SEATTLE — Wide receiver Doug Baldwin was asked Sunday to describe what was going through his head when he saw quarterback Russell Wilson go down awkwardly in the third quarter.
“My heart dropped,” Baldwin said. “It was weird because I hadn’t felt like that in a long time.”
Wilson suffered what Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll called a left knee sprain and will have an MRI to determine its severity.
Wilson missed one snap but then re-entered the game to finish the drive. After Seattle kicked a field goal, Baldwin and others made sure Wilson wasn’t going to talk his way into playing through pain.
“I told Pete to pull him out because Russell wanted to stay in,” Baldwin said. “And obviously, as a football player and as a competitor, you want to stay in the game and you want to be out there and compete with your teammates, but at that moment, I was really adamant about him getting out of the game. That’s what that conversation was about.”
There were a lot of positives to take away from the Seahawks’ 38-17 win over the San Francisco 49ers. Baldwin had another monster game, with eight catches for 164 yards. Jimmy Graham contributed six catches for 100 yards. Christine Michael carried 20 times for 106 yards and a pair of scores. And the offensive line delivered easily its best performance of the season.
The names were slightly different, but in many ways this looked like the Seahawks’ offense that exploded in the second half of 2015, averaging 32 points per game from Week 10 on.
Wilson entered the game still dealing with a right high ankle sprain. But it had been two weeks since he suffered the injury, and before he hurt his knee in the third quarter, Wilson had completed 15 of 23 passes for 243 yards and a touchdown.
“I thought he played great today,” Carroll said. “I love the way he played. He did everything we needed him to do.”
When Wilson took the podium for his postgame press conference, he hadn’t showered or changed yet. He was in a Seahawks hoodie and had eye black smeared on his face. After a narrow Week 1 victory over the Miami Dolphins, Wilson apologized for not being in a suit like he normally would be, but immediate treatment and testing on his ankle had taken precedence.
This time, it was a similar story, but it was his knee instead.
Wilson takes great pride in the fact that he has never missed a start, and this offseason, he focused his training on continued durability. He deserves a lot of credit for being able to play through pain. But his injuries so far have been the story of the Seahawks’ season.
In Week 1, the Seahawks needed a game-winning drive to beat the Dolphins. In Week 2, Wilson was clearly hobbled in a loss to the Los Angeles Rams. And in Week 3, it looked like the Seahawks’ offense was headed to a great place before Wilson suffered the knee injury.
“We’re going to have to take care of him and work him through the week,” Carroll said.
Jets, even if he’s at less than 100 percent; and after the trip to New York, he gets the bye to heal up.
The worst-case scenario is that he misses time.
Carroll stresses that the finish is far more important than the start. And the Seahawks are in a good spot at 2-1.
Getting Wilson healthy and keeping him that way is priority No. 1 if the team wants to be in a position to make a run in January. In reality, it’s always been that way.
But the first three weeks of this season are as close as the Seahawks have gotten to being forced to imagine what life might be like without him.
Article source: http://www.espn.com/blog/seattle-seahawks/post/_/id/22171/russell-wilsons-health-continues-to-shape-seahawks-season