Russell Wilson injured his middle figure on his right hand during the Seahawks’ Thursday Night loss to the Rams in the 3rd quarter when his hand collided with the hand of Aaron Donald, where it bent backward to levels painful to feel and watch.
But it was later revealed that he suffered two separate injuries to the finger: An extensor tendon rupture and a comminuted fracture dislocation of the proximal interphalangeal joint.
He is expected to miss at least a month and even up to between six and eight weeks after undergoing surgery on his finger, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler.
The surgery was more complicated than it was expected, as Wilson needed screws complicated matters. Wilson confirmed the surgery on Twitter Friday.
During the game, Seahawks backup quarterback Geno Smith impressed people and nearly led them to a comeback win before a game-sealing interception. Now that Wilson is out, Smith is set to be the starter for the foreseeable future. The former Jet has a 12-19 record as a starting QB in the NFL.
The bad news it that it can put the Seahawks’ playoff hopes in jeopardy, given that they sit at the bottom of a highly competitive NFC West, at 2-3, with the 4-0 Cardinals and 4-1 Rams looking like they will be tough teams to catch, as the Seahawks’ playoff odds have fallen from 42.7% to 22.2%. Their projected win total dipped from 8.8 wins to 7.8 wins, per Stephen Oh of CBS Sports.
It also ends Wilson’s streak of 149 consecutive games played across 10 seasons. So far during this season, he has 1,196 passing yards and a 72.0 completion percentage, with 10 touchdowns and one interception. His 9.6 yards per attempt leads the NFL.
Wilson has previously played through a sprained ankle and a sprained MCL in 2016, but Pete Carroll said that “everyone was together” on the decision to insert Smith when it was clear that Wilson couldn’t grip the ball well enough to throw it.
“Nobody should question his toughness,” Carroll said of Wilson. “Nobody should question his resolve. If he could have thrown a football and held on to it, he would have done it. Anybody that says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about. So you can deal with all kinds of stuff with your hands and you can still throw the football, and he tried last night and did not have … the control of the ball. So if he could have, he would have.”
Wilson tried playing through the injury but quickly found out he was unable to play through the injury, going three-and-out before turning the QB helm over to Smith. It’s not helping that the Seahawks defense, who is ranked last in the league, allowed 476 yards to the Rams.
Even worse for the Seahawks, they don’t have their 1st round pick, as it is property of the Jets after the Jamal Adams trade.
The Seahawks are in a weird spot because, not only has Wilson missed a game since entering the NFL in 2012, but he has also been durable to where he hasn’t even missed a practice because of injury, not even with sprains to his right ankle (when Ndamukong Suh stepped on it) and his left knee (when a 49ers defender bent it awkwardly) over a 14-day span during the 2016 season. He missed only two practices in his career, and he missed them to attend funerals.
He gets back up even after taking seemingly devastating hits as if nothing happened, such as the blindside shot to the jaw from Clay Matthews in the 2014 NFC Championship Game.
However, it is not surprising that he will miss time, given that he has been hit 1,556 times in his career, the most out of any QB since 2012. But it’s not out of the question on if he will return on the earlier end of the four-to-eight-week timetable.
While Smith is 12-19 as a starter, he has mostly played on mediocre and bad Jets teams. He may be one of the better backups in the NFL, and he played well enough on Thursday to give the Seahawks a chance to steal victory from the jaws of defeat. He went 5-of-5 and showed nice mobility on the 98-yard drive that ended with a touchdown pass to DK Metcalf, although the Rams may have been giving up some underneath throws to prevent a quick strike.
If Wilson misses, at the very least, five games, that means Smith will start the Seahawks’ games at the Steelers (1-3), vs. the Saints (2-2), vs. the Jaguars (0-4), at the Packers (3-1) after the bye and vs. the Cardinals (4-0). The Seahawks can go, at the very least, 2-3 in those five games given how bad the Jaguars are and the fact that Ben Roethlisberger is at the point where retirement needs to be considered.
The best hope for the Seahawks is that they win those two games, hope that the Rams and Cardinals cool down, and pray that Wilson comes back on the earlier end of the recovery timetable.
A strong running game would help keep the burden off of Smith, but another problem stems from Chris Carson dealing with a neck injury that kept him out against the Rams, which thrust Alex Collins to the starting running back position.
The defense is another problem. For the 2nd year in a row, the Seahawks defense is getting scorched. Historically so. And by historically, in a bad way. They have allowed at least 450 yards in four straight games, the longest streak in team history and the longest in NFL history, per ESPN Stats & Information.
The pass rush was expected to be strong enough to take some pressure off of a questionable secondary, but has underperformed and has not gotten a sack from Jamal Adams. What ignited their defensive turnaround last season was their pass rush. They have just as much firepower as they had last year, so there is hope that they can improve.
How this affects Wilson’s future with the Seahawks is the hardest and biggest question to answer. Both Wilson and the Seahawks are in a better place ever since the offseason drama before the season, leading to speculation on if he will be traded.
The situation here is, by no means, permanently resolved. Wilson’s concerns have been set aside by a plan to revisit the team when the season ends.
Logically, it feels as if for Wilson to be fully content, he would have to feel like the pass protection has improved, he would like to have fit in Shane Waldron’s offense, and the Seahawks would have to at least get over their divisional round playoff hump. But it feels less straightforward now that Wilson will miss time and the Seahawks could miss the playoffs because of it.
The offense has been on-and-off through five games, though Wilson is a fan of Waldron’s and endorsed him for the job. They have fared roughly in the same way as last season in the pass block win rate, QB contact percentage and sacks per dropback. It can’t sit well with Wilson that Donald is the same one who gave him the most problems in the past.
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