SEATTLE — OK, bait taken.
Earlier in the week, ESPN football analyst Ryan Clark said Russell Wilson is not an "all-time great quarterback."
The former safety said the Seahawks signal-caller will never be in "those conversations" when it comes to the best to ever line up behind center.
It wasn't a scorched-earth diss, necessarily. Clark said Wilson is "a very good football" player, just not on par with the greatest to ever do it. He put him in the category of two-time Super Bowl winner Ben Roethlisberger, although he said Big Ben was the better player.
A team with Wilson as their starting QB is not an automatic Super Bowl contender, Clark said. So do his words have merit?
I guess the first question is: What constitutes an "all-time great"?
One argument that has been brought up throughout Wilson's career is that he has never gotten a single MVP vote. To be fair, MVP voting in the NFL is different than other sports.
Voters can only select one player for the award. There is no second-place or third-place option like we see in the NBA or MLB. You can only pick one guy, and frankly, Wilson hasn't earned consideration.
True, in 2019, analytics site Pro Football Focus ranked No. 3 as the No. 1 quarterback in the NFL. But the eye test told you that Ravens QB Lamar Jackson was the best in the league, as he earned 100% of the MVP vote.
Wilson fell off in the second half of that year, something he's done throughout the latter part of his career. If the season were eight games long, he might have three MVPs at this point — but teams have seemed to figure him out in late November and December.
Ever since Wilson became "the man" for the Seahawks, they haven't even flirted with a Super Bowl run. They've won just one playoff game in the past five seasons. His postseason success has come when he A) had the best defense in the league behind him and B) Marshawn Lynch in the backfield. When those factors vanished, so, it seems, have the Seahawks' championship hopes.
That said, look at some of Wilson's statistics: His 101.8 passer rating is the fourth-best in history. One could argue that much of this is due to rule changes that have benefited recent quarterbacks (Vikings QB Kirk Cousins, for example, is seventh all-time in passer rating whereas Joe Montana is 18th and Dan Marino 41st), but it's still an eye-popping stat that speaks to Wilson's consistency.
Wilson also has compiled more wins in his first 10 seasons than any other quarterback has in their first decade in the NFL. That's what this league is about, right? Racking up victories. And in the regular-season, Wilson has done it about as well as anyone.
Also, this idea Wilson simply rode Lynch and the Legion of Boom to the Super Bowl is an oversimplification. He may not have thrown a lot in his early years, but the way he mastered the zone-read option made him one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the game.
Pro-football-reference.com has a stat called Approximate Value, which is a catchall figure designed to weigh a player's overall impact. And it said that in 2014 — when the Seahawks reached their second consecutive Super Bowl — Wilson tied for the best season of his career.
He wasn't simply a game-manager. He was the most elusive quarterback in the league working in sync with a monster running attack that got the Seahawks within a yard of winning back-to-back world championships.
Still, I don't think Clark's comments were completely without merit. Wilson, a nine-time Pro Bowler, is a near shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, but he isn't in the same tier as the best to ever do it.
He isn't a John Elway, or Joe Montana, or Aaron Rodgers or a Drew Brees (I'm not even mentioning Tom Brady, who stands alone at the top). He never took over the league like Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who already has an MVP, a Super Bowl MVP and three straight trips to the AFC Championship Game.
Roethlisberger probably does have a better résumé than Wilson does at this point. But Wilson isn't done yet.
Seahawks fans were reminded of what Wilson could do when he was healthy at the end of last season. He is still one of the most accurate passers in the league, and may have the best deep ball in football. Quarterbacks last a long time in the NFL these days.
So is Wilson an "all-time great?" I'll stop short of saying that for now. But five years from now, I wouldn't be surprised if he earned that title.
