually matter, he is a wonderful dude.
That said I can not stand the man. First, his game. As a fan of a team that had a good, sometimes great, defensive line during his Seahawks prime he had me tearing my hair out. Russ specifically exposes what I feel is a massive flaw/exploit in football rules. At least a rule that severely negatively impacts MY enjoyment of watching games.
Russ slips two sacks and moonballs a 43 yard gain, possibly for a touchdown? That’s friggin’ awesome. That’s a fun cool player making a fun cool play. It hurts when it happens to your team, but it absolutely slays when you are watching it happen to someone else.
Russ slips two sacks, dances…dances…dances… winds up 18 yards behind the line of scrimmage and just tosses the ball out of bounds? THAT SHIT IS THE WORST THING IN FOOTBALL! The defense won that snap, and the offense escapes with nothing more damaging than a wasted down. I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it! The ball doesn’t even have to pass the line of scrimmage before going out of bounds! It just has to land farther down field than the line to gain. It’s total bullshit. That should be intentional grounding; outside the tackle box be damned.
I will not miss watching Russell Wilson play football for those handful of plays each game alone.
The other part of hating on Russell Wilson is his public persona.
He is the fakest brandbot that ever shilled for a living.
As I said in my first comment he is a genuinely good dude. I respect him for that. I just don’t ever want to see him and his painstakingly manicured, absolutely dickless public persona ever again. His entire schtick was phony. Every thing he did was filtered through a framework of how do I remain as inoffensive as possible so that giant corporations will continue to pay me absurd amounts of money to promote their shitty goods and/or services.
I dislike Russell Wilson the way most NFL fans dislike Aaron Rodgers. Unlike Aaron Rodgers, I would still ask Russell Wilson for his autograph if the opportunity ever arose. I respect him. I just hate him, and want him to go away at the same time.
I generally agree with pretty much all your points. I don’t hate him quite to the degree you do but I get the sentiment. I got sick of him around the “Let Russ cook” really caught on because I always thought he was a touch overrated when his running game wasn’t dominating, slippery moonballs aside. Like you and Dave pointed out his saving grace appears to be that I think he really is a good person and that will serve him well post career.
I honestly agree with you on intentional grounding. QBs constantly find ways to throw the ball away but it’s only a penalty if it falls within highly specific parameters. Never made sense to me that a QB can just straight up dirt a ball like Philip Rivers and get away with it due to rule technicality when there is nothing more obviously intentional gounding.
I wonder if/when Bo Nix moves into Russ’s old 2nd floor office in Denver.
Career legacy will be interesting because QB’s from the last 25 years are really hard to judge overall. Statistically they have every single thing measured to the finest detail so an argument can be made for so many who fall into the “Hall of very good” depending on which way you skew the data, plus many of them played much longer than older generations. Eli, Ryan, Rivers, and Wilson lead this crew, but I’ve also seen arguments for Mcnabb, Newton, Romo, essentially any QB who played more than a decade primarily as a starter. Many of this generation are already in the HOF while still some others from this era are just waiting on the call like Big Ben.
Stafford, Rodgers, and Flacco stand out to me as the last of the Millennial generation qb’s and the gen x/z QB’s have taken over the league entirely. As a result, I think we are seeing more parity leaguewide and credit given to roster building when winning. I say this to ask this question. Are the millennial QB’s overvalued or were we just blessed to see sustained excellence from so many in this 2+ decade stretch. I am not immune to bias and it could just be my perception being off so I ask this out of curiosity.
Tiny Russ was/is my favorite running gag here by far. Every time I see Wilson I think “Why don’t we build a money island?”
His will be an interesting Hall of Fame case. He has a ring, was clearly an influential player on-field and off, and his career numbers are closer than one might think to his contemporaries that would be considered sure things for HOF induction. I think the case is there, but it has to be argued. Also, wild to think now that he was the 2nd Black starting QB to win a Super Bowl.
1700??? Wow, I just didn’t notice it’s been that long. On Russ, I loved him as a college QB because he felt so overlooked. When he made the leap to starting NFL QB level, I was happy for him, even if I didn’t particularly care about the Seahawks. He was a hell of a QB for them. And admittedly, he was fun to watch. Until “Celebrity Russ” (as you call him) showed up.
Then he became insufferable to listen too. The way he carried himself almost felt like he thought others were beneath him. With the Boncos, I laughed because he thought he was so good but his “Tom Brady” route imploded. The Steelers match was never gonna work either to me. When the Giants signed him, I thought maybe he can do something. We all saw how that went. My hope is that the last few years have humbled him. Otherwise, I think he’s gonna bomb on TV.
Also, the last panel made me legit cackle out loud lmao
Russ did seem like a good guy who donated time and money well. If he had stayed in Seattle and never taken up the attempts to create a brand I think he would have been loved much more there and respected more around the league. His whole brand attempt was so fake. And moving around between teams after Seattle with no success meant he didn’t cultivate any other fanbases.
Still it was awesome that he brought the Lombardi to Seattle and made football so much more popular there.
I feel like Russ has a mixed reputation in Seattle. He brought us our first Lombardi, sure, but he’s also partially to blame for the one-yard-line incident the following season. As far as I can tell, none of the players from that era really talk to him anymore, and though the competition was fierce, the air of confidence around the Legion of Boom had vanished. Everyone was looking for someone to blame, and Russ was given a big helping of that sandwich.
I really have to give credit to John Schneider for getting away with highway robbery in that trade to Denver. Out of that draft, we got Devon Witherspoon, Derrick Hall, and JSN—all starters for the eventual Super Bowl run. I really can’t overstate just how important that trade was.
As a Niners fan I hate Russ with an unquenchable primal hatred, but he will be missed.
When his career started, “Hey, that’s NC State graduate Russel Wilson.” When it ended, “That’s Wisconsin QB Russel Wilson, don’t look at where he grad transferred from.”
You have no idea how confused I was when I went back and looked at the first tiny russ comic and your blog post was talking about Madden 25
There’s no such thing as playing yourself out of the Hall of Fame. What you achieve stands forever regardless of what comes next.
Think of it this way: he was on track for a hall of fame career with those early successes, but then didn’t stay on track
He’ll get there, maybe not first ballot.