Russell Wilson anticipating ‘rowdy’ crowd during Seahawks-Broncos game

SEATTLE – As he gets set to return to Lumen Field for Monday night’s regular-season opener between his new team, the Denver Broncos, and his old one, the Seattle Seahawks, Russell Wilson appears to be leaving whatever bitterness and hard feelings that led to his departure in the past.

In a Zoom interview with Seattle media before practice Thursday, Wilson said multiple times he felt grateful for his 10 years with the Seahawks and that he hoped he’d get a good reaction from the large crowd that will be at Lumen Field.

“Hopefully, it’ll be positive,” Wilson said when asked what kind of reception he thinks he might get from the 69,000-plus expected at Lumen Field Monday. “Listen, I gave my heart and soul every day. … I know they’ll be rowdy. I know they’ll be excited.”

But in a separate interview with Denver reporters, Wilson said the Seahawks had explored trading him before the blockbuster deal pulled off on March 8 with the Broncos, and also defended himself against claims made by anonymous Seahawks execs in a story published in ESPN this week that the team felt his skills are diminishing as he approaches his 34th birthday in November.

“I don’t worry about all that stuff,” Wilson said of the comments in the ESPN article. “People can have opinions and thoughts and ideas, everyone has their own right to think what they want to think. I know how the whole thing went, how it transpired, just the whole situation.”

While Wilson said he didn’t want to relive “all the crazy details” that led to the trade, he told reporters in Denver that the Seahawks had approached teams in previous years about trading him, as has been previously reported and was reiterated in fuller detail in the ESPN article this week.

“Definitely they tried to, a couple of times, tried to see what was out there,” Wilson said. “It’s part of the business, being a professional and everything else … I believe in my talents, of who I am, I feel I’m one of the best in the world.”

Wilson told Seattle reporters that he ended the 2021 season hoping he could still remain with the team. But he said after a few conversations with coach Pete Carroll that each side realized it was time to move on.

“We definitely talked several different times,” Wilson said. “I was trying to figure out what the plan was and what we’re going to do with guys and what the plan was with Bobby (Wagner) and what the plan was with Duane (Brown) and me and just everything and the next 10 years of my career. If you know Pete, if you know we always have hope, you always have belief and unfortunately I think around the (NFL scouting) combine time or sometime around then it just kind of changed and whatever. So, maybe a little even before then. … I was hoping that it would all work out and be able to figure out all the details out, and we weren’t able to do so.”

That led to the trade for three players and five draft picks (which the Seahawks have already turned into six), with Wilson landing in Denver where he has already signed a new five-year contract extension keeping him with the Broncos through the 2028 season when he will be 40.

“Starting over and having to revamp is a challenge,” Wilson said. “But I’ve never feared any challenges, ever.”

But Wilson, who said he still keeps in touch with some Seahawks, saying specifically he talks to receiver DK Metcalf weekly and talked with Wagner earlier in the day to wish him luck in the Rams’ game against Buffalo on Thursday night, used most of his interview time to thank the Seahawks and Seattle.

“Seattle changed me for the better,” Wilson said. “It taught me about life. It taught me about relationships. I’m grateful for every second of it.”

And he reiterated that he had hoped until the end that he would be able to stay.

“I’ve always dreamed of being there my whole career,” Wilson said. “That was always my thought. I’ve always told you guys Derek Jeter (who spent his entire career with the Yankees) was my favorite athlete. But knowing that life is gonna change a bit and the time and energy I think spend in something and knowing that it’s sometimes not forever and it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t worthwhile, doesn’t mean that every second I wouldn’t do something different. I gave everything I had. So I cherish every second of it.”

But will Seattle fans reciprocate that feeling Monday night?

Carroll playfully danced around the topic of the kind of reception Wilson might get, saying it wasn’t his job to tell fans how to react – “I’ll leave that up to the 12s. I think they’ll know exactly what to do.”

Carroll also tried to downplay the significance of the game, saying he won’t change his approach.

“It’s not going to be something different than it ever really is,” he said. “Why would it be something different?”

But if Carroll knows the fans may think differently, he said another important subset of observers – former players – also will have a lot of emotions at stake.

“There’s a lot of guys that have played with us that are fired up about this game, too,” Carroll said. “And they want to see this game go our way and they’re jacked about it and I know I’m representing a lot of that.”