The biggest game of his life was never too big for Russell Wilson, Little Big Man.
The Other Quarterback in Super Bowl XLVIII outplayed the Hall of Fame quarterback, Peyton Manning, and if you wanted proof the kid is living a charmed life, consider how lucky Wilson was he didn’t have to try to face the tsunami that was the Seahawks defense.
“God is so good,” Wilson said after Seahawks 43, Broncos 8. “We believed we would get here. At the beginning of the season I told our guys, ‘Hey, why not us?’ ”
Then he talked about what his late father had always told him.
“He used to always tell me ‘Russ, why not you?’ And what that meant was believe in yourself, believe in the talent God has given you even though you are 5-foot-11, and you can go a long ways. That’s why I decided to play football, and I wanted to go against the odds a little bit.”
At a time when the Broncos swarmed Marshawn Lynch and dared Wilson (18-for-25, 206 yards, two touchdowns, 123.1 QB rating) to beat them, Wilson began beating them.
He zigged and zagged out of harm’s way, frustrating Broncos defenders to no end, and lofted a beauty of a 37-yarder to Doug Baldwin against Champ Bailey that led to the field goal making it 8-0, then calmly rode the backs of his defense and special teams the rest of the way. He should have had a touchdown pass before the Steven Hauschka field goal, but Nate Irving knocked it out of Jermaine Kearse’s hands in the back of the end zone.
“He stayed poised all year,” Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman said.
Wilson was his cool, calm and collected self and never put his team in jeopardy on a night when coach Pete Carroll only needed him to be a game manager.
“We want to be champions every day and bring it every time,” Wilson said.
None of it came as a surprise to the man who coached him at Wisconsin.
“The kid arrived the first week of July, was in summer workouts for three weeks, and after 10 fall practices, he was elected captain by his teammates, and it wasn’t just by one or two votes, he had an overwhelming majority of the votes, both offense and defense,” said Bret Bielema, who coached Wilson at Wisconsin in 2012 before leaving for Arkansas.
“It’s nothing about a flamboyant attitude, it’s nothing about campaigning, it’s nothing about trying to show that you’re above others, it’s just a kid that’s going to be real, he’s going to shoot you straight. He’s got as much time for anybody whether you’re the first guy on the depth chart or the last guy on the depth chart, he wants to see everybody have success. Just a really truly special human being.”
Seahawks general manager John Schneider’s decision to draft Wilson, all 5-foot-11 of him, in the third round in 2012 was rewarded with a Super Bowl title.
“Schneider had his eyes locked into him from about the third game of the season on,” Bielema said. “He wasn’t going to tip his hat, he just acted like he was interested in everybody.”
He wasn’t. He was interested in Russell Wilson. Now we know why.