The debate over Russell Wilson’s Hall of Fame credentials won’t really matter until five years after he retires. But it came up once again on Thursday Night when Tony Gonzalez and Richard Sherman both essentially declared that the Seattle Seahawks’ greatest QB is not a Hall of Famer.
Gonzalez began the conversation by saying that Wilson has played himself out of the Hall of Fame over the last four years. Wilson’s former Seattle teammate Sherman then piled on by pointing out that Wilson was only successful when he played alongside the Legion of Boom. The implication was that without an elite defense, Wilson was nothing special
There are a lot of ways to look at this debate, and speaking as someone who believes Wilson has a very good case for induction, I admit that statements like this – especially coming from a former teammate – suggest that Canton may never come calling for the only QB thus far to lead Seattle to a Lombardi Trophy.
Should Seattle Seahawks legend Russell Wilson be in the Hall of Fame?
Let’s make the pro-Hall case quickly, because it’s a fairly simple one.
Russell Wilson’s career is not yet over, but he currently ranks number 15 in all-time passing yards and number 12 in all-time passing touchdowns. He has the fifth-highest career passer rating, trailing only Lamar Jackson, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, and Joe Burrow.
Need more? Yards-per-attempt? His 7.7 career figure has him tied for 14th with, among others, Mahomes and Peyton Manning. Adjusted yards-per-attempt, which is generally more accurate due to how it treats touchdowns and interceptions, finds Wilson in fourth place all-time, again trailing only Jackson, Rodgers, and Mahomes.
He has a career touchdown rate of 5.8% -- the same as Mahomes. He has a career interception rate of 1.9%.
And I haven’t mentioned what he did with his legs. His 5,462 career rushing yards place him fourth among all quarterbacks.
I know that’s a lot of stats. But I think it is important to realize that, contrary to what Richard Sherman says, Russell Wilson put up sensational offensive stats for an entire decade. Seattle’s defense, which was indeed exceptional during the first half of Wilson’s career, had zero impact on any of those all-time remarkable numbers.
Those defenses did help him win a Super Bowl and almost win a second. But Sherman is conveniently forgetting one important thing when he says “without that legendary defense, he’s been 4-13, 7-8, 0-3…”
Setting aside how extraordinarily self-serving Sherman comes off here by stating outright that the only reason Russell Wilson had success was due to the “legendary” defense of which Sherman was a part, let’s correct one thing.
Sherman left Seattle after the 2017 season, when that legendary defense was sinking into mediocrity. So maybe he doesn’t realize that while Seattle's defense was finishing in the bottom half of the league in 2018-2020, Russell Wilson was leading the team to records of 10-6, 11-5, and 12-4 – and into the playoffs each of those seasons.
Russell Wilson is one of just 47 players in the history of the NFL to make at least ten Pro Bowls. Would you like to know how many of them are not in the Hall of Fame? Amongst those who are eligible, the number is zero.
Amongst the eleven players who have achieved this but are not yet eligible, I would say that nine of them are locks. Another, Matthew Slater, has virtually no chance given the way in which voters view special teams standouts.
Then there’s Wilson, who plays the most important position on the field. He has won a Super Bowl, and he has been chosen as one of the best in the league at his position in ten of his fourteen years.
There are arguments that can be made against his eventual induction. They mostly center on the way passing statistics have been so enormously inflated in Wilson’s era. And he does have the disastrous interception that cost the Seahawks their second Super Bowl.
But those arguments should not be based on the fact that Tony Gonzalez is disappointed by the way Wilson has looked over the past four years or by Richard Sherman’s apparent belief that his defense was so good you grandmother could have played quarterback and at least gotten Seattle to the conference championship.