HOF QB Kurt Warner: Why Seahawks, Russell Wilson will work through issues

The noise has certainly died down in recent weeks, but for much of the NFL offseason, the biggest storyline was the reportedly strained relationship between the Seahawks and star quarterback Russell Wilson.

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The offseason drama kicked off the day after the Super Bowl when it was reported that Wilson and his camp were upset at the Seahawks due to the amount of times that he had been hit and sacked during his nine-year career. Wilson then told Dan Patrick and other reporters that he was indeed frustrated with that, and that he wanted to have more say in the team’s direction because he wanted to build on his legacy.

Where things got very interesting, though, was when Wilson’s agent, Mark Rodgers, told ESPN that Wilson didn’t want to be traded from the Seahawks, but if the team did decide to go down that route, Wilson would OK a deal to four teams: the Cowboys, Saints, Raiders and Bears.

According to multiple reports, the Bears offered the Seahawks a massive deal that included three first-round picks, but the team declined and pressed ahead into free agency.

Now, things appear to have improved, with the star quarterback often praising signings and trades that the Seahawks have made this offseason on his Twitter account.

Someone who has been following along with this story all offseason is Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner, who is an analyst for the NFL Network. He joined 710 ESPN Seattle’s Danny and Gallant on Thursday to share his thoughts on all the offseason drama surrounding Wilson and the Seahawks.

Despite trade rumors flying around for the last few months, Warner isn’t convinced Wilson will find a better place to play as things currently stand.

“At the end of the day, I don’t know if he finds a better situation,” Warner said. “A lot of things they do (in Seattle), they build around the skillset of their guys and the skillset of Russell Wilson and they allow him to be a creator. And when he’s a creator, he’s really, really good and they have great success. They had great success last year.”

The Seahawks went 12-4 and won the NFC West, but Seattle got beaten pretty handily by the Los Angeles Rams in the playoffs. Wilson had one of the worst games of his career, and he was hit and sacked a great deal. Warner thinks how 2020 ended was a boiling point for Wilson’s frustrations as a whole, which led to the comments and trade rumors.

“I believe a lot of these comments is just frustrations that were building up,” Warner said. “As good as they’ve been in the regular season, they haven’t really been able to push the envelope in the playoffs recently.”

The key for both Wilson and the Seahawks, Warner said, is finding and resolving “the why” in terms of Wilson’s frustrations and Seattle’s early-playoff exits in recent years.

And for Wilson, Warner said he has to shoulder some of the blame as well.  In the Rams game, Wilson didn’t stay in the pocket or make good decisions at times, Warner said. Wilson also tried to “create too much,” which played a role in him getting hit and sacked.

“As a great quarterback would always do, you have some frustration,” Warner said. “How do we get (over the hump)? What can we do when you have to be realistic and scrutinize yourself first? And then you have to look at the big picture and say ‘OK, we need help and we need to improve in these areas. And if I want to stay here and finish my career (in Seattle), I want to compete for championships like we did early on and I want some of these moves to be made.'”

But even if Wilson is frustrated for the team’s inability to protect him and get deep into playoff games, Warner expects the marriage between the star quarterback and the Seahawks to continue.

“I think it’s something that will be worked through,” he said. “I think Russell is good in that system and they’ve been successful and they have a great program and a great thing going that you don’t want to break it up. But you’ve got to figure out some of those pieces that are causing you to stall when you play against those really good teams (you face during the playoffs).”

Listen to the discussion at this link or in the player below.

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