Richard Sherman, Tony Gonzalez Discredit Russell Wilson's Legacy After Giants Benching

A rough week for Russell Wilson got worse on Thursday night when two legendary former NFL players, including one of his ex-teammates, used their platform to push back on the possibility of him eventually being voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

During Amazon's pregame coverage for Thursday Night Football (starts at 2:45 mark), Richard Sherman and Tony Gonzalez discussed Wilson's Hall-of-Fame credentials in the wake of him being benched by the New York Giants.

Gonzalez opened the discussion by saying that Wilson has "played himself out of" being a Hall of Famer with how his career has gone since leaving the Seattle Seahawks.

Sherman, who played with Wilson in Seattle from 2012 to '17, chimed in by saying he agrees with Gonzalez before noting the quarterback's greatest successes came when he played with a "legendary" defense to support him:

"I think you got to judge his career off when the Legion of Boom was there. You had a legendary defense, an all-time defense, and how much success he had and then without that legendary defense, the success he had. Without that legendary defense, he's been 4-11, 7-8. 0-3 to start with the Giants. He was a winning football player in Seattle and people said, 'Hey, winningest football player.' All this good stuff, all these accolades. And now you get to go on your own and you get to prove, 'Hey, I'm this great quarterback. I'm this guy that's gonna be dominant.' And it just hasn't worked out that way."

The comments from Sherman are nothing new, but it's interesting to see him go this far into pushing back on Wilson as a Hall of Famer.

It's not a guarantee that Wilson will make it into Canton after his career ends, even before his career went off the rails. He was selected to nine Pro Bowls in his first 10 seasons, but that likely doesn't factor in as much for Hall-of-Fame voting anymore, given how few star players want to take part in the event.

Beyond the Pro Bowls, Wilson has only been an All-Pro once (second team in 2019) and never received an MVP vote. He did win a Super Bowl and played in another, but his most famous moment from those two games was the Malcolm Butler interception against the New England Patriots when everyone criticized Pete Carroll for not giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch.

The bar for quarterbacks from this era to make the Hall of Fame is extremely high. Wilson ranks 15th all-time in passing yards, just ahead of Joe Flacco. His 353 touchdown passes are 13 fewer than Eli Manning, who didn't make the Hall his first time on the ballot this year.

If Wilson had retired after the 2020 season, his candidacy probably would have looked better. He wouldn't be as high in the all-time passing rankings, but he had 33,946 passing yards, 267 touchdowns, 81 interceptions and won at least 10 games in eight of his first nine seasons.

Since 2021, though, Wilson's teams are 23-35 in his 58 starts. He has averaged 2,593 yards, 17 touchdowns and seven interceptions per season.

We are now five seasons into the downside of Wilson's career. His tenure with the Denver Broncos was a disaster, resulting in a head coach being fired after one season and another blasting him publicly while he was still on the roster.

Wilson's time with the Giants, which is only three games old, saw him throw for under 200 yards and no touchdowns in two of his three starts before being benched in favor of rookie Jaxson Dart going into Week 4.