Seahawks week one MVP: Mr. Unlimited himself, Russell Wilson

The Seahawks dominated the Colts in the 2021 season opener in a complete team effort. I would be coy about my pick for the game MVP, but the title kinda gave it away already. Still, there was a lot of competition for the honor in week one. And I’m going to mention every single one of my candidates. It isn’t the full roster, but close enough.

Let me get a couple of the obvious choices out of the way first. Bobby Wagner is a frequent recipient and a constant honorable mention. He led the Seahawks in tackles Sunday – shocking, I know. The Hawks heartbeat had 12 total tackles including one for a loss and broke up a pass.

Just a typical game for the future Hall-of-Famer, really. Seattle’s defense controlled an Indianapolis offense that ranked in the top ten in almost all categories last season. No one had more to do with that than Seattle’s seven-time Pro Bowler.

Russell Wilson: Seahawks week one MVP

Well, maybe no one other than my pick for overachiever of the game Rasheem Green. If you need a reminder of what he did, just jump to my previous recap of his exploits against the Colts. It’s telling that even though he didn’t get the start, he led all Seahawks defensive linemen in snap snaps, logging 70 percent of the plays. It seemed like he made nearly 100 percent of the big plays, too.

That’s unfair to almost every Seahawks defender, though. No one had a bad game, or even just a mediocre performance. As our own Jake Lupino pointed out, Darrell Taylor came up time and time again, as did Jordyn Brooks. The entire Seahawks secondary kept the explosive Colts passing game in check. Which is more than can be said for the secondary of Indianapolis. And that leads me to…

Tyler Lockett was an absolute monster. I really wish John McEnroe had done color commentary for the Colts for this game. Why? Come on, 12s; you just know he would have shouted “You can not be serious!” at least twice in this contest. Yes, the 69-yard bomb that closed out the first half was impressive.

But we’ve seen number 16 blow past coverage about a million times now, haven’t we? Yes, it was a huge play; it came on second and 20 and gave the Seahawks a two-score lead with Seattle set to get the second-half kick-off. But really, it was like taking candy from a baby. A baby that was asleep.

No, Lockett’s best play was the mind-blowing 23-yard pass from DangeRuss that gave the Hawks the lead they would never surrender. All good little 12s know that Lockett is the NFL’s true master of body control and awareness. I don’t know that he’s even been better than his adjustment on the over-the-left-shoulder strike that Wilson changed to the right side. Willie Mays has nothing on Tyler Lockett.

And that brings us to the man who threw all those passes. Russell Wilson was his usual ridiculously amazing self in the Seahawks win. He had almost as many touchdowns (4) as incompletions (5). Yes, he did have a couple of those baffling “I’m going to hit the yard marker instead of my open receiver” throws, but they were completely inconsequential.

Number 3 spread the ball around to at least 37 different Seahawks. Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but barely. He was cool under pressure, despite three sacks and seven QB hits. As usual, Russell Wilson was in complete command of the Seahawks offense. As such, he stood out as my pick for the first game MVP of the 2021 season.

The Seahawks had no shortage of MVP candidates in week one, that’s for certain. Frankly, I expect it will be difficult to not simply pencil in Wilson for every week. Hmmm…not a bad idea, get a head start on the other sixteen of these articles I’ll be writing. Nah. The Hawks have far too many great players for that, as we’ll see on their march to (and through) the playoffs.