Russell Wilson Opens Up About ‘Devastating’ Calf Injury, Why It Was A ‘Blessing In Disguise’

Entering his 13th NFL season, Russell Wilson fell in love with the idea of being the starting quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He had his choice to sign anywhere for a measly $1.21 million, and ultimately chose the Steelers after a lengthy visit with Mike Tomlin and Arthur Smith, as well as several recruiting calls from player leadership on the team. That is why it was such a struggle when his season was put in jeopardy the day before training camp began while pushing a weighted sled during the conditioning test.

“Unfortunately I had that calf injury pushing a sled, which was devastating,” Wilson said Friday via The Rich Eisen Show. “I’ve almost played 200 games, I think I’ve only missed five or so my whole career, and that was hard on me. That was different. That was challenging, just because I love practice, I love games. I never really missed much over all these years. And so for me, it was really important for me to focus on, number one, getting healthy again — being fully who I wanna be. I wanna play past 40 [years old] and be as healthy and be as great as I possibly can be over the years.”

Wilson’s focus was making sure that nothing happened that would put his entire season in jeopardy. Making it to 40 years old in the league is just as much about teams wanting you as it is about staying healthy. Coming off two bad years with the Denver Broncos and then having an entire season lost to injury would have been a tough blow to how teams around the league viewed him.

The original calf injury occurred on July 24. He mostly sat out of practice, but slowly worked his way back in and actually played in the Steelers’ final two preseason games. He ended up winning the starting job, but then aggravated the injury on Sept. 5, just a few days before Week 1 kicked off. That was a 43-day gap in between the original injury and the aggravation. Understandably, Mike Tomlin, the Steelers’ medical staff, and Wilson himself all played it cautiously over the next several weeks.

It wasn’t until Oct. 9 that Wilson logged his first full practice, which was a 34-day gap since the aggravation. Week 7 against the New York Jets was his debut. From the initial injury that is 88 days later, and 45 days from the aggravation. All that to say, it was a lengthy process and a huge setback for the hopes that Wilson has for his Steelers tenure.

He watched Justin Fields lead the team to a 4-2 record, and many wrote Wilson off as the team’s permanent backup as a result. But it was because of some of the stuff behind the scenes that Mike Tomlin went “lone ranger” in reinstating Wilson as the starter once he was healthy.

“I think the second thing was, it’s easy to lead when you’re at the front and everything’s going great — at an all-time high, but can you lead in the valley?” Wilson said. “Can you lead when you’re in a dark place in a way? Can you lead in those moments as well? And so I think that was a blessing in disguise is to be able to not look into myself but really just being able to focus on others and servitude and just sitting on the back porch of Latrobe and those late nights in the summertime in the dormitories.”

Multiple players have mentioned Wilson’s leadership throughout the process. Calvin Austin III spoke about how Wilson is constantly texting guys after practice to praise them for some of the good things they did that day. He also assembled many of the offensive players, including Fields and Kyle Allen, right before the start of training camp to get reps in with the receivers and tight ends.

In yet another example, he was getting after-hours work in with Jaylen Warren and Najee Harris at training camp after all of their team responsibilities were done for the day. Even when he wasn’t able to lead from the front, he was always leading behind the scenes.