The Pittsburgh Steelers and their fans are still learning who they’re getting in Russell Wilson. Ian Furness should know better than most, having covered him during his 10 years with the Seattle Seahawks. The Seattle radio host spoke to Tim Benz on the Breakfast with Benz podcast recently to talk Russell Wilson and provide some background and insight into one of the Steelers’ new quarterbacks.
Notably, he’s not a fan of Russell Wilson the man, I should say. He claimed that Wilson tried to get many people fired in Seattle, including head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider, and he said, “I don’t root for a guy who tried to get people fired”. Bear that in mind, that there are some personal things involved here. With that said, he believes the Steelers provide Wilson his last shot in ways other teams would not.
“This is probably the last and only stop he could have made to try to resurrect things”, he said. “I don’t think you could go to a weaker organization and get back what you used to have. If he went to the Jets or the Giants it would just be an absolute trainwreck. It’d be fun as hell to watch, but it’d be a trainwreck”.
Notably, Wilson interviewed with the Giants before meeting with the Steelers, so that’s more than a hypothetical. But both sides in Pittsburgh seemed duly impressed, head coach Mike Tomlin noting Wilson’s extensive research into the team. That’s perhaps a good sign, by Furness’ standards, who claims Wilson became a “’Look at me’ guy”.
“He became a problem inside the facility with the front office and the staff and it just snowballed from there before they traded him”, he said of his final years in Seattle, noting that teammates stopped buying into his cliches—perhaps because of their familiarity with the behind the scenes reality.
“I think this will be a telltale thing”, Furness said, referring to Wilson’s ability to succeed with the Steelers. “With an organization like Pittsburgh and a coach like that, this will be the true test. In the end, he thought he was a bigger star and more important and should run the show more than Pete Carroll”, he added, noting that he suspects he took the same approach in Denver with Sean Payton, to his detriment. But he doesn’t think Wilson could do that in Pittsburgh—certainly not in his present circumstances.
His personal feelings aside, however, Furness believes that Wilson is still a talented quarterback. The question is if he can get the most out of himself. There are some football concerns, particularly his mobility at this stage of his career, for example, but “he’s got a terrific arm” still. He’s still a competitor as well.
“Can the guy still play? I think so, I think you see flashes of it. I think I’d still take him over a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL. But it’s all the other stuff around it”, Furness said of Wilson. “Maybe if that guy comes back and under an organization that has the juice that Pittsburgh does”, he continued, he can resurrect his career.
He shared a lot of anecdotes about Wilson as somebody who will never be “one of the guys”, struggling—or rather not trying—to connect with teammates. You’ve surely heard the drama over his personal office with the Broncos, which I thought was insignificant.
But I think it’s beyond being the Steelers at this point for Wilson. He has to know that he is at the end of the line, and if he doesn’t make it work here, nobody is going to trust him as a starter again. He’ll have to do what’s necessary to win over the team and stay on the field. And that will mean elevating himself both on and off of it, being a team player, a leader. Can he make those around him better, assuming he lets others around him to begin with? Or are all of these stories coming from people who took issue with him? Either way, I expect him to carry himself differently in Pittsburgh, because he doesn’t have a choice.
