Bump & Stacy react to report Wilson wanted Seahawks to fire Carroll, Schneider

Friday morning in the Pacific Northwest started off with a bang thanks to a story from The Athletic, which reported that quarterback Russell Wilson wanted the Seahawks to fire head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider last offseason.

The story, which focuses mostly on Wilson’s chaotic first year with the Denver Broncos, reports that after years of Wilson and Carroll “clashing” over the team’s offensive philosophy and Wilson feeling like the Seahawks were “inhibiting his quest to win additional Super Bowls and individual awards,” that the perennial Pro Bowl quarterback made a “power play.”

“Wilson asked Seahawks ownership to fire both (Carroll and Schneider), according to league sources who spoke to The Athletic on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the details,” the report says. “Wilson also had a preferred replacement in mind: Sean Payton, who had recently stepped down from the New Orleans Saints.”

That obviously did not come to fruition as Carroll and Schneider stayed with the team, Wilson was traded to Denver for a package of high picks and players and Payton spent the 2022 season covering the NFL for FOX. Now, Payton is Wilson’s head coach, but in Denver rather than Seattle.

On Friday, Wilson denied the report that he wanted Carroll and Schneider fired both on Twitter and through his lawyer to The Athletic.

I love Pete and he was a father figure to me and John believed in me and drafted me as well. I never wanted them fired. All any of us wanted was to win.

l’ll always have respect for them and love for Seattle.

— Russell Wilson (@DangeRussWilson) February 24, 2023

Naturally, the idea that Wilson asked Seahawks management to fire the longtime head coach and general manager was a hot talking point on Friday, and Michael Bumpus and Stacy Rost of Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy opened their show discussing the report and sharing their thoughts on the situation.

“Could I believe that Russell Wilson kind of like pushed for that? 1,000%. Russell Wilson was 10 years in, there was clearly philosophical disagreements between Russ and Pete. Like that was very, very obvious,” Rost said.

What Rost doesn’t like about this situation is that it feels like people are trying to make there be a hero or villain “in an industry where everyone is kind of out for himself.”

“Russell Wilson is not especially likable. He seems narcissistic. But he’s also talented and was very talented here in Seattle,” she said. “Russell Wilson did not do a good job of pointing the finger at himself and saying ‘where am I the problem?’ But that doesn’t mean that just because you don’t like him that the things he pointed to like, ‘Hey, the offensive line is struggling’ or ‘Hey, we haven’t been able to get back to a Super Bowl, why is that?’ were wrong.”

“If you want to do the flip side, John and Pete for however many years had Russell Wilson kind of limited and people were always like, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? You’re insane,”‘ she added. “It ended up that they weren’t wrong, that they were right and that he had his own limitations, right? I just feel like sometimes whatever the narrative is of what we’re talking about – in this case that Russell Wilson is this horrible evil villain – makes everything that they stood for, pointed out, highlighted, somehow not true. And that’s not the case.”

Bumpus said that he wasn’t surprised by this news coming out.

“What doesn’t surprise me about this being leaked or this being a possibility is because we all know that Russell has wanted offensive coordinators fired before,” Bump said. ” … Russell sees himself as an elite of the elite, a top dog in this league, and he feels like he should have leverage and he should have influence on all of these decisions.”

Bump came away from the report feeling very strongly about it.

“When I heard the news that Russell wanted Pete and John fired, I just thought, man, just how ungrateful if this is true,” he said. “We don’t 100% know if it’s true or not, but there has to be some truth to it.”

Bumpus said he understands if Wilson would want a new quarterbacks coach or offensive coordinator in the mix, but thinking that way about the head coach who believed in him and the GM who drafted him isn’t right, especially since Carroll publicly backed Wilson from the very beginning. Bumpus noted that Carroll went with Wilson as the Seahawks’ starting quarterback in 2012 when he was a rookie over Matt Flynn, who they signed to a notable deal in free agency that offseason.

“So it just sounds ungrateful to me,” Bump said. “Again, we don’t know 100% if it’s true. If it is true, I feel disappointed that it’s happened this way.”

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