Brief pregame scene shows how connected Seahawks’ Russell Wilson has become to Seattle
Those folks from Maine to Maui who already have Russell Wilson out of Seattle didn’t see it.
The ones who benefit most from it don’t necessarily care so much about football.
Wilson and his wife Ciara were on the field at the end of the Seahawks’ pregame warm-ups Sunday, about 20 minutes prior to kickoff of Seattle’s final home game this season, against the Detroit Lions at Lumen Field. Wilson and Ciara were presenting a ceremonial check for the $2.7 million Wilson’s Why Not You Foundation and Safeway/Albertsons raised in 2021 for the Immuno Heroes, Seattle Children’s hospital’s program to fight childhood cancer worldwide.
For the last decade Wilson has made weekly visits to Seattle Children’s. He been at the bedsides of the sickest and youngest of the sick, from burn victims to cancer patients and transplant seekers. He did that every Tuesday for his first eight seasons and preseasons as the Seahawks’ quarterback, from his first rookie minicamp well before he became a superstar, until restrictions from COVID-19 stopped him the last two seasons.
In 2021 he and Ciara started a tuition-free charter school in south King County named after their foundation. The thrust of the school is to give underprivileged children access, a chance to excel into young adulthood they may not otherwise get.
These are the roots that are likely to keep Wilson planted in Seattle playing for the Seahawks longer than the innuendo and rumors already ramping up again for this offseason consider.
Wilson is the best and most-accomplished quarterback in Seahawks history. He’s the only one to win a Super Bowl. With the Seahawks’ 51-29 rout of the Lions Sunday Wilson has 112 career regular-season and playoff wins. He’s tied with Peyton Manning for the most wins by an NFL quarterback in the first 10 seasons of a career.
He’s got two more seasons after this one remaining on his record $140 million contract. He has a no-trade clause in that deal.
The Seahawks have the ultimate no-trade leverage, of course. They don’t want to trade him and start over with a 70-year-old coach and ultimate football authority in Pete Carroll, then Wilson doesn’t get traded.
Wilson added some to this will-he-leave talk on Thursday. The 33-year-old QB said his goal was to win three more Super Bowls. He was asked by The News Tribune if he believed he will be able to do that while with the Seahawks, given the direction of the franchise amid this 6-10 season.
“I hope so. Obviously, we can’t do it right now not being in the playoffs right now,” Wilson said, with Seattle missing the postseason for just the second time in 10 years.
“For me, I know you guys asked Bobby (Wednesday) about, ‘Could this be your last game?’ and this and that, and all that. I know for me, personally, I hope it’s not my last game (in Seattle). But at the same time, I know it won’t be my last game in the NFL.”
Asked about those last comments, Wilson said following Sunday’s game: “Listen, I think for me my mission today was to be able to win today. Just win the journey.
“And so you can have any thoughts you want. But I’m grateful. You can’t (put me) in a bad mood. I’m full of joy. I’m full of gratefulness. I’m full of just being blessed, man.
“So I’m not going to waver off of that.”
This season is the first one in his career he’s missed games. He injured the middle finger on his throwing hand in a loss to the Los Angeles Rams Oct. 7. He had surgery the next day and missed three games. He returned to practice four weeks following surgery, about half the time his surgeon told him he may miss.
The Seahawks are 3-5 since his return. They were 2-2 before he got hurt and had his first three missed games of his career.
Deep roots in Seattle
It’s the roots he’s put down in life far more important and impacting than football that are as much a part of Wilson’s link to Seattle as touchdown passes and winning games.
“Obviously, this city has been everything for me. It’s been a special place. And it’s always going to be, forever, a special place for me,” Wilson said following his 20-for-29-passing day with four touchdowns in the Seahawks’ final home game this season.
“So I’ve told you guys my goals and my visions, my thoughts and everything else.”
That is, to play his entire career, at least 10 more years, and win three more Super Bowls — for the Seahawks.
“And so I hope that it all gets to collide together and get to do it together and hopefully we can do everything that I’ve ever dreamed of and we’ve ever dreamed of together,” he said.
Asked Sunday specifically about the money and time he gives to Seattle Children’s and his most recent donation, Wilson’s eyes became moist and red.
He thought of his father. Harrison Wilson III died in 2010 at age 55 after complications for diabetes.
“My dad always told me...you always want to leave a place better. You always want to go to a place and make it better,” the QB said. “You want to always encourage people and make people believe. ...
“That’s why I went to the hospitals.”
That and the fact his mother, Tammy, was an emergency-room nurse.
“I’ve seen my dad pass away in a hospital room. When the line went flat,” Wilson said.
“So for me, I understand what it’s like to lose family members, to lose loved ones and all that. ... I don’t mean to get too emotional.
“But I just think when you get to go into a hospital room — now having three kids — for me and Ciara to be able to try to make a difference for people every day and just try to inspire. I always say sports and music are the two most entertaining things in the world. To be able to live life with ‘C’ and to be able to give back and give a little glimpse of hope, it’s what life’s really all about.”
That’s what Wilson sees as his purpose in Seattle, and beyond, past what he does with the Seahawks.
“What’s been probably the coolest part of the journey is just to be able to make a difference for people and to see kids walk in with cancer and then to be able to help raise funds or to be able to encourage them, give them a word of ‘Why not you?’ or whatever it may be,” Wilson said. “Give them that glimpse of hope.”
Wilson’s story of Milton Wright
Following one of his five wins this season on Sunday, Wilson told the story of young Milton Wright.
Wright was an 8-year-old in Arizona when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and first came to Seattle Children’s. He underwent chemotherapy for 3 1/2 years. The cancer returned when he was 15. He thought he was cured, again. His cancer returned, again, when he was 20.
Wilson was there to see Wright finally beat cancer.
“To see guys like Milton Wright walk out of a hospital room when they only had 12 to 18 hours left to live and to know that because of T-cell therapy and what our foundation was able to do with Why Not You Foundation, so many different things to encourage them,” Wilson said, “Why not you? You can overcome them.”
“I told him the story about my dad,” Wilson said of Wright. “And he said: ‘Why not me?
“He gets up and goes, walks down the hallway, gets T-cell therapy — and no more cancer.
“That’s why I believe. That’s why I believe. That’s why I do it, because somebody else is going to be affected by it.”
In 2018 Wright returned to Seattle Children’s — as a 24-year-old certified nursing assistant. Wilson was still going there, every Tuesday.
“For me and Ciara, we’ve seen that happen over and over and over again, the success rate of it all,” Wilson said. “We’ve seen kids walk out of the hospital room with no more cancer and no more problems. And we’ve also lost some, too.
“But the belief and the hope that someone else is going to be encouraged, that just maybe if there’s a small chance maybe they get to walk out of that hospital room, it’s worth every second, every minute and every hour, every day to wake up with that kind of encouragement and love.
“And I think that what we’re supposed to do. When much is given much is required for us, to love and supposed to serve. And so I’m grateful that I get to do it.”
In Seattle.
The talking heads of football commentary won’t consider this throughout the coming offseason.
Other part is ‘even better’
Sure, Wilson could take this serving to other communities if he ever played elsewhere.
Thing is, he’s already started and flourished it in Seattle.
Plus, his Seahawks haven’t shown any signs they want to start over without their franchise quarterback, with Carroll under contract through 2025 and with a franchise chair, Jody Allen, who hasn’t given any signs she wants a regime change.
Asked if Sunday’s win reaffirmed the blueprint and personnel to win big is here with the Seahawks, despite the losing season, Carroll didn’t appear thrilled.
“You be the judges of that. I don’t need to reaffirm it. You guys reaffirm it,” Carroll said.
“This is what we’re supposed to look like. This is the way we’re supposed to play. We’re supposed to get the football off the opponent. And we’re supposed to run the football and own the line of scrimmage so we can do all the things that our offense is structured to do and play off our special teams.”
There are thousands of young patients, their family members, students at a school in south King County, teachers and countless others who clearly see why Wilson is deeply rooted in Seattle.
“To go win games, do all this amazing stuff, do some cool things in your lifetime, your sports career, that’s awesome. That’s what I dream about every day and wake up for every day,” Wilson said.
“But the other part of it that makes it even better is that God chose me to do that, and gave me opportunity to encourage and so many others. And hopefully I can encourage somebody else. So you can’t say enough about the teachers at Why Not You Academy and all the schools around us who teach our young kids, teach them to overcome with all the things going on with COVID and much and more. And you think about the nurses and doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital right down the road. They’re the true heroes. These kids are true heroes.
“So I’m just grateful that our foundation, Why Not You Foundation, is able to make a difference like this with $2.7 million today and just to be -- it takes a community. It takes a village. It takes amazing people. It takes people that want to dream with you.
“So why not? Why not you? Why not us?”
.JPG "SeahawksTexansFootball (1).JPG")
This story was originally published January 3, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
