GM John Schneider explains why he doesn’t just hang up when teams ask about Russell Wilson
No, John Schneider isn’t “shopping” Russell Wilson for a trade.
But, no, Seattle’s general manager is not hanging up on the other teams that are calling him and the Seahawks, asking if their franchise quarterback is available, as incessant, baseless rumors have claimed for 13 months.
“Well, it’s rude, you know what I mean? I have relationships around the league,” Schneider said during an impromptu interview session with The News Tribune, the Seattle Times and three other local Seattle beat writers in a hallway of the JW Marriott hotel at the NFL scouting combine Wednesday.
“When somebody calls on a specific person, or on a specific player, or during the coaching process and coaching-hiring process, you obviously have to return those calls. You can’t just blow people off.
“Of course they take their shots. I would, right? I would be doing the same thing. If I read something in the media I’d be like ‘Well, shoot, go for it. See what’s up. Can we do that? ...
“Because if we don’t know what’s going on with everybody, we’re not doing our jobs. We’re living in, like, this, just, Seattle Seahawk Land.
“We can’t live there.”
The Seahawks’ GM since 2010 was speaking to a handful of Seattle-based reporters on his way to yet another NFL meeting during the combine, which runs through this weekend.
“You’re always — no matter what time of the year it is, really — you are always constantly listening to people. Especially the intensity of it just picks up at this time of the year, right?” Schneider said of this period of meeting with prospects, agents, counterparts from other teams and then the league’s free-agency period that begins March 16.
“So when people talk about Russ, like, the guy’s an amazing player. He’s our franchise quarterback. He’s an amazing person. He’s, like, done amazing, amazing things. Or, he does amazing things in the city of Seattle. And, so, when it’s been out there in the media and all that, of course, if I was another team I’d call you and be like, ‘Hey, what’s up with Russell Wilson?’
“Just because you field questions, you field those calls and questions, that doesn’t mean we are actively shopping him.”
Asked if there is anything of substance at all to other team’s talks and offers for Wilson in any possible trade, and if anything has piqued his interest, Schneider said: “Well, no.
“It’s like constant ... not constant calls, but when there are things in the media... of course you get people calling again.
“I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t listen to it, if I just blew people off.
“But to this point, no.”
Earlier Wednesday, down the street at the combine site at the Indiana Convention Center, coach Pete Carroll said off the podium the Seahawks are “not shopping” Wilson.
What John says is, ‘We’re not shopping the quarterback.’ That’s what he tells them,” Carroll said. “He has talked to other teams. He’s had teams that have asked, just because of all of the media. They think that something is going on, so he’s fielded a lot of calls. “But he’s fielded a lot of calls on everybody.
“But that in particular, he’s got a standard response.”
Wilson, 33, has two years remaining on his then-record $140 million contract he signed in 2019. He missed games last season for the first time in his 10-year career because of injury.
Seattle went 1-2 in those games he missed with a broken finger, then 0-3 in the first three games after he returned in October. He later acknowledged he rushed back too soon.
Now, 13 months after Wilson said “I’m frustrated with getting hit too much” and a year after Wilson’s agent told ESPN four teams Wilson would waive his no-trade clause and go to if the Seahawks wanted to trade him, the team and its franchise quarterback remain in the same place.
Wilson isn’t getting traded, because the Seahawks don’t want to trade him.
Wilson has said multiple times since the end of the 2021 season his “hope” is to remain with the Seahawks and that his goal remains to win three more Super Bowls with the team.
“My plan is to win Super Bowls. And my plan is to win them here. It’s that simple,” Wilson said Jan. 6, before Seattle’s season-finale win at Arizona. “There’s nothing, really, else, other than that.”
He quarterbacked Seattle to its only NFL championship, winning Super Bowl 48 at the end of the 2013 season.
That was one year after Carroll and Schneider drafted Wilson in the third round and made him the Seahawks’ starter from the third preseason game of his rookie summer.
“Russ was clear,” Carroll said Wednesday. “I think Russ was pretty clear of his intentions, you know, that he plans on playing here, being with us.”
Of course, fans want unequivocal answers from the team. They want Carroll or Schneider, or both, to just come out and state Wilson is not going anywhere, that he’s under contract for two more seasons and he’s our franchise cornerstone. And that’s the end of it.
But as Schneider said later Wednesday, NFL business — Seattle’s business under Carroll and Schneider since they arrived to run the Seahawks in 2010 — doesn’t run that way.
“That’s right. It doesn’t run that way. I’m glad you brought that up,” Carroll said.
Seattle’s coach and GM take huge pride and gain league-wide access by proclaiming far and wide they are always “in on everything,” always competing, to use Carroll’s pet phrase. They want all to know they explore any and all potential ways to improve and win.
That includes listening to any team that might offer the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn and the entire galaxy for the one player Carroll and Schneider haven’t fathomed being without since the team’s most successful run began with Wilson in 2012.
“The facts are, that if you are competing you’ve got to listen to what’s going on,” Carroll said.
“And we have been in — how many years it’s been, 12, 13 or something, whatever it is? — I think we’ve been saying it exactly the same way. Because we believe this. We cannot to miss the opportunity to compete.
“So that’s what we are tasked to do. And that’s what we’ve been doing.”
This story was originally published March 2, 2022 at 1:55 PM with the headline "GM John Schneider explains why he doesn’t just hang up when teams ask about Russell Wilson."
