One of the main stories of the offseason was quarterback Russell Wilson‘s clear and public frustrations with the Seahawks. While it never progressed to the point of Wilson explicitly requesting a trade, Wilson’s agent did release a list of four potential trade destinations for the QB.
But in his pre-draft press conference on Wednesday, Seattle head coach Pete Carroll noted that Wilson “wasn’t any more frustrated than I was” following the first-round playoff loss to the Rams. Carroll noted that as a team, the Seahawks felt like they had a chance for postseason success, especially since the club had a home playoff game.
And when it comes to the trade rumors, Carroll did his best to put them all to bed.
“Russ has been our quarterback for a good while,” Carroll said. “We’ve got a long contract with him. And when all of the conversation went about trades and all that — I knew what the truth was: We weren’t trading Russell. So we plan on him being here for a good while. I don’t know how many years it is now, but we’re in great shape and a long future ahead of us is shared. Russ knows that. I know that. We’re very clear about it. That’s why it was really obvious that we just had to sit back and kind of let the media take its course with the topic. So we did. So we’re in good shape and both very clear about that.”
Carroll added that he would’ve preferred to keep the whole situation out of the media. But based on his conversations with Wilson, Carroll said even though it looked like there was a problem, there was no problem.
“I think that we’re very clear about it now,” Carroll said.
Still, whenever a player’s agent releases a list of potential trade destinations, there was clearly some sort of issue between that player and the organization. Time will tell if it flares up again over the course of 2021.