They say you can’t win football games with too many choir boys. One choir boy might be too many in the case of Russell Wilson, the NFL’s would-be Mr Congeniality. From the off the New York Giants quarterback has gone to lengths to distinguish himself as the game’s most likable star, the kind of player kids look up to and opponents look out for. And all it seems to do is breed resentment.
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Wilson’s closest collaborators struggle to speak his name without spitting. Richard Sherman, the standout former defensive back turned TV analyst, begrudges Wilson for the favoritism he received from management during their years together at the Seattle Seahawks. KJ Wright, another prominent member of that Legion of Boom defense, accuses Wilson of betraying locker room bonds. Marshawn Lynch, the delightful but famously reticent Seahawks running back who lined up behind Wilson for 56 games, recalls having to ask someone in the team’s front office for the QB’s contact info – and Wilson calling him back from a blocked number. “Russ was just a quarterback for me,” Lynch said. Just the quarterback who led the Seahawks to their first ever Super Bowl title.
Sean Payton can barely hide his disdain for Wilson. After Denver’s historic 33-32 comeback win over New York last week, the Broncos coach beamed about the “little spark” the Giants had found with Jaxson Dart, the rookie who became the team’s starting quarterback after Wilson went 0-3. Payton also hinted that he told Giants owner John Mara that he would have rather faced Wilson. “We were hoping that change would’ve happened long after our game,” Payton told reporters.
That Payton said this as the coach who inherited Wilson – after Denver traded for him in 2022 and handed the quarterback a five-year, $245m deal that’s still eating into the salary cap – raised eyebrows, including Wilson’s. In a social media response two days later, he called Payton “classless” and accused him of using the media for “bounty hunting” – a clear reference to the pay-for-pelts scandal that darkened his otherwise successful coaching tenure with the New Orleans Saints. And though Payton would later say his comments about Dart were not intended as a veiled shot at Wilson, it’s still somewhat surprising that the QB would even take such offense.
Wilson has always had a knack for existing inside his own bubble. During his decade-long run in Seattle, he regularly struck the tone of a politician on the campaign trail – leading with charm, killing with kindness, leaving a trail of platitudes in his wake and sometimes in the huddle too. Especially annoying was Wilson’s habit of closing interviews with the tagline “Go Hawks,” which became “Let’s Ride” after he was traded to the Broncos; after signing with Pittsburgh last year, Wilson changed the tagline to “Here We Go,” the first words of the team’s fight song – and then: “Win the Seventh,” a reference to the Steelers’ quest for a seventh Lombardi trophy. But he honestly can’t help himself.
Overall, Wilson labors to say anything without sounding AI-powered. “The greater you’re great, the more they’re gone hate,” he said after a vintage outing against Dallas in Week 2. Even Wilson’s attempt to pivot from this robotic perception with a social media alter-ego called Mr Unlimited (not to be confused with his on-field persona, DangeRuss) was roundly jeered as painfully desperate and uncool. Corny is another word that’s used to describe Wilson. It comes up most often when Wilson is viewed through the prism of Black American culture – as Wilson’s aw-shucks airs, positive vibes and noticeable lack of visible tattoos veer from the stereotypical Black athlete who’s always getting into trouble on and off the field.
Critics and commenters in the Black manosphere further perpetuate the stereotype when they tease Wilson for putting the R&B star Ciara through a premarital purity test after she had previously been linked to the rapper Future, a committed bachelor who has dissed Wilson on several records. The manosphere practically melted down after learning Ciara had added Wilson’s name to the son she shares with Future, even though Wilson had not legally adopted the boy. “He’s the most amazing human being you could know,” Ciara said this summer in defense of her husband. “The smartest, most intelligent Black man I have ever known. What you see with him is really who he is.”
The irony of Wilson’s carefully crafted image is that he probably never would have had much of an NFL career without it, let alone hung around long enough to become one of the league’s least-liked personalities. The longer years wear on, the easier it is to forget the odds stacked against Wilson: a short, Black quarterback who had cycled through two colleges back when that wasn’t a good look. The Seahawks took a flier on Wilson in the third round of a 2012 NFL draft headlined by Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III, selecting him ahead of Nick Foles and Kirk Cousins – the only other QBs in the bunch who overdelivered.
Wilson wasn’t supposed to see playing time, given that the Seahawks had signed Green Bay super-sub Matt Flynn to one of the more significant quarterback deals in the NFL at the time. Had Wilson been drafted even 20 years earlier, he almost certainly would have been converted into a defensive back or, failing that, chased a long career in professional baseball. (Wilson was drafted by three different MLB teams after high school and played second base in the Colorado Rockies organization for 93 games.) When Wilson defied forecasts and beat out Flynn for Seattle’s starting job, it triggered an avalanche of reports about the rookie QB’s outsized ability, strict work ethic and deep religious faith.
There was nothing corny about Wilson going on to lead the Seahawks to a Super Bowl drubbing of the Broncos in 2014. He became something for championship contenders to aspire to: a breakout QB star on his rookie contract who’d leave plenty of cap space to address other needs on the field. But that high point may also have marked the beginning of Wilson’s popularity slide. The Seahawks looked like a dynasty in the making when they reached the Super Bowl again the next year. But then Wilson threw a goal-line interception to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Seattle’s 2015 Super Bowl clash against Tom Brady’s New England Patriots and doomed the Seahawks to one-hit wonder status.
Many former Seattle players still hold a grudge against Seahawks coach Pete Carroll for calling the pass play instead of handing off to Lynch, the game’s leading rusher. It wasn’t much longer there after that you began hearing whispers about Wilson’s hewing closer to management than his own teammates, who were moved on to other teams until Wilson himself became expendable. Upon taking the Broncos job in 2023, Payton evicted Wilson from the office he scored among the team’s coaches and executives – proof of the extreme privilege he enjoyed on the team, some say. It’s also been said that Wilson tried to get his superiors fired in Seattle and Denver, a move another QB in his position might try if he had that kind of juice. (Wilson denied the power-grab claims ultimately.)
It was also reported that Wilson had once engaged in a four-hour workout on the way to a London game in the aisle of the Broncos’ team plane, rankling teammates and deepening the public intrigue around his quirks. (Wilson said the story was “overblown”.) The last straw for fans, though, was Wilson cashing in on one lucrative deal after another while his play declined and the team consequently lacked money to fix the roster – a far cry from the bargain value that once made him a franchise cornerstone. His approval rating doesn’t seem as if it will recover until he retires.
That said: it is worth noting that Wilson does have some supporters who are definitely not his wife. Former Broncos guard Dalton Risner calls Wilson one of his favorite teammates. (“You wanna know why he had an office? Because Russell Wilson was grinding,” he said.) Doug Baldwin, Wilson’s top receiver in Seattle, says that their once-close relationship was changed by success and fame, but he wished his ex-teammate well in the end. Justin Fields, Wilson’s main competition for the starting job in Pittsburgh, remembers him being a great teammate and friend who served as a prime example for how to go about the job in the right way. It’s a reminder of how opinions can vary from person to person when the average NFL team fields 53 players or more.
In a league built on relationships and perception, it means something for the hate toward Wilson to be largely circumstantial. It proves that choir boys don’t stand a chance on the gridiron as long as Wilson is out here reveling in the strait-laced football life, no matter what they do.
