On Sunday afternoon the iceman melted. Russell Wilson has never been anything less than in constant control. The Seattle Seahawks quarterback arrives for interviews 15 minutes early. He studies game film through his lunchbreak. He plots his public words long before he speaks. Even those moments of miraculous improvisation that have come at the end of games are born from careful contrivance. He shows no emotion. He will not break.

Then with the unlikeliest of comebacks just complete, the camera closed on the man who has been called “the Stepford QB” for what is the most choreographed act in American sports: the banal routine of the postgame interview. And here Russell Wilson cracked. Tears spilled from his eyes, rolling in glistening rivulets across his cheeks. His voice choked.

He never seemed more real.



“You don’t see that often from him but you don’t see a game like that one often,” his uncle, Ben Wilson, told the Guardian. “With Russell it was a little like coming off a near-death experience. It’s like he was saying: ‘we won, we’re still alive!’”

But those was more the tears of relief that rolled across the face of the man who is prepared for everything and Ben Wilson knew as much as he sat in his Washington DC law office on Tuesday afternoon. For years, as diabetes tore apart his brother, Harrison Wilson III (Harry) – Russell’s father – Ben was a second paternal figure in the quarterback’s life, a role that became more significant when Harry died in 2010. He knows the emotions that roil beneath his nephew’s placid front.

More importantly he understands the release that was long in coming. A year after another Seahawks player, Richard Sherman, stood before the same cameras with the same interviewer after the same game in the same stadium and introduced himself to the country with a scream, Russell Wilson let go in a way he never saw coming.

“A lot of people spend their whole lives chasing after their parent’s approval and then their parents are not there to see them accomplish things,” Ben Wilson said.



Much of who Russell became was because of Harry. Ben has stories of the brother who played football and baseball at Dartmouth and once tried out for the San Diego Chargers. He was the one who brought his sons to sports in their hometown of Richmond, Va, who taught Russell how to be a quarterback, waking him early to throw balls in the gauzy morning light.



Harry gave Russell his dreams, then nurtured them in the face of the public critique that said his son was not big enough to be a quarterback and the private one that pushed against the notion of an African American quarterback.

And then after Russell grew to be a star at North Carolina State and later Wisconsin and defied all expectation by becoming the Seahawks quarterback and winning the Super Bowl in his second season. Still, the defiance of being overlooked never left. Russell might have smiled on the outside and said all the right things and done all the proper things a quarterback should do but a fire simmered inside.

And that too was what happened for the Fox cameras on Sunday afternoon was all about. The year after the Super Bowl was not an easy one for Russell Wilson. The perfect quarterback showed unfortunate blemishes. In April he announced he and his wife were divorcing. He was criticized for accepting the large number of television commercial offers that came his way. And in the fall, as the Seahawks struggled through a sluggish start and the team traded away gifted receiver Percy Harvin, a criticism came of Russell from anonymous team-mates who suggested to a Bleacher Report writer that Russell “isn’t black enough”.



“I think there were a lot of things that were frustrating and unsettling that he had no control over,” Ben Wilson said.

So when the worst game of Russell’s life became his best it seemed appropriate to Ben that his nephew gave in at last to the emotions inside. They must have hurt, those words not “black enough.” Russell brushed them away when the story appeared and at first Ben dismissed them on Tuesday saying: “For Russell it’s water off a duck’s back.’”

But they were also a swipe in the face of a family that knows well the price of being black in America, a family whose roots are traced to slaves freed after the Civil War. Ben and Harry’s father was once the president of Norfolk State University, a historically black college. Ben went to Harvard and Harry to Dartmouth, they became lawyers at a time when such achievement was not simple for a black man in America. In many ways not “black enough” might have been the cruelest thing anyone could have said.

“They say Russell is close to his head coach,” Ben said, addressing another of a team-mate’s criticisms. “Who of the top quarterbacks in the league don’t have a close relationship with their head coach? Is Tom Brady close to Bill Belichick? Is Drew Brees close to Sean Payton? Someone said ‘geez he’s getting all the commercials,’ but he’s also been the lowest paid star quarterback the last three years. He gets that award for being the best value. What if he hurts his knee and never gets the opportunity to play again?”

Ben Wilson paused for a moment. Much like his nephew, he is a calm man, his words contained. But there was an edge to his words, a frustration that must have simmered inside him throughout this year, too.

“Russell knows who he is. His grandfather was the president of an historically black college. There’s no question Russell understands who he is. He understands the history of black quarterbacks in the NFL and the history of black athletes in sports. I think for some people they want to decide: ‘Are you black enough’ or ‘Are you Jewish enough’ or ‘Are you Catholic enough?’ It’s not limited to race alone. But Russell is not a person who will allow race to define him nor should he.”

In two weeks Russell Wilson will play to be the first black quarterback to win two Super Bowls. Ben Wilson said his nephew is well aware of this fact, knowing too there are only two African American quarterbacks who have won Super Bowl games and the first – Doug Williams – did it before Russell was born.

Ultimately, in the hard season after what should have been the best moment, Russell Wilson has a chance to make history, to add to a legacy built by many black stars before him. This would undoubtedly earn the approval of a certain father in Richmond, who woke his child early to fire passes through all those doubts that said Russell Wilson couldn’t be a quarterback someday.

So when the camera came on the afternoon when Russell Wilson snatched back an NFC Championship certain to be lost, what else could he do but let go at last. And in the stands, Ben Wilson watched his brother’s son weep and knew that once again, Harry’s child had done good.