Inside the Russell Wilson-Seattle Seahawks drama that led to the Denver Broncos trade

SEATED NEXT TO his wife and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in a luxury suite at Raymond James Stadium, Russell Wilson watched Super Bowl LV and stewed.

To Wilson, who was in Tampa, Florida, to receive his Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, the game was an unsettling reminder of what he wanted and didn't have, of where his career was after nine seasons with the Seattle Seahawks as compared to the quarterbacks on the field before him. On one side, there was Tom Brady getting hit twice all night, winning his seventh Super Bowl at age 43 and doing it with a collection of marquee players, several of whom the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had signed at his request. On the other side, there was Patrick Mahomes throwing 49 times in a pass-happy Kansas City Chiefs offense that had helped him win an MVP.

«You play this game to be the best in the world,» Wilson would say on «The Dan Patrick Show» two days after that Super Bowl in February 2021. «You know what I hate: I hate sitting there watching other guys play the game. There's nothing worse.»

Wilson was frustrated. And in his mind, it was time to do something about it.

In an interview with Patrick and on a Zoom call set up to discuss his Man of the Year honor, Wilson made those frustrations public. In a 180-degree turnaround from his usual news conference puffery, he vented about pass protection and a perceived lack of say in personnel decisions relative to other elite quarterbacks. He made multiple mentions of his legacy and said the nearly 400 times he'd been sacked in his career — the most in a player's first nine seasons since the 1970 merger, per ESPN Stats & Information — was «way too many.»

The Super Bowl, Wilson's comments and the trade conversations that followed proved to