Russell Wilson Should Hold The Seattle Seahawks Back In 2016 And Beyond
Even though the NFL media and pundits have created a perception that franchise quarterbacks are the main catalyst for the success of a team. There comes a certain point in a franchise quarterback's career where they go from a player who is a catalyst for success to a player who prevents his team from achieving success. An example of a player who is currently going through this type of scenario is Russell Wilson. During his first three seasons in the NFL, Russell Wilson was primarily a game manager who was in charge of handing the ball off to Marshawn Lynch and making the opposing defense pay for having eight men in the box against Marshawn Lynch by calling some play action passes. Where they would fake the handoff to Lynch making the opposing defense believe that he going to run the ball. As a result, the opposing defense will keep the box stacked thus giving the seahawks receivers more man to man coverage and Russell Wilson more open space on the field to lead his receivers to the ball which would have increased the likelihood of the pass being completed. This allowed the team to keep drives alive while forcing the opposing team to put more players in coverage to decrease the likelihood of the offense scoring a substantial amount of points in a short period of time thus giving Lynch room to run the ball again. The combination of these factors enabled the offense to stay on the field for a prolonged period of time in fact, from 2012 to 2014 the offense was on the field for an average of 31:09 minutes. This means that the defense received the proper rest between drives which enabled them to have enough energy to execute a properly tackle to a player when they are running with the ball or being able to keep up with wide receivers. This organizational philosophy allowed Russell Wilson to be one of the catalysts for the success of the team.
However, the seahawks decided to change their organizational philosophy once they signed Russell Wilson to a contract extension in 2015. The contract extension is slowly forcing the team to change their offensive philosophy from a run heavy offense to more of a passing offense because they want to prove to the public that they made a good investment. As a result, the seahawks decided to increase the number of pass attempts by 3.2 per game from 28.1 to 31.3 and have lower the number of rushing attempts by 2.7 per game from 32.7 to 30. The combination of these factors means that the offense spent less time on the field because of incompletion or big plays that result in short drives. This means that defense would have to go back on the field without the proper amount of rest which leads to the defense being more susceptible to giving up yards because they were not able to regain the energy to make stops in fact, the defense spent an average 23 more seconds on the field from 28:34 to 28:57. Due to all these factors, Russell Wilson has become and will continue to be a detriment to his team.
The New York Giants Should Strongly Consider Trading Odell Beckham Jr After Next Season https://t.co/zz5KywWcp5 via @SportsBlog
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