Where would Seahawks be in 2019 without Russell Wilson?

With each passing day, the reported April 15 deadline that the Russell Wilson camp has reportedly given the Seattle Seahawks to reach an extension gets closer and closer. Whether the two sides will reach a deal or not remains to be seen, but with fans and observers weighing in on what Wilson means to the team and whether they might consider trading him for a king’s ransom, the outcome will be newsworthy one way or another.

A couple of weeks back I conducted a highly unscientific poll on Twitter regarding how the 2019 seasons would go for the Seahawks if, for whatever reason, they were quarterbacked by someone other than Wilson. This is what the results of that poll looked like.

So, basically, 87% of respondents believed the team would win fewer games with someone unknown at quarterback than Pete Carroll’s Seahawks teams of 2010 and 2011 won with Matt Hasselbeck and Tarvaris Jackson at the helm. Further, 97% of respondents believed the team would win eight games or fewer, which would represent the worst season of Seahawks football since prior to Wilson’s arrival.

So, today I am posing the same question here on Field Gulls.

The answer obviously depends on who would be quarterbacking the team if Russell is not available. If it were Paxton Lynch at the helm, I shudder to think what the season might look like based on what he showed during his time with the Denver Broncos. The pickings on the free agent market are pretty slim, where names like Mark Sanchez, Geno Smith, Josh Johnson and Brock Osweiler remain unsigned, though Colin Kaepernick could represent an intriguing option if the team were interested in adding a media circus to the season.

In any case, this is certainly a story that should remain front and center in the coming days, and hopefully there is a resolution one way or the other in the coming days so that fans can focus on that which is truly important during the second half of April: developing completely unrealistic expectations for every member of the Seahawks 2019 draft class.