When you've unearthed your franchise quarterback, life is good.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll found his man in Russell Wilson, but he refuses to take credit for an in-house strategy that saw Seattle pluck the passer in Round 3 of last year's draft.
"(General manager) John (Schneider), he wanted to go in the second round with it," Carroll told fans at Wednesday night's annual Town Hall meeting, via theSeahawks' official website. "He was willing to do it and take him right there. ... We had had a plan to wait until the third round. But as the first round came and then the second, John was starting to get antsy because he just didn't want to miss (out on Wilson)."
The Seahawks instead selected middle linebacker Bobby Wagner in Round 2 -- by all accounts a successful pick -- but Carroll emphasized that Wilson burned on Schneider's radar from the quarterback's early days at Wisconsin.
Said Carroll: "I can't remember if it was the Michigan State game or the Oregon game -- I think it was the Michigan State game (in 2011) -- he called me after the game and said, 'The field just tilted in this guy's direction.' He said, 'When you watch the game, he's the only guy you could watch,' because he was just so magical in the things that he could do."
Carroll laughed off the notion that Wilson's 5-foot-11 stature was a pre-draft concern: "We didn't care about that.... Sometimes conventional wisdom isn't the right one."
It's well-established that the Seahawks think differently about team-building. Carroll and Schneider haven't hit on every move, but they'll be talking about the Wilson pick for years to come in the proud Northwest.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.
