Don’t expect rookie Anthony Gordon from WSU to be Russell Wilson’s only Seahawks backup
For now, if Pete Carroll wants an experienced quarterback to back up Russell Wilson, he is going to have to get his arm loosened up.
“I’m getting ready,” said the 68-year-old Seahawks coach, who likes to sling passes across the field before practices and games. “You never know. I might have to put me in.
“At least we know we have a backup to our backup, if we need it.”
Right now, they need it.
The Seahawks exited this last weekend’s NFL draft with 19 offensive linemen and one quarterback, Wilson. That’s apparently going to change when the team announces its batch of undrafted rookie free agents in the coming days.
Anthony Gordon, last season’s quarterback at Washington State, has reportedly signed onto Seattle’s offseason roster. He set a Pac-12 record with 48 touchdown passes in coach Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense at WSU in 2019.
If Gordon remains Seattle’s only other quarterback behind Wilson into this coming season, it would be a surprise, to put it mildly.
The Cincinnati Bengals released long-time starter Andy Dalton on Thursday. That is a reminder the Seahawks again are in the market for a veteran who has started NFL games to backup Wilson.
Just in case.
Or do you forget their Trevone Boykin experience?
Carroll doesn’t.
In the spring of 2016, the Seahawks signed Boykin as an undrafted rookie out of TCU. By September, they made him their second and only other quarterback on the regular-season roster. Their thinking: Wilson has never missed an in-season practice, let alone game—he still hasn’t, now at age 30. So Boykin can develop and learn from the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl passer for years without having to play.
Except he had to play.
In the first game of that 2016 season, Wilson got his right ankle stepped on and turned by 305 pounds of then-Miami defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh. Everyone in CenturyLink Field gasped when Boykin put his helmet on and took snaps with center Justin Britt on the sideline during Seattle’s ensuing defensive possession. Only because it was Wilson—credit “recovery water” or nanobubbles, or whatever—the starter did not miss a snap that day. He remained in the game and rallied his team to the win in that opener by throwing a touchdown pass to Doug Baldwin in the final minutes. Crisis averted.
Crisis returned two weeks later.
In the third quarter of a home win over San Francisco, Wilson’s left knee buckled under him. As it did, the 49ers’ Eli Harold grabbed the back of Wilson’s shoulder pads and yanked down the cornerstone of Seattle’s franchise from behind onto his left leg.
“My heart dropped,” Baldwin said that day.
Wilson eventually exited the game, put on a brace and watched Boykin run the offense. Boykin did throw his first and only touchdown pass of his career, a 16-yard strike to Baldwin against a bad Niners team that went 2-14 that season.
But in the final 21 minutes of that 19-point win, while Boykin had to play and Wilson got an MRI on the knee then watched from the sidelines, the offense compared to what it is with Wilson looked like the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers’. For those born after 1976, that’s not good.
That’s the Bucs team about which their coach John McKay famously said when asked about his offense’s execution, “I’m in favor of it.”
Since those unprecedented Wilson injuries four years ago, Carroll and general manager John Schneider have made it a priority to have an experienced backup to Wilson.
Boykin never played for another team. The Seahawks cut him in the spring of 2018 after his girlfriend alleged Boykin broke her jaw. This past February, he was sentenced to three years in prison in Texas for aggravated assault after he had been on probation there.
For 2017, the Seahawks signed Austin Davis, the former starter for the Browns and Rams.
For the 2018 season, the Seahawks traded a late-round draft choice to Green Bay for Brett Hundley, the former fill-in starter for the Packers when Aaron Rodgers was out injured for nine games in 2017. The Seahawks let Hundley go as a free agent after his contract ended following the ‘18 season. When he signed with Arizona last spring, Schneider got back as a compensatory draft choice the pick he gave to Green Bay to get Hundley. So that whole experience was a net wash in the name of insurance.
Last season the Seahawks signed Geno Smith, a former second-round draft choice and starter for the Jets and Giants.
Smith is now an unsigned free agent.
The commonality between Hundley and Smith: they played as many snaps in a regular-season game for the Seahawks as you did. Wilson never missed a snap in 2018 and ‘19, the only quarterback in the league to play every down.
But that’s not the point.
The point is, Carroll and Schneider were so spooked by Boykin having to play in games that mattered as their only other quarterback in 2016, they became convinced an experienced veteran was the way to go—just in case fate and the odds of getting hurt in the NFL finally catch up to Wilson and the Seahawks.
They have options: Dalton, who has thrown for at least 3,200 yards in eight of his nine NFL seasons and had 3,494 yards passing last season for a three-win Bengals team; Smith, who remains available though wants to be a starter again; Cam Newton is also unsigned, with starting opportunities for 2020 dwindling to nearly zero following last weekend’s draft.
And more veterans will be released up to the start of the regular season, whenever that may be amid the coronavirus pandemic.
They always are, as teams shed to save money against the salary cap for the season.
Gordon may develop into the latest Air Raid quarterback to change perceptions on guys from that system and their NFL chances. The success of Gardner Minshew, Gordon’s predecessor as the starter at WSU, plus Nick Foles, Jared Goff and Patrick Mahomes has paved a smoother road for Gordon in the league in recent years. They’ve changed the belief across the NFL that prolific throwers from Leach’s Air Raid offense can’t succeed in the league.
“Right. The whole Air Raid-quarterback stigma has kind of been getting broken down the last few years,” Gordon said in late February at the NFL’s annual scouting combine in Indianapolis.
“I think the last few years there’s been a Super Bowl representative from the Air Raid, each of the last three years. Very fortunate for the guys that have been breaking that stigma down.”
But the Seahawks don’t appear to be willing to count on that, nor Gordon, as being their only option in the event Wilson’s nanobubbles run out, and he finally misses games because of getting hurt.
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 8:33 AM.
