How To Fix Russell Wilson: Stop Pretending He's Not In The Five Foot Club

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I have one piece of advice for Nathaniel Hackett that just might salvage his chances of remaining a head coach in 2023 or at the very least for the rest of 2022: STOP MAKING 5'11'' RUSSELL WILSON THROW OVER THE MIDDLE!

I feel a personal duty to help Nate out here. I want Nate to succeed. And yes, I'm going to go ahead and refer to him as Nate until he turns this around. It's at least better than "Hack It", which is what I went with in my Week 1 Sad Stats blog. Anyway, Nate was an incredible guest on Pardon My Take before the season started. He showed himself to be a down to earth, good humored, relatable guy. Felt like he was just another AWL. The problem is…that's probably the problem. If the average stoolie found themselves as head coach of a team expected to win 9.5 games along with being a lot of people's Super Bowl pick darling, I think you'd probably expect that stoolie to look about as lost as Nate has looked so far. 

A very easy correction Nate can make is to realize he has one of the only three mainstay quarterbacks of the last two decades standing under six-feet tall and that seeing over the middle is hard for his vertically challenged capable quarterback. All Nate even needs to do is take out the crossing patterns from the play book. Nothing over the middle. That's about it. 

This is literally not a tall order. Just a simple short cut that could raise Russell Wilson back to the one the Broncos thought they signed in the first place. Unlike Russell Wilson, I don't feel I'm being short-sighted here and I come with receipts. I looked for historical evidence to corroborate the idea that height-capable quarterbacks are less willing to attempt passes over the middle (presumably because they can't see over the line of scrimmage). While there's no correlation with height and percentage of passes thrown to the middle of the field for quarterbacks overall - there is a sizeable correlation (r = .45) for the 17 qualifying quarterbacks 6'1'' or shorter. 

For instance, 6'2'' Jalen Hurts has thrown the least over the middle of all qualifying quarterbacks while the also 6'2'' Lamar Jackson has thrown the most. But for quarterbacks under six feet tall, all three (Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray, Seneca Wallace) were in the bottom 19/114 quarterbacks in percentage of attempted passes over the middle. And the shorter under 6'1'' a quarterback is, the less over the middle they throw. 

The graph below backs this up by showing percentage of passes thrown over the middle by height. The number next to the dot just shows how many qualifying quarterbacks were that exact height. 

You can pretty clearly see that for quarterbacks 6'1'' (73 inches) or taller, height doesn't really impact how often they throw over the middle. On the smaller hand, there is a continual decrease in attempts for quarterbacks 6'1'' and shorter. My read on all this is that 6'1'' is the magic threshold necessary for quarterback's to be able to fully see over the line of scrimmage. Only at 6'1'' or taller can a coach fully open up the playbook and dial up passes over the middle.

But we can't just rely on the macro level, 6'1" plus view of this issue. We need to address the microlevel too. Let's all squat down and take a look at Russell Wilson specifically. The table below shows the number of attempts Wilson has thrown over the middle by season throughout his career. 

Note: The 2022 figure is prorated based on his numbers through Week 6. Also note that he missed a lot of time in 2021.

Wilson is on pace for a career high 142 passes over the middle this year. There's your short-circuit right there. And it comes with a career low 48 percent completion percentage. It appears Nate is forcing Wilson out of his comfort zone and making him throw over the middle so much there might be grounds for labeling it a hate crime. The astute observer will also notice that if you disregard 2021 due to missed games and playing injured, Wilson threw the least over the middle in 2013 - the year the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. 

I know Bronco Country is already wishing they could short-sell Russ, but I think this easy short cut might get him back on his raised standing mat in the kitchen and ready to cook. I think Wilson would appreciate it too. He's got to be aware of his shortcoming. I mean, what if the real reason he cringingly professes "Let's Ride!" in press conferences after a terrible loss is because it's actually a cry for help and he is LITERALLY requesting to ride on an actual horse during games so he can see his receivers. I'm not intimately familiar with ADA law, but there might actually be something there. And after all, who would say no to Russell Wilson and Kyler Murray riding up to midfield for the pregame coin toss making fans wondering if they accidentally stumbled into a Civil War reenactment? 

"Five-foot Quarterbacks Allowed on Horses" clause aside, I think Nate can just take this one small step to set his 200 million dollar quarterback up for success. No middle routes! But just in case, I'll end with just a few other options to consider if this plan falls short.

- Sign 5-ft offensive linemen. Sure this doesn't address the height of defensive linemen but they'd have to bend down to their level

- Pay off the grounds crew to put the field at a slightly declining grade going towards midfield. 

- If all else fails, drill some spikes in these bad girls:

#LetRussRide

- Jeffro