Russell Wilson’s swims, hyperbaric chamber part of Seahawks’ rushed recovery to play Rams
The two most important elements to Russell Wilson’s preparation this week aren’t film study and game planning.
They are oxygen and water.
The Seahawks’ franchise quarterback spent his Tuesday morning swimming 25 laps. That became a main part of his weekly recovery ritual in 2013, his second season in the NFL.
So he must be a fairly fast swimmer six years of weekly laps later, eh? Breaststroke? Backstroke?
“No,” he said Tuesday, smiling. “I’m not all that.
“Funny thing was, I wanted to try to do the flip turn when I first started off here, trying to really get good at swimming. And I did it and I almost hit the wall. So I was like, ‘OK, you know what? I’m not getting hurt in the pool.
“So, I tap the wall and go.”
Wilson doesn’t just exercise through water. He began guzzling bottles of it for this week on the flight home from Sunday’s win at Arizona.
“Hydration is big. Hydrating, hydrating, hydrating,” Wilson said. “Flushing your body, it heals you up quicker, quicker than anything.
“Throughout your career, you want to have the things that help heal your body. I believe that water is a big part of that.”
The oxygen?
He spends two to three hours a day up to three days each week during the season laying inside a hyperbaric chamber.
For Wilson, water and oxygen work like life’s most basic charms. He’s yet to miss an in-season practice, let alone a game, in his eight years as Seattle’s starting quarterback, a tenure that began with the first game of his rookie season in 2012.
Wilson’s and the Seahawks’ recovery ways are even more important—and condensed—this week. They play the Los Angeles Rams Thursday night in a NFC West showdown at CenturyLink Field. The game that produces huge bucks for the NFL is four days after Seattle beat the Cardinals in the desert.
With all the time he spends outside of game planning, film study and practicing between games, when does Wilson’s body usually feel healthy enough to play again?
“I feel great by Thursday, to be honest with you,” he said.
Then he smiled.
“So, good thing the game’s on Thursday,” he said.
That was the consensus day the Seahawks veterans The News Tribune polled informally in the locker room said was the first day they feel up to playing again each week after Sunday games.
All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner, defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, linebacker K.J. Wright and left tackle Duane Brown all said their bodies felt recovered enough to play again by each Thursday.
“Or Friday. By Thursday or Friday you start to feel well again,” the 34-year-old Brown said.
The 12th-year veteran chuckled, knowing Friday won’t help him this week.
Clowney said it helps this Seahawks-Rams Thursday nighter is coming earlier in the season then later, when his body is wracked by slamming into offensive linemen every weekend for three months. He, like many players in the league and especially the ones who play along the line of scrimmage, said he can barely get out of bed or walk pain-free on Mondays and Tuesdays later in the season. By November, he says he often does not feel better until Saturday morning—the day before his next game.
Clowney didn’t practice or play games of any kind from early January to early September because of his holdout with Houston until the Texans traded him to Seattle Sept. 1. So he’s fresher than most players. He intends to use that to his advantage on the short turnaround Thursday.
“Quick turnaround, knowing guys are going to be beat up, coming into that game feeling beat up, just trying to come into that game real physical with the guy (opposite him),” the Seahawks’ prime pass rusher said.
“I like short weeks. I don’t mind them.”
He’s in the vast minority. Many players hate these Thursday games.
“Yeah,” Brown understated, “it’s not the best thing for our bodies.”
The Seahawks remember one as particularly devastating.
Richard Sherman tore his Achilles and Kam Chancellor injured his neck during a Thursday-night win at Arizona in November 2017. Neither played another game for the Seahawks. Wide receiver Doug Baldwin played that game with a quadriceps strain he said he got in pregame warmups because he wasn’t in proper condition to play. Brown left that game injured. Wilson went to the sidelines after getting hit to the chin for a controversial, not-really concussion evaluation.
That game and its locker-room scene of Sherman not being able to walk, of players strewn across the carpeted floor on the night that ended half the Legion of Boom secondary in Seattle, enraged Baldwin. He ripped the league with a profanity in the hallway of the visiting locker room in Glendale, Ariz.
““This s*** should be illegal,” Baldwin said that night of Thursday-after-Sunday games. “It is not OK. It’s not OK. You can quote me on that.
“This is not OK. ... Absolutely, guys do not have enough time to recover. You can’t recover in four days.”
Baldwin retired this spring after three surgeries since last season.
So many Seahawks couldn’t walk without significant pain after that Thursday night “showcase” in Arizona, about 10 piled onto an equipment cart from all angles outside locker room so they could avoid having to walk to the team bus. Sherman and his crutches plus Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett with his plantar-fascia injury on top of wrecked toe were among them.
Wagner said that night: “Change the format.”
Does he still feel that way now?
“It’s pretty much still the same,” Wagner said Tuesday.
“I think it’s very hard for players to get their bodies ready to play a Thursday night. But we are professionals. We figure out a way.
“Would we like it to change? Of course. Will it? Probably not.
“So we just have to deal with it.”
Wagner suggests perhaps a bye week before all Thursday night games. But that would increase the season beyond 17 weeks and one bye for each team, without additional revenue for the NFL and its team owners.
The current format, which was not collectively bargained with the players and came into existence well after the last labor negotiations between players and owners in 2011, calls for each of the league’s 32 teams to play one Thursday night game each season.
Wagner and the other Seahawks veterans know Thursday night games are here to stay, because of the huge profits they generate. The NFL nets $5 billion per year in television revenues from NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN on right to televise games. Amazon gives the league $50 million annually for the right to stream Thursday night games digitally, outside of Fox and NFL Network’s television coverage.
Thursday games have became a huge windfall and reason the league exceeded $15 billion in revenue in 2016, and is now targeting $25 billion annually in profits.
“At the end of the day, they are about making money,” Wagner said. “They are going to try to make the best decision as far as money (that is) possible.
“Players know that. You’ve got to recognize that. ...
“It’s just ‘player safety,’ or whatever they make it out to be. It’s obviously, always, money behind every decision that we make.”
Of course, swimming pools, hyperbaric chambers and recovery methods aren’t the only aspects to this game few players really want by all players tolerate. For the football Xs and Os of this short turnaround, the Seahawks began studying film of Rams games on the flight home from Phoenix Sunday night.
“After the game was over, you’ve got to enjoy it for a second, then you’ve got to get right to starting watching film,” Wagner said.
“Luckily, it’s a divisional opponent, so you know about them a little bit.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2019 at 5:42 PM.
