National Football League

Russel Wilson's rushing makes him worthy of an elite contract

Published May. 18, 2015 2:15 p.m. ET

foxsports

By Michael Lococo

So I was going through some of last year’s stats and a number just jumped off the page at me: 849. Specifically, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson rushed for 849 yards last year.

I knew Wilson was a prolific runner, but I didn’t realize just how many yards he had racked up. Obviously many, if not most of those yards, are gained on broken plays, but still. Wilson plainly relies on his feet to gain a lot of his offensive production.

Could that be why the ownership is allegedly so afraid of giving him top money? They shouldn’t be.

There’s an adage in the NFL, no one gets faster as they get older. Wilson has yet to even reach his prime. At 26 years old he likely has another 12 years left in the NFL at some level of solid production. However, he is not Peyton Manning, Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers. Wilson has less than prototypical height and relies quite a bit on his rollout game to give him the best throwing lanes. Moreover, Wilson has never thrown for more than 3,500 yards in a season. Clearly the Wilson camp thinks that overall production and results should be considered in his contract negotiation though.

While he isn’t in the 4,000 club, Wilson rushes for at least 500 yards per year and saves a lot of broken plays. The concern for the team though has got to be, when your speed goes (and it always does eventually) are your passing stats going to suffer along with your rushing stats, or will the fact you can’t run mean that you’ll simply gain more of your yards through the air? No one knows. This is where some of the Wilson hesitancy is probably coming from. Franchise quarterbacks typically sign deals in the five to six year range. Wilson will be in his early thirties when the contract expires. He’ll have a good seven or eight years left at that point.

More importantly, he likely will have just started slowing down. The team can reevaluate then. Right now, with his rushing and the offensive production Wilson adds just by being so elusive, he’s worth top quarterback money. In a league with so few franchise passers, Wilson is unique in his own right. The team shouldn’t worry at the moment about his rushing stats, they should worry about keeping him happy and in Seattle. Right now Wilson is worth the money.

Here's another clip of him eluding defenders in the Super Bowl.

We can all sympathize with the Seattle ownership on the Wilson contract scenario. They are under significant pressure to keep a team competitive with a lot of money in the defense already. Now they have a quarterback, albeit an uber-successful one, who has never thrown for 3,500 yards, never thrown for 30 touchdowns, and never completed more than 65% of his passes.

This quarterback wants Aaron Rodgers money or better. However, if the hesitancy is coming from concerns about slowing down, the Seahawks should not worry about that. Wilson is still very young and will remain a force on the ground through the remainder of any deal he’s given. That concern can be addressed later.

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