It wasn't so much that Russell Wilson threw five interceptions. It was the throws he missed, the mistakes he made and the big plays he couldn't make.
It wasn’t that he threw five interceptions because that’s a little misleading. It was the way Wilson looked, the throws he missed, the mistakes he made, the big plays he didn’t make.
Yes, one of Wilson’s interceptions came when tight end Jimmy Graham tripped over the middle. And, yes, another two bounced off his receivers’ hands. But Wilson also just didn’t play well.
Twice in the first quarter, he missed potential touchdowns when he first had Doug Baldwin open deep and then Graham. He overthrew both of them. On one of his interceptions, he threw across his body over the middle, and the ball hung in the air forever and was picked off. He misfired low on a key third-down throw to Baldwin and underthrew a ball to Jermaine Kearse that was picked off in the end zone early in the third quarter.
Wilson has now thrown multiple interceptions in two of his last three games. He hadn’t thrown multiple interceptions in multiple games during the regular season since his rookie year, and he had never thrown four interceptions in a regular-season game.
It was strange to watch because you just kept waiting for that moment when Wilson flips the balance, shrugs off the past and starts making big plays. He couldn’t right himself, which has been one of his calling cards. Things can go bad for Wilson, even for most of the game, but eventually he figures it out. That never came.
Wilson played poorly two games ago against the Bucs, but that always felt as much a product of the offensive line’s issues. For one of the rare times in his career, the struggles against Green Bay were largely Wilson’s.