Wilson and His Receivers (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Long Bomb)

Over the last few games, we’ve seen Russell Wilson start to come into his own, first with a good showing on the road against the Lions, then with a great game at home against the Jets’ top-five pass defense.  As I said in last week’s stats article, the Seahawks appear to have finally found their next franchise quarterback, and unlike the Redskins, who effectively used up four high-round picks in order to land Robert Griffin III, all John Schneider and Pete Carroll had to do to acquire Wilson was wait patiently until their number came up in the third round. But bargain or not, Wilson can look forward to a great many comparisons to Matt Hasselbeck in the years ahead.  All new NFL starters are inevitably measured against the last great player to man his position for the team in question, but no one has to put up with more of that kind of relentless scrutiny than quarterbacks.  Even when a quarterback has a pretty strong career, if he didn’t perform better than the team’s previous ...