During the spring and summer of 2012, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was taking one-third of the first-team reps at Seahawks practices.
Things are very different this year. Tarvaris Jackson is in Buffalo, Matt Flynn is in Oakland and Wilson is the only man running with the starters during Seahawks workouts. That is going to mean a lot more snaps during practice and a high likelihood of improvement as Wilson spends more times at the controls of the team’s offense. According to coach Pete Carroll, that improvement is already readily apparent.
“He threw a couple of balls today, things that we talked about over the offseason that he’d like to take a shot at, and he did it today just to see what would happen with full awareness of why he was doing it,” Carroll said, via Eric Williams of the Tacoma News Tribune. “We were talking about trying to throw the deep ball last year over guys’ outside shoulder; we’re just a million miles ahead of where we were. He’s the kind of player that will affect other guys — he affects everyone around him — and hopefully that will help everyone play better and faster.”
Wilson agrees with his coach that he’s ahead of where he was last year, although he points out that the key is to keep improving. That’s an unknown at this point, obviously, but what we’ve seen from Wilson thus far makes it hard to bet against him.