Rachel Wold
Instead of Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks preparing for the Super Bowl, the quarterback is preparing to head to school.
After Wilson posted record-setting numbers in 2015, head coach Pete Carroll explained what his quarterback will be working on during the offseason.
“Russell and I talked about this last night,” Carroll said this week, via Sheil Kapadia of ESPN.com. “I think this is really the right time to really turn his focus and broaden his awareness of what is going on in the game overall. And so he and I will spend a lot of time this offseason introducing him to the perspective of what it’s like to look at the defense from the defensive side of the ball.”
It is going to be a jam-packed offseason for Wilson and his entire team according to Carroll.
“We are going to school, and it will be a tremendous offseason for those guys,” Carroll said. “And they are ready for that.”
Per Kevin Patra of NFL.com, Wilson became the first NFL quarterback to record 4,000-plus passing yards, 500-plus rushing yards and 30-plus touchdowns all in one season.
Furthermore, Wilson’s 34 touchdowns compared to only eight interceptions made for his best touchdown to interception ratio of his four-year career. He also completed a career-high 68.1 percent of his passes and achieved the highest NFL rating (110.1) among all quarterbacks in 2015.
Though on the downside, Wilson fell victim to opposing defenses when he took 45 sacks throughout the season, making the third-most sacked quarterback in 2015. Had he not endured an average of nearly three sacks per game, the numbers Wilson recorded would have been even higher and more overall team success would have been achieved.
Also one of the more pressured quarterbacks in 2015, Wilson ranked fourth in the most passes thrown away (29) for the season.
Recognizing that there is always room for improvement, Wilson commented about what is in store for the upcoming months.
“I think the first step is the knowledge,” Wilson said Monday. “You want to continue to grow intellectually and master that part of it. Continue to work on that craft. I think that when you really mentally grasp the game of football, the game really, really slows down. And that’s what was able to happen this year especially.”
After some serious offseason schooling, we can only believe that Wilson, who is in his prime, and his young team will only enter 2016 mightier than ever.
