Seahawks’ offense can’t continue to rely on Russell Wilson’s improvisation

He is Seattle’s escape artist.

The diminutive quarterback able to evade unblocked pass rushers play after play. So nimble he can avoid rain drops, so strong he can take six sacks without batting either an eye or a football in the end zone and someone who’s so composed he completed 20 of 26 passes on Monday in the midst of the chaos that was the Seahawks’ pocket.

Russell Wilson’s evasion and accuracy is unparalleled in the NFL and the best thing that Seattle’s offense has going so far this season. The Seahawks’ reliance on those traits, however, is what leaves them most vulnerable, too. We saw that on Monday night when he coughed up a pair of second-half fumbles, one of which was returned for Detroit’s only touchdown of the game, and we’ll see that with increasing frequency if Seattle’s best offensive game plan continues to be the highly sophisticated play of having Wilson run like hell to escape seemingly impossible situations and huck the ball downfield.

Wilson’s ability to go sandlot at a moment’s notice needs to be the trump card Seattle plays in key situations, the kind of thing you break glass so you can grab it in case of an emergency. It should be the nail in an opponent’s coffin, but so far this season it has been a staple* in Seattle’s playbook.

It’s simply not sustainable, not over a 16-game season in which Wilson is now on pace to be sacked more than 70 times. Heck, it couldn’t be sustained over the course of a four-quarter game on Monday against Detroit because if you ask a quarterback to do as much as Wilson was trying to do, the defense is going to catch up.

The quarterback is the most vulnerable ballcarrier in the game. Even Wilson. No wait, especially Wilson. At least that’s true right now when his one-man improvisational show has been the most successful element in Seattle’s offense.

And Wilson has been incredible – let’s make that very clear. The fact that he has completed more than 70 percent of his pass attempts this season and been picked off twice under the pressure he is facing is truly remarkable.

But the same process that led to his third-down pass to Jermaine Kearse in the second quarter against Detroit is what left Seattle vulnerable in the second half. You rely on Wilson’s individual initiative and ability to that degree and there are going to be mistakes. It’s an unavoidable cost of doing business in that manner.

This isn’t news to the Seattle coaches. Pete Carroll has said – repeatedly – that the offensive line is far from a finished product. It’s a group that needs to improve and a group he believes will improve over the course of the season.

“We’re still a work in progress,” Carroll said after Monday’s game. “We’re still trying to find it. We’re not as clean as we need to be.”

Not even close. Through four games, the Seahawks’ offense has scored five touchdowns, tied with San Francisco for fewest of any offense in the league. In fact, at the same point in Wilson’s rookie season, back when everyone worried that Seattle was wasting a championship defense by starting a rookie quarterback, the Seahawks’ offense had scored six touchdowns.

But this isn’t about Wilson. It’s about lessening the pressure on Wilson both literally by pass blocking better and figuratively by finding a way to run the ball more effectively.

This isn’t about letting Russell be Russell. It’s about finding other ways to move the ball so Russell doesn’t have to be Russell quite so often.

*Yes, I know that playbooks are not really books anymore let alone stapled, but I was too pleased with the fastener metaphor to let that one go.

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