Pete Carroll all but dares Seahawks fans to boo Russell Wilson in his Seattle return

Pete Carroll didn’t explicitly encourage Seahawks fans to boo Russell Wilson in his return to Seattle.

But ...

“You are either competing, or you’re not. I’m leaving it up to the 12s,” Carroll said Thursday, four days before Wilson’s Denver Broncos enter Lumen Field to play the Seahawks in a season opener like no other.

“You know, it’s game time, and we’re going for it. However they take it, I’ll follow their lead on that. I mean, I’m not going to be involved with that opportunity to react, so I don’t have to make that decision.

“We’ll see what happens. But I’m leaving it up to the 12s.

“I think they’ll know exactly what to do.”

The Seahawks coach and Wilson both expect the same thing: a raucous setting, one as loud as for any season opener in Seattle’s 46 years of NFL football.

It certainly will be an environment Wilson has not experienced in his 10 previous seasons playing in Seattle. He’s now the enemy.

“First of all, I know they’ve got some of the best fans in the world there. I was fortunate to play there for 10 years,” Wilson said Thursday on an online Zoom call from Broncos headquarters in Colorado. “I know they will be rowdy. I know they will be excited. I know that it’s Monday Night Football, so it will be a special environment.

“Listen, I think that I gave my heart and soul, every day. I know nothing less.

“Hopefully, it will be positive.”

Good luck with that.

This week wide receiver Tyler Lockett said he believes Seattle fans should cheer Wilson for all he did for the Seahawks and the Pacific Northwest.

“I mean, at the end of the day I get it,” said Lockett, who has succeeded Wilson as Seahawks players’ choice to be the captain of the offense. “It’s football. It’s competitive. You never want to see people leave.

“But you’ve gotta understand, everybody’s got to do what’s best for them. That’s what you have to be able to learn about this life. You have to be able to cheer people on, you know what I mean? You can’t get mad that people are on another team, or this and this.

“I mean, we are fans, so we learn it the hard way. I’m a fan of the NBA, and I get mad when people leave because I want them to stay on the same team (particularly his beloved Los Angeles Lakers), right?

“But at the end of the day, you’ve got to separate the man from the player, and you’ve got to be able to understand that everybody’s trying to do what’s best for them.”

Wilson said his decade of being the winningest quarterback in NFL history to begin a career and winning Seattle’s only Super Bowl championship at the end of the 2013 season will always be special to him.

“My time in Seattle was special, 10 years of some amazing games, some amazing moments,” Wilson said. “Got to play 100 games, I think it was 100-plus games, in that stadium, something crazy like that. ...The stadium means a lot to me, those fans, too, as well.

“I think also, too, the city has meant the world to me.”

He mentioned his two daughters being born in Seattle and raising his and his wife’s three children in their suburban Bellevue home on Lake Washington.

He mentioned the “amazing teammates” that remain Seahawks, naming DK Metcalf, Lockett, Jamal Adams, Quandre Diggs, and former ones including Bobby Wagner, now with the Los Angeles Rams.

“It was a special place for me, a special place for my family in our hearts. I think about all the kids at Seattle Children’s and the Why Not You Academy (the charter school he and his wife started in south King County last year), as well. ...

“What a gift. What an amazing gift in my life.”