Someone asked him if the game was as fascinating to play as it was to watch. Wilson's response was pretty much "yes" and said the thing that made this game so wonderful to play in was the incredible lows and the incredible highs.
Basically, Russell Wilson lives to play on this stage. He eats and breathes it. All of it. Man, that would have killed me.
How to relate it to everyday life? Take something a little more mundane, like...your marriage. I heard a counselor say a few months ago, that fighting with your spouse is a form of intimacy. We all crave intimacy in our marriages. But in how many ways do we withdraw from a fight, because it's safer to withhold what's really bugging you? It's dangerous ground, we could get hurt, or say something that will really blow up in our faces.
And Russell Wilson LIVES to fight on that dangerous ground (speaking gridiron, here). He thrives in it. I suppose Brady does as well.
And perhaps that is why this Super Bowl is Wilson vs. Brady, and not Rodgers or Romo vs. Manning.
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The 2014-15 Seahawks were approximately one Odell Beckham, and two Russell Wilson seasons' worth of game experience, away from being perhaps the best football team of all time.
As they are, the Seahawks are a legit, historical NFL dynasty. They haven't the resume yet, but neither does Felix have the HOF resume yet. Like 49er's fans watching Montana after his 2nd Super Bowl, we're in the middle of watching it happen. It's dumb to wait until it's over to talk about it and enjoy it.
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The 2014-15 Seahawks are a dynasty, as are the current Patriots. Why couldn't the 1983 49er's have existed at the same time as the 1971-73 Dolphins?
Bill James signs off, with gusto, on this "concurrent dynasties" paradigm. Recently he created a points system for objectively ranking the successes of generational baseball teams; the current Cardinals are a sort of dynasty, as are the Giants.
Dynasties that run together, that can, and does, occur. It's occurring now. Super Bowl 49 will be sort of a time warp: the dynasty of the '10s against the dynasty of the '00's.
Dr. D had thought that the best years of Brady and Belichick were over, partly because of --- > Brady's age, partly because of --- > the salary cap, partly because --- > the state of the art moves on.
But! In 2015 the Patriots somehow improved, and they've got a team every inch the equal of their Super Bowl winning teams.
As a result, we get to see the 1975 Steelers face off against the 1992 Cowboys. What more can you ask of a football spectacle?
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Right now on ESPN, they're running a Tom Brady biography, called "The Brady 6." Giovanni Carmazzi, one of the six QB's taken ahead of Brady, was in fact more physically gifted than Brady.
Steve Mariucci, the 49ers' coach at the time, summed up Carmazzi's career by saying, "The lights just got a little too bright, and the stage a little too big for him." I would suggest that you and I, from behind our monitors, consider that Mariucci knows a little more about it than we do.
And, if you're a sabermetrician, you might contemplate this question: why would this "makeup" factor have an effect in football and basketball, but not in baseball?
It applies in every sports competition. Different people react differently to the prospect of defeat and humiliation. Some focus. Others fold. Some relish a fight to the death. Others don't.
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The difference between Brady and some other quarterback is makeup.
And that specific difference in makeup pertains to --- > a man's reaction when things get truly grim. In the immortal words of Josey Wales: when it looks like you ain't gonna make it, that's when you gotta get plumb mad-dog mean.
Well, you know.
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An interesting area of study for Dr. D is, the concept of Deathbed Declarations. In a man's final 10 seconds, you find out what he really thinks. Good topic for a Konspiracy Korner sometime? Why should the world's legal systems provide a "Hearsay Exception" for a man who is about to die? Courts of law (in most cultures, including ours) make the formal assumption that such a man will tell the truth.
When things get truly grim, you find out who a man truly is.
This is one of the reasons that sports are useful and edifying. Fine art isn't, usually. But pro sports are, usually.
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A reporter asked Wilson something. The reporter was genuinely mystified. Wilson parted the curtain and gave us a glimpse.
"On that 3rd-and-7 throw down the field, with the game you'd had, how did you stay aggressive there?"
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If it's you, Gentle Reader, how DO you stay aggressive? After 4 interceptions on that stage, after levels of sports defeat you have never in your life experienced?
Without a week, or a day, to go home and lick your wounds, and learn something, and consolidate, and re-boot?
How do you maintain your champion's mindset, when you've been flattened in the middle of the ring four different times?
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"On that 3rd-and-7 throw down the field, with the game you'd had, how did you stay aggressive there?"
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I wouldn't have been able to keep my optimism. Would you have?
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"On that 3rd-and-7 throw down the field, with the game you'd had, how did you stay aggressive there?"
Wilson laughed and responded instantly, naturally, without thinking about it.
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He said, "If I was going to go down, I was going to go down swinging. That's for sure."
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Die with your boots on,
Dr D
Comments
That's a cool point about marriages: much worse is the situation where the two people won't argue with each other any more. If they're fighting, they're emotionally engaged.
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I think with some guys - Manny Ramirez, let's say - they're great in the clutch, in part because they are a little more detached from the pain of losing. But Wilson breaking down in tears after ... that's when it hit him, the scale of what was at stake, the crushing pressure, how scary it all was. But he accepted all of it, fought with courage, and you could see how "real" the battle was for him at the end.
He's a remarkable person - one of the very few who deserves the "Great Leader" label IMHO.
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Have you seen the ESPN thing on Brady, Rick? It's good stuff. He's a great leader, too -- a little bit more the cold-blooded killer type. More FDR than Abraham Lincoln.
I will definitely check it out.
Two of my all time favorite dynasty teams are the '67 Packers and the '68 Celtics. Two very old, tired teams that laced up the shoes and gave their alls for one last championship. Let's put Bart Starr and Bill Russell in the "all heart" of fame. And relish the day the Hawks will tell the next upstart contender to the throne, "not quite yet, sonny boys." Hey, I like this "enjoy the dynasty in the now."
Hey, win forever, right?
SI's Peter King reports that at the absolute lowest point of the game, after the fourth interception:
At that moment, CenturyLink Field as quiet as anyone’s ever heard it, some fans already up and streaming for the exits. Wilson came to the sideline and made a beeline for offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell. “We’re gonna win it,” Wilson said. “I know we’re gonna win it.” And he said he had a play he knew was going to work.
And is delusional self confidence a requirement to be a world champion?
Have never understood why Peyton front running Manning gets all the middle America love, and Brady is unloved in the sports "culture". But then, I love Kobe Bryant too. Give me the cold blooded killer any day. Watching Brady get so fired up like a big kid during games at 37 years old with all those rings is glorious. Just like the second Kobe championship run with Pau and co (and 3rd Phil Jackson run...). Where do these guys even find the motivation? They're not humans like the rest of us.
I can't wait to see Brady and Belichick's best shot, and find out if the Hawks can take it!
Wilson's attitude was, if I *do* lose, it's going to be on my terms.
And it's one thing to assess the chances from the hill, with binoculars, another thing to be trapped inside the walls. The mentalities required are different ... from inside the Alamo, there's little to be gained by conceding the odds.
My son and I have been pretty big Tom Brady fans since the Bledsoe controversy.
I think of them as the Boston Americans :- ) and Brady echoes the American "speak softly and carry a big stick" tradition. He's not a bully: he seems to prefer coming into camp as the #7 quarterback and then calmly taping on the foil.
Being a teenager and watching Tony Eason putting himself on the bench in the first quarter of the Super Bowl against the Bears is something I'll never forget.
Roberto Duran's No Mas is another instance. Sometimes even champions toss their hands up.
"It's dumb to wait until it's over to talk about it and enjoy it." - Like all the ridicule I got after saying we had an all-time great HOF pitcher in '95. Chastised by everyone because he hadn't really done it yet.
ANYONE can call their homerun after they hit it. Calling the shot beforehand? Much more enjoyable. Realizing you are seeing greatness while in the midst of it? Doesn't get *any* better than that.
That was the most incredible sports game I've ever watched in my life. Most of the game, even when we were down and making mistakes, I was still confident we would come back. I just thought Russell would pull some more magic out of his hat. But after that last INT I saw the clock and had to admit to myself that it was nearly impossible. I started resigning myself to defeat and mentally preparing myself to be gracious to my wisconsin friends.
At every point during the comeback I kept thinking of what we had to do next, "Ok we scored, but we've gotta get the 2pt conversion" or "The onside kick almost never works." or "Aaron Rodgers will march 'em down the field again."
Only when Russell dropped that dime to Kearse in the endzone did it hit me that there was nothing else left for us to do. In the words of Warren Moon, "GAME OVER, BABY!"
Just unbelievable. Russell's reaction postgame was exactly how I felt, and knowing how stoic he usually is, that was purely genuine. What an amazing player. Lucky to watch him and this team.
Talk about watching game film to the very tiniest detail.
http://deadspin.com/this-is-how-close-the-seahawks-came-to-never-even-st...
The Packers are being trashed in the media for lack of aggressiveness. Here, it cost them. It could help explain why they grew exceedingly cautious from that point on: "Don't be a hero, kid, fall on that interception." Did you realize that at last interception, Football-reference said we had a 0.0 chance of winning the game? Even before the onside kick, it stood at under 3 percent. Yeah, teams will get cautious, and players will grab a football instead of block, for fear of what could happen. Catch the football, it might fall on the ground. That's the safe choice.
Given those odds, going to the ground on that INT is not only the safe choice, it's the right choice. If I was a coach I would still coach it that way. And, BTW, in that situation that is what they are coached to do.
Stuff like that has been going on for Seattle for the last three years...the intense detail orientation and preparation he brings to the team cannot be replicated. I hope he never leaves. :)
Again, who does that? Greatness. All game long, Wilson and the offense leaned so heavily on the defense to bail them out. And how easy it would have been to just concede the play was busted, settle for a one point lead, and call on the defense to pull it out - again. Through sheer willpower (and using underrated yet impressive physical tools) Russell threw about as perfect a pass as you could in such a situation. Oh, and he had that play in the back of his mind, apparently.
So much of "heart" is long hours of relentless preparation, isn't it? It allows you to jump up at the depths of loss and exclaim, "I know we're gonna win this!" And not be delusional.