Football

Seahawks say they’re in ‘fantastic place’ with Russell Wilson, didn’t effectively participate in exchange talks

SEATTLE – To hear mentor Pete Carroll and head supervisor John Schneider advise it, everything is great between the Seattle Seahawks and Russell Wilson.

What’s more, as per the group’s best two leaders, there was never any genuine idea given to exchanging their establishment quarterback.

The Seahawks made Carroll and Schneider accessible to correspondents Wednesday interestingly since Wilson openly voiced his disappointments about the association during a couple of media interviews in February. Among those dissatisfactions were every one of the hits and sacks he has assumed control over his nine seasons in Seattle.

“There was some stuff that was said that had to be dealt with, and it has been,” Carroll said. “So Russ is in a great place right now, and he’s been in a great place throughout the offseason. We have communicated throughout all of the things just like I always have.”

ESPN’s Adam Schefter detailed in March that the Chicago Bears made a “forceful pursuit” of Wilson yet were told the Seahawks weren’t exchanging him around then. Gotten some information about the Bears’ quest for Wilson, Schneider declined to determine which groups asked about his accessibility.

“There was a number of teams that called after that media blitz that happened,” Schneider said. “But no, I never actively negotiated with anybody and with any team. Did people call? Absolutely.”

Wilson voiced his dissatisfactions over Seattle’s pass security and expressed a longing for more say in faculty choices during an appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show” and in a different meeting set up for the quarterback to talk about his being named the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year. Those remarks denoted the first occasion when he had openly communicated any level of disappointment with the association that drafted him in 2012.

“Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson are two of the most passionate and competitive people that I know, and passionate people just say passionate things,” Schneider said. “I think that it just kind of came out.”

Carroll said there wasn’t an issue between the association and Wilson, just an issue of enduring the media storm that came about because of the quarterback opening up to the world about his misery. Inquired as to whether Wilson’s remarks abused Carroll’s No. 1 guideline – consistently secure the group – Carroll said they “challenged” the standard.

“The conversation is out there that we wish we didn’t have to be sharing with the world and all of that,” he said. “You never get to the clarity and the essence of it when you have to operate through the media. That’s why we tried to go really quiet in all of that.”

That calm methodology via Carroll implied not making such an articulation through the group that might have taken care of hypothesis about Wilson’s future. Carroll said he’s exacting about not conveying through the media, something he gained quite a while past from Bud Grant.

“I said [to Wilson]: ‘You will not hear a peep out of me and you can do that, too, and just let the stuff that’s being said go,’ but it’s hard. It’s hard for people, and not everybody can do that. It takes real discipline to do that and it’s a learning [process], and hopefully Russ will always be better for it because he’s been through a lot of that, and hopefully other guys can learn from that as well. The power comes from knowing really the truth and knowing what was going on. … The truth is that he wasn’t getting traded and he’s on our roster and he’s signed up for a long time around here, and anything that could ever take place was so far out there that could ever happen that it was not even worth considering.”

Carroll said he routinely looks for contribution from Wilson and different players and that the quarterback never requested that he have more say in faculty moves. Sources have revealed to ESPN that Wilson’s disappointments have gone past pass security and his apparent absence of say in acquisitions comparative with other top quarterbacks. Wilson has additionally needed a greater amount of Seattle’s offense to go through him, an issue itemized in a story by The Athletic.

As detailed around there, Wilson stomped out of a gathering with Seahawks mentors last season out of disappointment that his ideas for fixing the group’s faltering offense were excused.

Not long after The Athletic story distributed, Wilson’s representative, Mark Rodgers, disclosed to ESPN’s Adam Schefter that while Wilson has not requested an exchange, he would just acknowledge an exchange to the Bears, New Orleans Saints, Dallas Cowboys and Las Vegas Raiders, if Seattle somehow managed to give him. Wilson has a no-exchange condition the four-year, $140 million expansion he endorsed in 2019. That arrangement has three years remaining.

“I had made a clear statement to Russ: ‘Let’s just shut down and be quiet on this stuff,'” Carroll said when asked about speculation over Wilson’s future gaining steam once Rodgers gave Schefter the list of acceptable trade destinations. “We don’t need to say anything, we know the truth of what’s going on. When that came out, that kind of got over the top in that it opened up some other conversations that didn’t need to happen. That was an example of why we’re quiet and why we don’t say anything. It was so meaningless because it had nothing to with what was going on. It gave another little byte in there that people could talk about, and I wish we would have avoided that is what I’m saying.”

A source revealed to ESPN that Wilson attempted to select running back Chris Carson back to Seattle. He observed Carson’s profit from Twitter and did likewise with a few of the group’s different moves in free organization.

“Right now, he is as jacked up as he’s ever been,” Carroll said. “He’s in the process of turning over our new offensive stuff that is different from the past and things that we need to learn. He’s totally after it and doing a great job, his mentality is strong, and his conditioning is right. He’s doing a great job. So things were said, things were said. And sometimes you have to deal with stuff, and that’s how we take care of our business. We’re in a fantastic place right now and really excited about this team and this season and this draft coming up and all of that.”

When asked how much Wilson is focused on the Seahawks long haul and the other way around, Carroll made another notice of how they weren’t exchanging him and that they “plan on him being here for a fun time.”

With respect to the issue of pass insurance, Carroll said the framework Seattle is introducing under new hostile organizer Shane Waldron will help by underlining speedier tosses, in addition to other things. He declined to get into particulars on why he and past OC Brian Schottenheimer headed out in different directions after the season.

Carroll alluded to Pro Bowl security Jamal Adams as the Seahawks’ No. 1 pick in the current year’s draft, a reference to how Seattle surrendered a bundle of draft picks, including the current year’s first-and third-rounders, in the previous summer’s exchange with the New York Jets.

Both Carroll and Schneider discussed Adams being a piece of the group’s future. Adams is entering the fifth and last year of the tenderfoot arrangement Seattle acquired from the Jets. Schneider said Adams hasn’t given the group any sign of whether he’d play out his present arrangement, which accompanies a compensation of just shy of $10 million. A source has revealed to ESPN that there’s trust in the association that a drawn out augmentation with Adams will complete during this offseason.

“We want him here long term, for sure,” Schneider said. “We’re really glad we made this trade to get him. He’s going to be a very important part of our future.”

Schneider said he can’t examine guarded end Aldon Smith’s new capture regarding a supposed second-degree battery in Louisiana, adding that they need to allow the lawful cycle to follow through to its logical end. Gotten some information about Smith’s past, which incorporates an abusive behavior at home charge, Schneider implied a sweeping explanation he made years prior about how the Seahawks would keep away from players associated with such occurrences and said he has since discovered that “each circumstance is totally unique and you need to concentrate each circumstance and be OK with your choices.”

“We researched it with Aldon this last time,” he said. “It was a minimum-salary deal, and we decided to take a shot and go for it.”