Russell Wilson full stat-line predictions for the 2022 season
Russell Wilson will be entering into a very favorable offensive situation in 2022. Just how good can he be in the upcoming season?
Russell Wilson has been the model of consistency in the NFL in the 10 years that he’s been in the league. Not only does he stay on the field, but he has had a winning record in nine of his 10 seasons and also has thrown at least 20 touchdown passes in each season.
He’s also never thrown more than 13 interceptions in a season, and six of his 10 seasons have had single-digit picks.
Moreover, he’s got a 9-7 playoff record and 101.8 career passer rating, which ranks fourth all-time.
One could argue that he has never been in a more ideal offensive situation in his 10 years in Seattle.
The deep receiving core, solid running back room and competent offensive line are going to help take Wilson’s game to the next level.
The Denver Broncos and us fans have been used to awful quarterback play for the last six years.
There have been times of solid or even great play, but no consistency to speak of.
I think for the first few weeks of the 2022 regular season, it’ll be weird to see a legitimate quarterback under center for Denver.
Wilson’s Hall of Fame resume is missing absolute nothing, but he has said how he wants to continue to build his legacy in the NFL.
Russell Wilson is a workhorse; he never seems to stop working, whether it’s on-field, film room, or in the weight room.
Having a quarterback with this intense work ethic is something that few have ever replicated.
So, for that reason, Russell Wilson having another stellar season in the NFL won’t be out of the question.
However, just how will he play? What kind of numbers can we expect from the veteran QB?
I’m a huge numbers fan, so I want to try and project, the best I can, Russell Wilson’s stat-line in its entirety for the 2022 season.
I think this is going to be a fun task and hopefully, readers of this piece find it an interesting article.
OK, so I think there is a clear area to start for these projections. I am not a fan of making random projects and creating numbers out of thin air, so I want to start with what his average production has looked like over 10 seasons, not including wins.
Starting with touchdown passes, Wilson has thrown 292 regular season ones.
That averages out to 29.2 per season.
As for interceptions, he’s thrown 87 of them during the regular season, which averages out to be 8.7 per season.
Rounding those numbers off, we get 29 TDs and 9 INTs per season for Russell Wilson.
As for his completion percentage, it sits right at 65% after 10 years, so we’ll leave that number go.
Wilson has 3,079 pass completions in 10 years, which is an average of 308 completions per season rounded off.
He’s thrown 4,735 passes, which rounds off to 474 attempts per season.
As for yards, he’s thrown for 37,059 yards in the regular season, which averages out to be 3,706 yards rounded off.
All of those numbers plugged into a passer rating calculator comes out to a 101.3 passer rating.
Russell Wilson finished fifth in passer rating in the NFL this season.
So, he put up all of those numbers and averages in Seattle, where the team usually employed an offensive system that relied on running the ball quite a bit.
In 2019, Seattle averaged the third-most rushing attempts per game, and second-most per game in 2018.
They also had the third-most attempts per game in 2015, second-most in 2014, second-most in 2013, and first-most in 2012.
In six of his 10 years in Seattle, the Seahawks had at least the third-most rushing attempts per game during those seasons.
It’s clear to see why Wilson perhaps grew frustrated with his role in the offense.
So, how many times could the Denver Broncos throw the ball this season?
Well, for that projection, we could look at the passing attempts per game by the Green Bay Packers, where Nathaniel Hackett recently served as the offensive coordinator.
Green Bay attempted about 35 passing attempts per game in 2021, good for 18th most in the league. For reference, the Seahawks attempted the fewest passes in the league, with 29.1.
Green Bay ranked 24th in the NFL in 2020, attempting 34 passes per game.
They attempted about 36 passes per game in 2019.
So that makes life easier. If we average 35, 34, and 36, we get 35 passes per game.
So, we could reasonably expect the Denver Broncos to attempt 35 passes per game. If Wilson’s career average of a 65% completion percentage holds up, he’ll complete 23/35 passes per game on average.
Next, I want to figure out how many yards he will throw for. To do this, I want to figure out how many yards he averages per completion. So, for that, I’ll take his career passing yard total which is 37,059, and divide that by how many completions he has had in his career, which is 3,079.
Russell Wilson has averaged 12.03 yards per completion in his career. Well, since I’m projecting that he’ll have about 23 completions per game in 2022, we can simply multiply these numbers together to get his yards per game total, which ends up being 276.82, which rounds off to 277 yards.
Multiply that by a 17-game season, and we get 4,709 yards.
So, far I’m projecting Russell Wilson to throw for 4,709 yards on a 23/35 average completion/attempt per game.
If we take the 23/35 over a full 17-game season, we get 391/595.
So, we have our 65% completion percentage, 4,709 yards, all while attempting 595 passes and completing 391 of them.
Now we need to figure out his touchdowns and interceptions.
For touchdowns, Russell Wilson has a 6.2% touchdown rate, which means that 6.2% of his attempts go for touchdowns.
If we take this rate and multiply it by his projected attempts of 595, we’d get 36.89 touchdowns, which rounds up to 37 touchdown passes.
As for the interceptions, the same method applies.
A 1.8 interception rate on his 595 attempts for 2022 nets 10.71, or 11 interceptions.
OK, readers, I think that’s it!
So, using simple average calculations and other projections, I am projecting that Russell Wilson completes 391/595 passes for 4,709 yards, 37 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions, with a 65% completion percentage. This would be a 102.8 passer rating.
In summation, I calculated the projected completions/attempts based on how often the Green Bay Packers threw the ball when Nathaniel Hackett was head coach.
I projected the yards based on the sentence above and, on average, how many yards per completion Russell Wilson has had during his career.
I projected the touchdowns and interceptions by taking his career touchdown rate percentage and interception rate percentage and multiplying those by his projected attempts this season.
I kept his 65% passer rating the same and plugged all of this in for a passer rating.
If Russell Wilson put up this exact stat-line, the Denver Broncos are making a deep playoff run.