A familiar story plays out for Russell Wilson in Pittsburgh.
The NFL just announced today that the Pittsburgh Steelers will be “hosting” the league’s first regular season game in Dublin, Ireland this coming season. As it happens, the Seattle Seahawks are one of the teams who are scheduled to play the Steelers on the road this year, so it’s possible that they’ll be chosen to make the trip across the pond to play Pittsburgh.
Fans who are hoping to get a Russell Wilson grudge match should probably not hold their breaths on that one, though. The latest reporting coming out of Pittsburgh indicates the Steelers have had more than enough of the Russell Wilson experience. According to team insider Dejan Kovacevic, the Steeles do not want Russ back at all.
“I’ll keep this short and very much to the point: Russell Wilson’s not wanted by the Steelers. Like, at all.”
That’s pretty unequivocal, and it sounds like it’s more than just a case of Wilson no longer being the competitor he once was. In truth, Wilson hasn’t actually been Russell Wilson since the first half of the 2020 season. The Seahawks were sharp as hell to recognize it and cut the cord at exactly the right time. The trade that sent Russ to the Denver Broncos was shocking at the time and almost universally panned. However, it turned out to be a stroke of genius and one of the most imbalanced trades in modern NFL history.
Wilson was never able to get back to his previous level of play and reportedly clashed with head coach Sean Payton behind the scenes in Denver. Now there’s apparently been some more drama, this time involving Wilson and offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. Kovacevic claims a recent report that Smith would not allow Wilson to change plays at the line of scrimmage was “nonsense” cooked up by Wilson’s camp to excuse his poor performance down the stretch.
“What actually occurred with Wilson, according to those same people inside the team, is that, as all of our naked eyes could plainly tell us, he wasn’t following the play calls, he was holding the ball way too long and, within the latter, he no longer could escape defenders in the backfield.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Wilson was a tremendous competitor at one point in his career, but that was a long time ago and this isn’t the first time that he’s engaged in these kind of office politics to the detriment to his team. Some NFL franchise may be desperate enough to sign him as a backup for this coming season, but there’s a decent chance Wilson’s NFL career will be toast by this time next year.