Peteball needs Russ, or Russ needs Peteball?

Our season is what it is, our HOF franchise QB is playing like a shell of his glory days. Let's have some fun talking about Peteball and Russ?

I must confess I didn't watch any of Pete's games when he was HC Jets and New England, also just a few of his USC games. Did he coached Peteball before the Hawks? Why would a defense minded HC has an offense philosophy or system?

What's Peteball anyways, here on dot net, whatever caused the offense to stall is Peteball. The bit that I heard Pete said, PeteBall is balanced attack, using runs to setup passes especially long play action passes attacking the sides, and when it comes to rushing the ball, Pete seems to favor north south pounding? Actually all said, sounded not unlike Al Davis' vertical job. I remember Pete always had good RBs in USC, so he might have used runs to set up passes too in USC? Pete also had Norm Chow as his OC, until Chow was getting too much limelight, Pete's switched to young offense minds.

The collective wisdom on dot net for the past decade, Peteball hindered Russ's development, and pigeon holed him into a game manager. Therefore, Pete must go, and sun will come out birds will sing once Russ's free of Peteball. That narrative gain momentum and reached it's peak during the era of Let Russ Cook, but Let Russ Cook crashed back to earth, and frankly Russ hasn't been the same since.

So, was PeteBall a system designed to help Russ by covering shortcomings in his game? or Peteball a dinosaur system that needed Russ to save the day in 4th quarter and to save PeteBall from itself?

What's your take?

At USC, Pete was criticized quite often for his offensive schemes -- especially towards the end. It was pretty much what you're seeing here only with more plays ran from under the center. He ran a lot of the i formation at USC and he utilized his fullbacks quite a bit on the Trojans.

His passing concepts were similar, he ran a lot of plays to the sideline, didn't like going over the middle. Lots of deep passes and splash plays. One thing that has been missing in Seattle is a slasher type of player. Carroll has been chasing that guy since he came to Seattle. I'm talking to Reggie Bush sort of player that could be rolled out as wideout, ran on end arounds, or exploit defenses to the outside. Dee Eskridge, Percy Harvin and I think even Penny was Carroll trying to get that type of player.

For the most part, Carroll was always about keeping things simple and allowing the players talents speak for themselves.

Unfortunately, I think this style of offense has really hindered the development of Wilson. He's had tight controls on him for most of his career. Now what we're seeing is that he's going to need to refine his game. Wilson has gone through stretches where he looked great running a WCO style of attack and exploiting the middle of the field. Think the later half of 2015.

Peteball started out as a pejorative used by those who were frustrated by the Hawks being at the top of the league in rushing attempts every year. It was used to describe being conservative on offense, namely by running and punting too often. When our defense was elite we won a lot of games by being conservative on offense, but in some people's minds we should have been winning them by a much bigger margin even if it meant risking more losses.

However, as Lynch retired and we paid Russ top QB money we started running the ball less and less. At the same time, other teams had success running the ball quite a lot. There were lots of teams ahead of us in run percentage and they tended to be pretty good, so it gradually became less cool to downplay the value of running the football in the NFL. The term Peteball had to adapt with the times, and now you'll get a different answer from each person you ask who uses it seriously. They all boil down to the offense underperforming in some manner.

The common theme is the hope that Pete is holding Russ back somehow. That seems unrealistic based on what we've seen thus far, but I'd argue we should all be hopeful that is the case. The future looks sunnier as a Hawks fan if your franchise QB with the #1 overall QB cap hit isn't one of the main problems.