I just did a Murphy search and he called Russ Elite while in Seattle. Not sure how we can claim he didn’t think Wilson is a stud.
I talked with Griff a couple of weeks ago where he said Wilson could be doing much more if they allowed him so painting the idea that Murph thinks Wilson is bad(it seems to be implied) is misleading to me. Maybe I’m misreading it.
Well again he’s 35 so of course he’s not the same player, but to be fair to him you can’t put up numbers that good and be flat out bad. It’s never happened in the nfl and if someone is claiming he’s way worse than his numbers indicate it’s fairly obvious they’re biased. I’m also not sure how you could watch that last Denver game and not blame Payton a little if you truly are objective(Murphy did). It was some really strange play calling and then when they were forced to call a normal offense Russ responded with two touchdowns. I had a buddy who hates Russ tweet at me during the game saying exactly that….Russ looked good when Payton handcuffed him and he hates Wilson more than the biggest Wilson hater on the forum lol.
That’s all I’m asking for. Almost no one who leans critically at Russ is mentioning anything other than everything negative. It’s outing them as not being objective.
I’m typing this on my phone while in the bath(flame away) so I could me misreading a ton of stuff.
The issue with this take is that when you look critically at Russ, you do so to figure out WHY, when his stats are so good, EVERY offense he's been in seems to play well for a period and then lose its steam. Why EVERYTIME he's had success, that success wanes in the playoffs. Why HE ALWAYS has a horrid offensive line, never uses the TE, can't seem to get the ball out quickly etc etc etc. Why he can have a game where his passer rating is > 100, but his performance on the field was unanimously bad ( I use his game agaisnt the Commanders in 2021 as an example - 111 passer rating and he literally looked horrible until the last drive, when he just played sandlot down the field and almost tied the game).
The investigation BEGINS with these questions. What he does well is taken as a given because its just that. So inherently then, the criticism HAS to look at things OTHER THAN the positives.
I used the Formula 1 racing analogy a few months ago. If a car is fastest at the track in 5 pretty significant categories, but still can't win a race, then it has to be some aspect of auto performance that it's not functioning well in. Slow in turns, poor stability, etc.
To NOT look deeper than what the car is doing well to figure out why it is losing makes no sense at all and looks like just passing fault for everything bad that happens around it to other factors and choosing to only see what it does well and use that as the bar for greatness.
True, objective critics of the guy already know he's great at all of the things he's great at. Some have just chosen to (or had access to coaches tape which make it easy) look at other factors in performance that have ALWAYS been bad with Russell - things that you can objectively trace back to at least 2017 with available game film and acknowledge that those things are part of his reality as well - AND contribute to his and his teams ultimate failure.
So I get the frustration at thinking people just hate on the guy.
But from where I sit, the UNWILLINGNESS to entertain any narrative that dares level criticism at the dude because he had some great statistical years here and was always in on some ridiculous highlight reel play or dramatic comeback win, is just turning a blind eye and wanting to see him as a hero because he did heroic things.
This issue has never been his inability to do heroic things. He made his game about HAVING to do heroic things. He's like playing pool with a guy that makes EVERY shot a trick shot, when sometimes all he has to do is line up behind the ball and knock it in.
Russ could make the trick shot 80% of the time. Until the complexity of the shot became too difficult (in the playoffs). And defenses knew that if they just made him do the easy things, he'd fail.
It's why folks were frustrated with him in Seattle. It's why he got benched by Payton. Payton flat out said in the last game when a reporter asked him if he was pleased at how the offense was able to score on their comeback drive.
He answered that it came from a bunch of empty set formations and ultimately playing like that wasn't sustainable, so no.
^^^^^^ THAT'S the truth that has ALWAYS been. It's never been disputed that Russ could make up stuff on his own and look good. He just always struggled to do the things that could make him and whatever team he played for consistently capable of winning beyond the early rounds of the playoffs. And after 2020, when defenses began to take away the deep game he was best at, his entire game began to suffer.
But I understand the difficulty of seeing how his faults can ultimately have been his own undoing. I mean EVERYBODY at the billiards hall stands around the table where the guy is doing all the jump shots, behind the back shots, curve shots, triple banks, etc. And they all assume because he can do that, that he can do the simple things as well. That he's one of the best at what he does.
Russ is the odd case of the guy who could amaze with his ability to succeed when success looked improbable. But couldn't maintain success when it should have been much easier. He forced the trick shot when he didn't have to and folks believed him to be a superstar for how often he actually succeeded. And refused to believe he couldn't just sink the eight ball straight in the corner pocket. But Payton, for 15 weeks FORCED HIM to do that and didn't like what he saw.
It's simple.
His critics didn't care that he made a career on trick shots and pointed to how often he missed the easy ones.
His fans defended him claiming that if you can make the impossible shots, that of course you can make the easy ones and rationalized the difficulty of the shot being the fault of others MAKING it so.
