One of my friends is a DIII college football coach; he said for years that Russ was a very limited QB and the Seahawks coaches did a great job playing to his strengths and masking his weaknesses. One specific comment was he always missed a ton of open guys; a lot of the “broken play” scrambling around and making something happen in Seattle started with Russ not throwing when he should have. Seeing how Russ is doing now, along with how Gino is doing…maybe the Seahawks just know how to maximize the strengths of their QB. And knew Russ wasn’t close to being worth what he was demanding.
2012 felt like Syracuse left a lot of meat on the bone, but got better offensively as the year went on. I think Hackett and his staff could improve a lot in the second half of this season, although by the time they figure out how to use Russ the team may have already mentally checked out and it won’t yield on-the-field results anyway.