I don't even think Smith will be average this year. I think there's reason to believe he might not be terrible, though.
But either way, the Seahawks are positioned for success in coming years.
I saw an interesting comment from Smith recently, but I can't for the life of me find it. I could have sworn it was on Seahawks.com, but I've been unable to find it. In any case, it surprised me greatly that there hasn't been more discussion of it around here. It fits nicely with what
@Maelstrom787 just said:
It's football. Any given Sunday. League of parity. Etc etc etc.
Anything can happen. People here used to know that. We're all gonna learn that again.
What Smith said was basically that in the NFL, games are lost more than they're won.
That is (going to my interpretation now, not what Smith actually said), every NFL team has a lot of really talented players.
There are just under 1700 players on NFL rosters, out of a world population of nearly eight billion (8,000,000,000) people. That makes even the worst NFL player, the guy we say "sucks" and "has no talent," among the top 0.00002% in the world at football. Break it down by position, and it's even more impressive. That guy who "sucks" is in the top 0.2% of the top 1% of the top 1% in the world at football.
Even the worst NFL team would utterly destroy even the best college team in a game.
So games often come down to a few key moments, even when it's a really good team playing a really bad team.
And my interpretation of what Smith was saying is that a lot of games are won when a player on one team makes a mistake that gives the other team the advantage. That is, the game is lost, not won.
The fact that Smith said that makes me believe he has understood what Pete Carroll has been preaching for decades. It's why Carroll puts such an emphasis on protecting the ball. People (sometimes willfully) misinterpret Carroll and say he just wants to run and isn't interested in "modern" offense, but that's not quite what he says. Carroll loves explosive plays, as long as the team is paying enough attention to protecting the ball and avoiding giving away the game.
I want to be clear that I don't expect the Seahawks to have a very good record this season. Wilson demanding top-of-the-market QB money from the team but failing to provide top-of-the-market QB performance, plus having a $#!+-fit if the team even considered looking at young and potentially good QBs, had already weakened the roster, and then Wilson forcing his way out to try to "pull a Brady" and go to an otherwise-loaded team just missing a QB to win one or more titles and gain universal acclaim for it put a giant dead-money hole on the Seahawks' cap this year, basically guaranteeing the Seahawks a bad record this season. But Seahawks management has responded surprisingly well and has already started putting the pieces in place for a
team that can have sustained success despite Wilson's sabotage. That's why I personally celebrated the crap out of Monday night. Not only did the Seahawks beat an old division rival I've disliked for a long time, they did it as a team, and despite all the problems Wilson had caused, and they did it against Wilson himself. That was about as sweet a victory as a Seahawks fan could want, and I think it's pathetic to see supposed Seahawks fans grumbling about it, writing it off as luck, or even lamenting it.
I want to be clear: I don't expect to be celebrating wins very frequently this season, but I am excited about the promise I see in this team, and I am beyond thrilled with the victory in what Wilson wanted to be his "revenge game" in front of a huge Monday-night audience. And I can't tell you how happy I am that it was the still-disliked Broncos that had their coach thrown under the bus for Wilson's failings, instead of my Seahawks. It's a great time to be a Seahawks fan! I'm looking forward to the Seahawks being a strong team, one that doesn't depend on a single player's performance and that isn't built to cater to a single player's needs.
