Yahoo Sports senior NFL reporter Jori Epstein reveals how Russell Wilson was able to keep a level head during the Steelers QB controversy and how he’s prepared himself for future situations. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on , , or
Video Transcript
The Steelers fans on Sunday night football start booing him.
It’s my understanding there were even calls for Justin Fields from the crowd rush just comes back, throws for the most passing yards.
They’ve had all season, two passing touchdowns and other rushing touchdowns.
And the first question that he’s asked after the game, what’s going through your mind as you do it?
And, and Russell said, um, when I think back to my mental conditioning coach who passed a couple years ago, he talked a lot about being neutral and staying the course and that’s what I had to do.
Russell Wilson gets some, I would say even criticism for being too positive or too cliche or all of that when really he’s actually not trying to be positive based off the mental conditioning and psychology elements that he subscribes to.
He’s actually just trying to eliminate negativity and there’s a difference.
So, Trevor Moat, his mental conditioning coach who died of cancer on September 15th, 2021 had this idea that positivity will work sometimes, maybe not all the time, but negativity works 100% of the time.
One thing he told me that has really stuck with me is that negativity is 4 to 7 times more powerful than positivity according to a lot of studies that are out there.
So if you tell someone one negative thing and three positive things, they’re much more likely to think about and fixate on the negativity thing.
Now, biologically and evolutionarily that makes sense.
But in today’s world, it can be really, really challenging, particularly when we are kind of overwhelmed by all this negativity.
And so sometimes Russell will say these things that I think people think um, borderline, I like a little bit out of touch.
It requires not only physical discipline but also mental discipline to be able to come to, to the Pittsburgh realize that even though you’re in a later stage of your career, you’re not gonna let what happened in Denver define you.
You’re also not even gonna criticize Denver like he’s not going out there being like Sean Payton screwed me over.
That’s not what Russell’s been saying.
He’s really tried to take the high road.
You’re not gonna let the fact that Justin is starting these games get you down and you’re not gonna let a few bad throws in the, in the first quarter if you misfires in the first quarter be going.
So I understand it’s a small sample size in terms of what Russell Wilson has done for the Pittsburgh Steelers so far.
But I think that I have a lot of respect for the like several layers of mental discipline that are required for Russell Wilson to perform in the way that he just performed on Sunday night.