Russell Wilson’s scrambling sometimes comes at a cost for Seahawks

RENTON – Russell Wilson’s propensity to scramble has helped Seattle avoid so many negative plays this season.

It has also been a cause of some of them, a tricky reality that offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell acknowledged Wednesday while talking about Wilson’s ability to keep plays alive – sometimes for too long.

“I would say it’s probably a minor problem,” Bevell said when asked to characterize the degree to which Wilson holding onto the ball can sometimes work against him, “but there’s definitely times when Russell could help out the protection and get it out. The fine line there is he does such great things with his feet.”

Like escaping pressure when he seems dead to rights in the backfield then making something out of nothing, either by finding an open receiver down-field or tucking the ball and running. Coach Pete Carroll has stated his desire for the Seahawks to be the best scrambling team in the NFL, and they have been with Wilson’s ability to improvise when the protection breaks down like it so often does.

“We coach really hard the second-chance opportunities,” Bevell said. “You’ve seen times where we haven’t blocked it very well, and he ends up escaping and making plays, and we get a second-chance opportunity down the field. So we’re coaching hard the opportunities where he can get the ball out quick, and say, ‘OK, here’s exactly how we want you to do it.’ But then we don’t really want to take that opportunity away from him either where he has that ability to create those second-chance opportunities for us. Because we do it really well, our receivers are really in tuned to it, they get open, we get really big plays that way.

“So that’s a fine line that we’re walking there.”

Wilson was sacked five times last week against San Francisco, bringing his total through seven games to a league-high 31. That rate puts him on pace for 71, which would be five shy of the single-season record of 76. Seattle’s sack total would be even higher if not for Wilson’s ability to escape pressure. While that has been a saving grace for the Seahawks’ offense this season, it also has an underside as there are times – as Bevell noted – when Wilson holds onto the ball too long in the hopes that something will develop.

Brock Huard took a closer look at one of those instances in a recent “Chalk Talk” video, breaking down a third-down play against Carolina in which Wilson had an open receiver but tried to escape the oncoming rushers and ended up taking a sack that forced Seattle to settle for a field goal in the red zone.

Bevell acknowledged that as much as Seattle would like to avoid those types of plays, it is to some degree the cost of doing business.

“There’s times that you’re going to have to live with it because you’re going to say, ‘Well, yeah, that guy’s open right there.’ But let’s pull up these other 10 where he got a 20-yard play,” Bevell said. “He could have gotten that ball out there, but that’s something that we’re battling and we’re continuing to talk about and say, ‘When is the right time to take those chances.’ “

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