For plenty of Seahawks fans, the firing of offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell will be viewed as good news. For some Seahawks players, they’ll be wishing it was #fakenews.
Consider last week’s remarks from receiver Doug Baldwin regarding the issues with the offense: “I can’t say it. My job is to protect the team right now, and I’m doing a poor job of that. How can I say this? It’s not playcalling. It’s not playcalling. We go into a game knowing what the defense is going to give us, the situations we’re going to be in. We don’t execute as a team. Offensively, that’s what we’ve seen countless time and time again that we do not execute the way we should. And that’s on us as players. You guys can blame Bev all you want to, but the truth of the matter is, Bev is not the problem. Probably already said too much.”
He said even more during a game late in the 2017 season, when NFL Films caught him saying on the sideline, “I’m team player, I don’t want to be an asshole, but I need the f--king ball!”
So if Bevell isn’t the issue, who was Baldwin talking about? Given Baldwin’s clear frustration with not getting the ball, it’s possible that Baldwin is talking about quarterback Russell Wilson.
There’s a perception that Wilson does too much offensively because he has to. Maybe what Baldwin reluctantly was saying last week is that Wilson does too much because he wants to. Without knowing the plays that were called and the ensuing assignments to the various players, it’s impossible to know whether Wilson is or isn’t going through his progression or whether Wilson is or isn’t bailing on the play that was called and improvising. But it’s possible that Wilson is the one Baldwin is talking about when he talks about players not executing.
Wilson, for whatever reason, has been the target of plenty of resentment within the locker room. The heavy praise heaped on Wilson this year, with the not-so-subtle message that Wilson is doing it all alone, surely hasn’t made things better.
The question now is whether the firing of Bevell will make it worse.
Ultimately, it may hinge on who the next coordinator will be, and whether that person will be viewed as someone who is there to cater to Wilson or to coach him hard.