MADISON, Wis. — Russell Wilson calls Wisconsin’s quarterbacks room “my little sanctuary.”
It’s where he watches film for two hours before every practice on a screen that’s 12 feet wide by nearly 7 feet tall. Wilson agreed to break down two key plays from the Big Ten championship game, two plays that show why he’s a Chicago Tribune Silver Football finalist.
Third-and-17 from the Michigan State 42. Spartans lead 29-21. Early third quarter.
Wilson has three receivers to his left, and two are running vertical routes. Wilson notices that Michigan State is giving a “radar-type look, moving around a lot,” with safety Isaiah Lewis retreating from the line as Wilson barks out the signals.
Wilson watches the safeties but also notices the body language of two potential blitzers outside right tackle — linebacker Denicos Allen and cornerback Johnny Adams. Fullback Bradie Ewing can pick up one but not the other. This is a problem.
“I know he’s coming full speed at me,” Wilson says of Adams, “but I’m still trying to make a play.”
Untouched, Adams rockets toward Wilson and reaches out with his left arm. A finger gets inside Wilson’s facemask, fracturing his nose, but Wilson dashes away.
“I play with big eyes,” he says. “Sometimes that’s taken as a negative thing, like, ‘He’s nervous.’ With me it’s having my eyes wide open so I can see more of the field. Like an eagle.”
After shaking Adams (who got flagged for facemasking), Wilson launches a pass from midfield to the front-left corner of the end zone. Given the angle, it sails about 70 yards, 5 shy of his max.
Jared Abbrederis is wide open and hauls it in, trimming Michigan State’s lead to 29-28.
Fourth-and-6 from the Michigan State 43. Spartans lead 39-34. A little more than four minutes to play.
Wilson says the Spartans are in “Cover-1 lurk” — one safety and a spy lurking near the first-down line. His receivers are Abbrederis, Jeff Duckworth and Manasseh Garner, in for the injured Nick Toon.
Wilson takes the shotgun snap. Michigan State pressures with four — five when linebacker Max Bullough, on an apparent delayed blitz, zooms toward Wilson.
Abbrederis is covered. The little-used Garner is running a slant, perhaps too shallow to get 6 yards. Wilson seems trapped.
He rolls to his left and spots Bullough. Then he pushes off with his right foot to create just enough space to throw over the leaping linebacker.
“That’s instinct,” he says. “Like in basketball how you V-cut to get separation.”
Wilson has been throwing footballs since he was 3. As a ball boy working a high school game, he almost broke a referee’s nose with a 50-yard dart. He was in third grade.
You’d never know Wilson is 5-foot-11. He glides on the balls of his feet — “like a dancer,” he says — and has a high, quick release and long arms, “so it’s as if I’m 6-2 or 6-3.”
And he doesn’t wish he were taller because “God made me this way for a reason; I can move quickly.”
He was blessed with a powerful right arm that needs little maintenance.
“Most quarterbacks ice their elbows down all the time,” Badgers coach Bret Bielema said. “In fall camp I asked him, ‘You don’t ice your arm down?’ He said, ‘Why? My arm never hurts or gets tired.’ “
Wilson fires the ball from Wisconsin’s 48-yard line, across his body and across the field, to Duckworth, who fights off Lewis to make an out-of-this-world catch.
The Fox cameras show Wilson, no emotion, jogging down the field.
His thought: “What’s the next play? Let’s go.”
The next play is Montee Ball’s 7-yard touchdown. Wisconsin retakes the lead.
Incredible.
Bielema finds another word to describe the play.
“Insane,” he says. “What he has, more than any quarterback who has played for me or against me, is the ability to make something out of nothing. That fourth-down play was a classic.”
Twitter @TeddyGreenstein
