Russell Wilson is in his ninth year as a quarterback in the NFL. During that period, his team, the Seahawks, have played 118 regular-season games, and 13 more in the playoffs. Wilson has been the starting QB in 131 of those games.

That's right. All of them.

This is true even though Wilson has run the ball 744 times in his career, for an average of 5.6 yards. Some of those were scrambles away from the pass rush when no receiver appeared to be available. Some were designed runs called to take advantage of his speed and elusiveness. Some were concluded by Wilson taking a hard hit from a defender, some by Wilson dashing out of bounds or sliding like Maury Wills swiping second.

None of these plays on its own, nor all of them in totality, has dissuaded the chorus of NFL reporters, analysts and even coaches and executives from singing their favorite old song: The quarterback who runs too often puts himself in too much jeopardy for an NFL franchise to afford the risk.

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The bias against the running quarterback has endured from Bobby Douglass nearly posting 1,000 rushing yards in 1972 through Randall Cunningham’s four Pro Bowls in the 1080s and ‘90s, from Michael Vick’s dazzling (though abbreviated) stay in Atlanta to Cam Newton's MVP season in 2015.

Any injury to a quarterback with genuine running talent is treated as proof of his fragility — even if it occurs while he is performing the acceptable quarterbacking task of throwing from the pocket. Any injury to a pocket-based quarterback while he is in the pocket is summarily ignored.

No less an authority than Patriots superstar Tom Brady, who once tore his ACL on a hit that occurred while he was passing from the pocket, told radio station WEEI he believes it’s important for a quarterback to remain available to a team, implying that's why he rarely runs with the ball: about one run for every 19 throws.

"A lot of quarterbacks who do run, they’re trying to make yards and it’s great," Brady said. "At the same time, you’re susceptible to big hits."

Earlier this season, Newsday’s Tom Rock wrote while discussing Giants rookie Daniel Jones, "Every time a quarterback runs with the ball in the NFL, he's putting himself in peril."

There is some logic to this.

"I mean, you are going to be getting more hits. There's no question about that," NFL analyst John Clayton of the Washington Post and 710 ESPN Seattle told Sporting News. "That’s why it’s going to be amazing to see how Lamar Jackson does because he’ll end up having more carries than Cam Newton’s 135 a few years ago. And he's not as big as Cam Newton."

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It’s not entirely scientific, though. Research on NFL quarterback injuries compiled by injury coordinator John Verros at Sports Info Solutions shows the risk of a quarterback being injured on a designed run is remote — only one for every 236 plays.

The risk for a scrambling quarterback is almost equal to the quarterback who is sacked: once every 91.7 plays for the scrambler, once every 92.5 plays for the guy getting sacked.

The most dangerous play category Verros discovered is the knockdown; the quarterback who is taken to the ground while unleashing a pass, as when the Jaguars’ Nick Foles suffered a broken clavicle after being struck while releasing a pass against the Chiefs. That player is hurt once every 67.3 plays.

"I believe the risk of a running QB being more prone to injury in comparison to a pocket passer is overstated by many analysts," Verros told SN. "One caveat would be that a running QB will attempt so many rushes per game that the sheer volume will still put him at an increased risk."

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