No, he is not overrated, how can Russo be overrated when he still holds the record after 20 long years as the most successful WWE writer and headwriter in history?
No, Russo doesn't try to take credit for everything. Have you ever listened to him or are you just jumping on the Russo bash wagon because it's the cool thing to do?
Vince McMahon can't be responsible for Stone Cold and The Rock simply because those characters and their storylines were not his style. McMahon is known for the style like Super Cena, Super Roman, patriotic hogan, patriotic Luger, USA vs the rest of the world, clowns, plumbers.
Somebody like McMahon who is known for those things because that's his type of humor, entertainment, pro wrestling, can't be responsible for a drunk redneck who gets cheered for doing bad things, a corporate Champion who owned the babyfaces on the mic, Sable, Godfather, Ministry of Darkness, Gangrel etc. The best example that he can't be behind the Attitude Era is when he sent Paul Heyman home prior to the ECW December to Dismember 2006 and took over and instead of giving the fans a show that has that ECW style he booked a typical WWE Sports entertainment nonsense.
When Cornette was in the creative Glen Jacobs was a dentist and fake Diesel. Cornette's only contribution during the Attitude Era or WWE in general during his 10-15 year tenure was "hey why not give the steel cage a roof".
Patterson was great at booking but that had nothing to do with writing Russo was responsible for.
There is a clip on YouTube how the same Shawn Michaels you have mentioned is giving credit to Russo why he was so successful during the late 1997 early 1998.
Russo didn't create Steve Austin and The Rock because there is nobody in the world who could give them charisma, instensity, personality but Russo's strength was always giving the wrestlers the right storyline. It was the talent that made both Rock and Austin successful and legends but both would be lost if they didn't have the right storylines.
McMahon, Hayes, Cornette, Patterson, Brisco and others in the creative were smart, creative guys who contributed to the business a lot in the 80s but they were all lost in the 90s. They didn't know how to deal with the society, they didn't know how to deal with WCW kicking their ass, they didn't know how to deal with the new style of pro wrestling made popular by ECW, they didn't know that the society was more edgy with shows like South Park, Jerry Springer and Howard Stern being the popular shows, that's why he put his magazine writer on the creative, it's because he was the only worker employed by WWE who understood how the society worked back then.
Russo knew how the sociey worked back then, what people wanted and how to change things to make WWE part of the group that was popular in the mainstream.
There is an interesting story Vince Russo told once that explains everything why WWE sucked in mid 90s and why WWE sucks now. When Russo just started as part of the creative the nWo was founded and WCW became more popular than WWE. So one time he was in the office thinking about what to do to beat WCW with their nWo storyline he found a map with future storylines made by other people in the creative. Jim Neidhart was already in WWE with his new gimmick, a masked wrestler named Who, so the big story how to compete with WCW, heel Hogan and nWo was to introduce the brother of Who named What. That's why WWE sucks for years and that's why WWE never had a new Vince Russo because 10 years ago when Breaking Bad started and Heisenberg was the Stone Cold of TV shows at the same time WWE had the face of the company spraying "JBL is poopy" on a car. That explains all, especially the problem and the answer to the question of this topic.
