After months of wait, the 2022 NFL season is finally here. Week 1 had a number of highly anticipatedgames, but one of the biggest storylines was undoubtedly the return of Russell Wilson to Seattle with another uniform.
In a shocking turn of events, the Seahawks parted ways with the franchise legend by sending him to the Denver Broncos in one of the biggest trades of the offseason. Curiously, the schedule determined that the veteran quarterback would face his former team in his very first game since the trade.
Many thought it would be Wilson’s night, but it was Geno Smith who took all the limelight.Though things could have gone differently had Nathaniel Hackett didn’t made a controversial late-game decision, Pete Carroll took pride in the way his team executed the game plan to stop its former quarterback.
Pete Carroll reveals how Seahawks tried to stop Russell Wilson
“We really were focused in on Russ’ play with our pass rush. That’s really the way to play him. You can move him and you can make him go,” Carroll said, via SeattleSports.com. “I think he moved 10 times and he completed two passes on the times we moved him out of the pocket and moved him around like we were trying to. It’s a hard dynamic to have. There’s so many factors in there, but we’re trying to push him in directions.
“When he moves to his left, it’s hard for him numbers-wise and all that, so we just we were able to do some stuff,” Carroll added. “It wasn’t perfect at all, but it was effective and we felt like we were controlling it. It wasn’t always just getting clean to get the sack, it was to try and make him go where we wanted him to go, and guys did a good job.”
When you look at Wilson’s stats, it’s not like he had a bad game or anything like that. He threw for 340 yards, but only had one touchdown and completed 29 of 42 passes. But inthe end, he wasn’t comfortable enough to give his team the win.