It’s getting harder and harder to find people in the national media who believe in Seneca Wallace:

Peter King of Sports Illustrated illustrates exactly large he thinks the gap between Matt Hasselbeck and Wallace is in his Week 3 picks:

I’m not saying Matt Hasselbeck is a candidate for MVP or anything like that. But the dropoff from Hasselbeck to Seneca Wallace is like the dropoff from Peyton Manning to Jim Sorgi.

Adam Schein writes on Foxsports.com:

This is a major boom. I have a ton of respect for the defensive stars on the Seahawks and the 12th-man factor playing in the great northwest. But Matt Hasselbeck broke a rib, and I don’t think Seneca Wallace can get it done.

John Hansen writes the most stinging criticism of Wallace in a Yahoo sports article:

Seahawks QB Seneca Wallace(notes) isn’t an NFL QB; he’s not even a backup. He doesn’t know what he’s seeing. Again, Seattle is in trouble if Matt Hasselbeck(notes) misses a lot of time.

I agree with King that there is a big dropoff from Hasselbeck to Wallace — there’s a reason Hasselbeck is the unquestioned starter when healthy.

Schein’s comments makes enough sense, although with the injuries to Leroy Hill, Marcus Trufant and Lofa Tatupu you wonder how much those defensive stars he mentioned will be a factor.

However Hansen’s comments seem particularly tough to swallow. To say Wallace isn’t even a backup doesn’t really make sense. Wallace has a career quarterback rating of 83.0, which certainly isn’t awe-inspiring, but it’s not terrible.

To keep things local, let’s look at the other NFC West backups. In Arizona, you have Matt Leinart — career QB rating of 71.6. In San Francisco, there is Alex Smith (63.5). And in St. Louis you have Kyle Boller with a career rating of 71.9.

So far I’m not seeing how Wallace is not worthy of being a backup. To further the point, here are the four QBs’ career touchdown to interception ratios: Wallace (23:13), Leinart (14:17), Smith (19:31) and Boller (45:44). Wallace also has the highest career completion percentage out of the four.

I understand Hansen is using his expert eye to dissect how Wallace works on the field, but these aren’t small sample sizes. How much should we weigh Hansen’s scouting acumen over established numbers?