Russell Wilson fleetingly looked like his vintage self early on in his stint as the Pittsburgh Steelers’ starting quarterback, though it wasn’t long before his past struggles reentered the equation.
Wilson, who signed a one-year contract with Pittsburgh last offseason after the Denver Broncos took on $85 million in dead money in order to release him, guided the Steelers to a 6-1 record over his first seven games upon returning from a calf injury in Week 7.
He wasn’t impeccable over that timeframe per se, but the 36-year-old threw for 1,784 yards, 12 touchdowns and three interceptions while the Steelers’ offense was humming at a level it hadn’t in years.
Then the losing streak happened. Wilson, and frankly a majority of the team, suddenly looked like they had been sapped of their talent.
After entering Week 15 with a 10-3 record and two-game lead in the AFC North, Pittsburgh lost its final four games of the regular season before falling to the Baltimore Ravens, who captured the division title, in the Wild Card round of playoffs.
ESPN’s Brooke Pryor provided some insight into how just how bad Wilson looked in practice ahead of that contest, which backs up his substandard level of play down the stretch.
“Towards the end of the season, the practices at Acrisure Stadium before the playoff game, I just remember watching Russ and thinking, ‘This is not good,'” Pryor said on the Shek Show podcast. “He did not look good. He was making mistakes, he was throwing picks. I felt like the defense was gonna put up a bigger fight based on what I was seeing in practice.
“I felt like Russ kind of went over a cliff at some point in the season in that five-game losing streak. And no matter how much positivity he’s preaching, the actions didn’t back up the words. It just snowballed.”
There’s plenty of directions in which blame can be thrown for the Steelers’ fall from grace, and Wilson was certainly complicit to some degree. He concluded the year with a total of 2,482 yards, 16 touchdowns and five picks, which aren’t inadequate numbers on paper, but they don’t tell the whole story.
Wilson has been open about his desire to return to Pittsburgh, and the organization appears to be seriously weighing that possibility, but it would still come as somewhat of a shock if the two sides reunited in 2025 given how things ended this past season.
