Seahawks Fans: Russell Wilson Isn't Elite (HuffPo article)

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It's not hard to like Russell Wilson. He's young, he's exciting, he obviously wears his emotions on his sleeve. Oh, and he's also a Super Bowl champion with another potential ring on the way.

Liking him, however, is different than agreeing with the current narrative of Wilson the superstar, Wilson the elite, Wilson the unstoppable. Even though ESPN canceled the show, the maxim still stands: numbers never lie, and in Wilson's case, the truth hurts. He's not a superstar and he's not elite; he's simply, well, good.

Let me start with some names: Mark Sanchez, Joe Flacco, Philip Rivers, Matt Ryan and Carson Palmer. All of these fellow QBs outpassed Russell Wilson this year, but not in the conventional way. No, just going by passing yards and touchdowns is misleading. Instead, we'll go the advanced analytics route, in order to tell you the real story.

You see, throwing for 300 yards against a terrible defense like the Redskins means a lot less than doing it against the Texans. So the first thing we'll do is adjust the performances, taking the strength of the opposition in mind.

The second thing we'll do is re-adjust what we consider important. After all, simply racking up meaningless yards doesn't really tell us much (isn't that right, Bears fans?). What really matters is putting points on the board. By applying a mathematical concept called the Markov chain to a drive of football, we can determine the impact of each individual play on the team's ability to score points. In essence, we're measuring a QB's ability to generate points for his team.

After doing these handy adjustments -- the same adjustments used inside every team's war room, I should add -- Russell Wilson grades out to a 0.10 NEP/P, meaning that for each pass he throws, he creates an additional 0.10 points for his team in comparison to an average QB.

In other words, he's 0.10 points better per play than Shaun Hill.

So Wilson is a 0.10. What does that mean? Well, as mentioned above, he's behind Sanchez, Flacco, Rivers, Ryan, and Palmer, not to mention the true elites. It puts him No. 14 in the NFL, just about smack dab in the middle.

But what about his rushing ability? Glad you brought that up! His rushing NEP/P is a stout 0.62, a number rivaled only by Michael Vick in his prime. Still, even with adding his rushing efficiency in, Russell Wilson still only moves to No. 9 on the list; still behind Flacco, still behind Ryan.

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