How do you honestly feel about this team right now?

We definitely have some question marks.

Offensive Line
We have zero starters from the 2013 Owl team. I know many thought our line wasn't good then, but they did block for the No. 4 rushing offense of all-time. Right now, the group looks pretty bad. I'm not trying to be overly negative here - I do believe there's some young, untapped talent available to us. But the Seahawks spend the least amount of money by an NFL franchise on their offensive line by a pretty healthy margin. I'm pretty much 50/50 on whether or not this group can be coached up and end up being pretty decent. The draft should infuse some talent into this group (hopefully). 2016 is going to be Tom Cable's toughest test yet.

Kam Chancellor
I have no idea what to think of the Kam situation. I have to believe that it's still there. He's not happy with his contract, but his holdout, followed by average play doesn't justify a reworking of his deal, and I hope the front office holds firm with him. I think he's a bit irreplaceable, which is quite the conundrum - anyone remember Earl basically telling the media that Kam is the entire brain of the defense?

Michael Bennett
Very underpaid at this point. Two years left on his deal. I think Bennett is hitting the last half of his prime. Will be 33 by the time his deal is up.

Mostly standing pat in Free Agency
Arizona got better. New England is the favorites to win 51 after having a pretty productive offseason so far. I don't hate that we didn't do much. The contracts this season were insane. But I do feel like we didn't really get better, either.

Thomas Rawls
Love this kid, and I hope he makes it all the way back from his injury and can stay healthy. But as a second year back coming off a pretty significant injury, I hope he can pick up where he left off. He looked like the league's best back in spurts last season.

Offensive Philosophy
I still read posts on here from people who think we're still a power run team. I don't think that's us anymore. The offense is going to be completely geared around Russell Wilson and the passing game. I can see us being a balanced attack for the most part, but I think the days of the power run are mostly over.

The draft is going to be huge for this team, and the front office can't whiff on picks. I'm going to support each pick when the time comes, but I really hope some serious draft capital is infused into our offensive line.

Right now, I think we're a top 10 team in this league. We have the talent to win 12-14 games if everything clicks. But the rest of this offseason is going to be huge.

In 2013, after the playoff loss to Atlanta, I felt like we were on the cusp of being a great team. My optimism level for the 2013 season was about an an eight out of 10. In 2014, I felt there was a great chance to repeat. In 2015, after acquiring Jimmy Graham, I was a solid 10 out of 10. I just felt we were far and way the best team in the NFL. Right now, I am at about a six out of 10, and feel like there's a lot of work to be done. But while I feel that way, I wouldn't be surprised if the 2016 season churns out the best Seahawks team ever.

Basically, it's tough to gauge where we're at right now.

It's still an incomplete team, as we haven't drafted yet, and the FA period isn't over.

Last season was a disaster from the Cary Williams epic failure, to Kam holding out, injuries to key players, and taking coaches on the offensive side of the ball too long to make adjustments and personnel decisions.

Yet they still made the playoffs and survived the first round.

I think if they draft smart, quit dinking around with the O-line "experiments", and give Russ more free reign they'll be fine.

Still have more "great" players than anybody else in the NFL. Our depth and bottom few starters may not be as strong, and we'll need them to improve. I think we're going to come out hungrier this year. Rawls is the big one for me. Marshawn has bigger shoes to fill than simple production. He's got to be that dog. That scrapper. That guy that gets everybody jacked. If we are thinking we're going to change our philosophy and be a pretty team, we're in big trouble.

Rob12":1f9ql453 said:

We definitely have some question marks.

Offensive Line
We have zero starters from the 2013 Owl team. I know many thought our line wasn't good then, but they did block for the No. 4 rushing offense of all-time. Right now, the group looks pretty bad. I'm not trying to be overly negative here - I do believe there's some young, untapped talent available to us. But the Seahawks spend the least amount of money by an NFL franchise on their offensive line by a pretty healthy margin. I'm pretty much 50/50 on whether or not this group can be coached up and end up being pretty decent. The draft should infuse some talent into this group (hopefully). 2016 is going to be Tom Cable's toughest test yet.

Thomas Rawls
Love this kid, and I hope he makes it all the way back from his injury and can stay healthy. But as a second year back coming off a pretty significant injury, I hope he can pick up where he left off. He looked like the league's best back in spurts last season.

Offensive Philosophy
I still read posts on here from people who think we're still a power run team. I don't think that's us anymore. The offense is going to be completely geared around Russell Wilson and the passing game. I can see us being a balanced attack for the most part, but I think the days of the power run are mostly over.

The draft is going to be huge for this team, and the front office can't whiff on picks. I'm going to support each pick when the time comes, but I really hope some serious draft capital is infused into our offensive line.

Right now, I think we're a top 10 team in this league. We have the talent to win 12-14 games if everything clicks. But the rest of this offseason is going to be huge.

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Tom Cable kind of let the cat out of the bag last Year when he said that Lynch was going to have to make some big adjustments when he comes back, and I took that as a cue that, the power blocking by the power run O-Line, was revamping for more Pass Protection, because Lynch out with injury Russell Wilson had to take his game to the next level, and he did an astounding job of putting it all together WITHOUT Lynch, Graham & a less than stellar Offensive Line.
With Wilson's mobility and a bunch of help from his Receivers, Pete Carroll and Tom Cable had to make some tough changes just to salvage the second half of last Season.
We'll probably never see another RB like Lynch again so of course the Offensive Line schemes are going to go through some transformations, and I too believe that Pete will strive to keep a balanced Offense, but I think we're going to see a RB by committee to get there.

How do I honestly feel about this team?

Well, you asked...

This is a top 5 team, perhaps top 3 ELITE team in the NFL if we take care of our trenches. We've found our Super Star in Russell Wilson, and he's got a decent arsenal to throw to in DB, JG (if he's healthy this season) and JK (look who's back by default!) not to mention the uprising of Tyler Lockett which is the MASSIVE X Factor ("Wait, I thought he was just a returner" - Said every D coordinator facing us last year)...

A lot of exciting pieces that doesn't mean shit if we can't dominate in the trenches. So far? I have seen no solid evidence to think we will suddenly change course and dominate on the OL. Perhaps the draft will ease my weary Soul.

As sound as Pete and John have been, I am shocked at the lack of focus they have shown in relation to our OL and nobody can argue that lack of focus has been costly to say the least. In fact, I would say it cost us a consecutive Super Bowl championship.

I expect the draft/UDFAs will get the fans more upbeat about the season. Plus, I still think the Hawks will get another veteran OT before camp.

Dynasty.

We have the best young QB in the league throwing to best WR group he ever played with and is helped out by last year's most effective RB. Even with a bad Oline (which by the way probably will still be better than the line we had week 1 of 2015) this offense should be among the best in the league.

We also have had the best defense for four years straight. We lost Mebane and Irvin which sucks but their positions are pretty replacable. I doubt we'll much of a drop off, might actually be better than last year with Lane starting day 1.

We're also great ST.

I see us as very likely to make the play offs and a serious contender for the Bowl.

Overseasfan":1gkf8ph5 said:

We have the best young QB in the league throwing to best WR group he ever played with and is helped out by last year's most effective RB. Even with a bad Oline (which by the way probably will still be better than the line we had week 1 of 2015) this offense should be among the best in the league.

We also have had the best defense for four years straight. We lost Mebane and Irvin which sucks but their positions are pretty replacable. I doubt we'll much of a drop off, might actually be better than last year with Lane starting day 1.

We're also great ST.

I see us as very likely to make the play offs and a serious contender for the Bowl.

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Best wr group he's ever thrown to? When he was throwing to the group of pretty much the same guys with Golden Tate added, that was a better group.

SomersetHawk":4ogbe6qr said:

Dynasty.

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Melrose Place.

seabowl":3l2dyft5 said:

Overseasfan":3l2dyft5 said:

We have the best young QB in the league throwing to best WR group he ever played with and is helped out by last year's most effective RB. Even with a bad Oline (which by the way probably will still be better than the line we had week 1 of 2015) this offense should be among the best in the league.

We also have had the best defense for four years straight. We lost Mebane and Irvin which sucks but their positions are pretty replacable. I doubt we'll much of a drop off, might actually be better than last year with Lane starting day 1.

We're also great ST.

I see us as very likely to make the play offs and a serious contender for the Bowl.

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Best wr group he's ever thrown to? When he was throwing to the group of pretty much the same guys with Golden Tate added, that was a better group.

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No E > Golden Tate. And, current JK and DB are better than they were when GT was here.

I'm super scared of our OL though.

I feel like we're still a top 5 team. We've got superstars at nearly every position, especially qb.

The elephant in the room is the o line, like everyone's saying. It's frustrating but understandable that this group has been the last priority due to salary cap reasons, and PC/JS believing russell is basically superhuman at this point and can carry the entire offense

Even with the questions on the OLine, I'd say we're on of the top 4 teams in the NFC. It's going to be like anything, how healthy we can remain during the season. I think we would have won the Super Bowl last year with a healthy Okung, Graham, Rawls and Lynch.

Offense ? A good bit depends on how Jimmy G and Rawls make it back from their injuries. Our line will be bad at least to start the season. We will need to get the ball out of Russell's hands quickly and often and with out even one of these two in the line up it will be difficult. Hopefully what ever line Cable tinkers up improves by the end of the season in time for us to make a run at the playoffs.

I have a pretty mixed feeling about this offseason. I've become accustomed to the team losing big names each year because we simply can't afford them. We will look back at the SB48 team as one of the greatest teams ever due to many of our star players playing on their rookie contracts. I've always been a firm believer (in sports in general) that it is hard to get back to where you were when your roster gets weaker. Talent wise, there is no doubt we will probably never get back to the talent of that SB team. So I'm not sure if we will dominate the league like we did that year.

However, if we are able to put together a good draft this offseason and plug-in a couple more free-agents here and there I think we will be in the mix for one of the top 5 teams of the season. I think our team likely hinges on the OLine once again. Football starts in the trenches and until we get good play out of the OLine, we won't be dominating the NFL. I think we need to try to win home-field advantage and make the NFC road to the SB go through Seattle. We've seen the past three years that HFA plays a big factor.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think we will ever touch what we did two seasons ago. We hit lightning in a bottle that year. But we obviously have a good enough team where we can compete with anyone. But in a way, we dominated football the year we won the SB, I don't see that happening again.

So, I'm seeing a lot of skepticism when it comes to the O-Line, and early on last Season I would have agreed that there was a legitimate concern, but, things got somewhat better for the Offensive Line when Wilson started making quicker passes from the pocket, to his Receivers, and he was doing all this WITHOUT his All World RB Marshawn Lynch, or Jimmy Graham, and even when Thomas Rawls went down, he wasn't stymied.
That was pretty telling for me....Russell Wilson doing what only a truly great Quarterback can do, and that was, to shoulder the team and carry it on his back.
If you look at the top 5 Quarterbacks and do an honest assessment, how many of those top 5 do you imagine could have pulled this turnaround off, when a faltering O-Line, an two or three of your KEY co-players down for the count, an atrocious 7 game stretch and still make it to the playoffs.....Yea, me neither.

Not sure what the hooplah about the offensive line is about.

Okung can be dominant but hes not consistently elite and he hasnt been since 2012. Mostly because he cant stay healthy. And for a 5th year player he has too many false starts.

Sweezy is probably going to be the best guard in the NFL come his third contract. That is if he can be a more consistent pass-protector. What TB paid for just a currently one trick pony with future elite potential wasnt worth it for us.

I like Glowinski, he might not be as physically dominant as Sweezy but I think Glow's mental game and technique is already just as good or even better. I think in comparison, Glow will more consistent and more well-rounded yet still be a nasty dude in run-blocking.

I'm not worried about the draft. We're expected to take OL and we may or may not and it doesn't bother me either way.

If you draft players you need, you pass on players you should have drafted. If you took all players out there and ranked them from 1 to X in order of potential value to the Seahawks, then when it's time for the Seahawks to pick, they should select the highest number available, regardless of which position he plays. The reasons for this are several, but here are some highlights:

1: You cannot depend on a drafted player to live up to his draft hype. If you have a hole and need to fill it with a drafted player, you're taking a crap shot with the season on the line. If you must draft that position, get a journeyman in to fill the spot and make the decision who starts though training camp competition.

2: If your needs are known to you they are known to others. If we need a tackle, and one is falling in the draft, bet your bottom dollar that another team will trade to draft ahead of us to take that player, because they know if we get to draft before them, that player won't be there. On the other hand, another player will be there who would otherwise have gone to the team that made the trade - it's like moving up in the draft for free.

3: If you always take the best player available, your team ends up filled with best players. If you take second-best, you have a team of second-best players. Pretty simple concept.

4: The draft is not the last dance of the pre-season. After the draft there will be cuts, and still more cuts as rosters get cut down. There will always be a few guys with a year or two left in the tank being replaced by a drafted player, and those guys can fill any remaining gaps.

A side point I want to make...

Here's how football outsiders ranked the offensive line performance of all the SB winners of the PC/JS era:

DEN: 17th run, 13th pass
NE: 5th run, 2nd pass
SEA: 9th run, 32nd pass
BAL: 6th run , 13th pass
NYG: 28th run, 6th pass
GB: 23rd run, 21st pass

AVG: 14.8 run, 14.5 pass (league average is 16.5)

The results are all over the place, and when averaged together the final result shows that SB offensive lines are on the whole just barely better than average. (And if Lynch gets the damn ball in XLIX, these numbers change to 14.7 run, 18.2 pass).

It should be noted that the best OL of this group by far was largely the product of a pass to set up the run scheme and a GOAT candidate QB.

Now lets compare this to defense:

DEN: 1st
NE: 12th (Seattle was 1st)
SEA: 1st
BAL: 19th (SF was 3rd)
NYG: 19th
GB: 2nd

AVG: 9.0

Clearly, you can see that defense factors very highly. It's also worth noting that the three teams who won their SB the most comfortably had elite defenses, while the luckier SB winners had average defenses. Now for one more comparison:

Pass defense:

DEN: 1st
NE: 12th (Seattle was 3rd)
SEA: 1st
BAL: 13th (SF was 6th)
NYG: 19th
GB: 1st

AVG: 7.8

There might not be any ranking that shows SB dominance better than this. Of the past six teams to finish #1 in pass defense, three of them hoisted a Lombardi.

The point of all this is to say that if Seattle ends up with a below average OL but an elite pass defense, they are very well set up to win the Super Bowl.

And with last year's secondary obviously going through a whirl of issues early in the season that are unlikely to repeat in 2016, and with Frank Clark likely getting an expanded role in what is already a good pass rush, it's reasonable to think that there could be a big improvement in that area.

And keep in mind, even Seattle's seemingly disastrous 2015 pass defense was still good enough to rank 3rd in the NFL by FO's metrics.

To me, the real key for Seattle's SB chances is getting their secondary back to a dominant level. Doing this will allow Seattle to control games and dictate terms. And usually, teams that control their opponents are the ones that win in January and February.

Rob12":fsgw0wz7 said:

Offensive Line
We have zero starters from the 2013 Owl team. I know many thought our line wasn't good then, but they did block for the No. 4 rushing offense of all-time. Right now, the group looks pretty bad. I'm not trying to be overly negative here - I do believe there's some young, untapped talent available to us. But the Seahawks spend the least amount of money by an NFL franchise on their offensive line by a pretty healthy margin. I'm pretty much 50/50 on whether or not this group can be coached up and end up being pretty decent. The draft should infuse some talent into this group (hopefully). 2016 is going to be Tom Cable's toughest test yet.

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It's almost as if that bad turf in Carolina or that -6 degree game in Minnesota whipped out those Men In Black memory erasers on the Seahawks fanbase. Everyone forgets that Seattle's offense was historically good at the end of last season, with an offensive line that was on pace to be historically bad in the first half of the year.

Further, teams that win SBs are generally not built around their OL.

Now granted, it's pretty obvious that Seattle is going to draft heavily at OL this year. It's fair to say this is a question mark, but when the OL has arguably been the worst pass protecting unit in the league over the past 3 seasons, it's probably a good thing to have new bodies in there. The grade for the offensive line just changed from an "F" to a "?". Even if the 2016 OL is an "F" again, it's not something we aren't used to at this point, and Seattle proved late in 2015 that they can mitigate the damage from it.

Rob12":fsgw0wz7 said:

Kam Chancellor
I have no idea what to think of the Kam situation. I have to believe that it's still there. He's not happy with his contract, but his holdout, followed by average play doesn't justify a reworking of his deal, and I hope the front office holds firm with him. I think he's a bit irreplaceable, which is quite the conundrum - anyone remember Earl basically telling the media that Kam is the entire brain of the defense?

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I don't worry about this AT ALL. Kam's holdout was insanely stupid from the beginning, and now he knows how that medicine tastes. Zero risk of him holding out again.

Rob12":fsgw0wz7 said:

Michael Bennett
Very underpaid at this point. Two years left on his deal. I think Bennett is hitting the last half of his prime. Will be 33 by the time his deal is up.

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Bennett was too smart to holdout last year, and since then he's seen firsthand what happened to Kam when that holdout backfired. I'm sure Bennett is unhappy but such unhappiness led him to have a career year in 2015.

Rob12":fsgw0wz7 said:

Thomas Rawls
Love this kid, and I hope he makes it all the way back from his injury and can stay healthy. But as a second year back coming off a pretty significant injury, I hope he can pick up where he left off. He looked like the league's best back in spurts last season.

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IMO, too much has been made of Rawls injury. Surgery was an option on the table and Seattle declined it because they didn't feel the injury was serious enough to justify it.

The running game was still okay with street FAs at RB. Seattle will probably draft a RB this year who's good enough to compete with Rawls for the starting job.

Rob12":fsgw0wz7 said:

Offensive Philosophy
I still read posts on here from people who think we're still a power run team. I don't think that's us anymore. The offense is going to be completely geared around Russell Wilson and the passing game. I can see us being a balanced attack for the most part, but I think the days of the power run are mostly over.

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Even at the peak of Seattle's run game physicality from 2012-2014, Seattle was still a team that ran the best out of 'finesse' looks such as 3 WRs with no fullback. The 2011 and 2012 OL's had decent power blocking, but from 2013 on the run game has mostly been smoke and mirrors made to work thanks to Tom Cable's schematic wizardry, an elite rushing QB, and some incredibly talented RBs who fit the system.

The run blocking last season seemed to improve dramatically when Thomas Rawls was carrying the rock. He seems to have an ability to make run blocking look better than it really is.

My only concern about the running game (as mentioned by others) is whether or not it can put teams away. Thomas Rawls rushed for 169 yards on Cincy, but Seattle still lost because they couldn't grind out first downs late in the game. Lynch was special in that he could put teams away even when they did all they could to stop him. There are just a handful of backs in the league that can do that, and Rawls probably isn't one of them.

That said, I do think this is something that can be worked around with savvy playcalling, as certain pass plays are effectively the same thing as a 5 yard run.

Anyway, I think the biggest question for the 2016 Seahawks is one that nobody seems to be asking. That question being, can Kris Richard get the secondary to look like the LOB again? Because if he can, Seattle would be a heavy favorite to win the SB given the historical importance of pass defense among champions.

This post is already too long, so I won't go into my full spiel on Richard and the pass D, but I do think it showed significant signs of improvement near the end of the year. I don't think Richard will be as effective as Dan Quinn, but I think for a variety of reasons that the secondary will be in a much better place in 2016 than it was in 2015.

Rob12":fsgw0wz7 said:

Right now, I think we're a top 10 team in this league. We have the talent to win 12-14 games if everything clicks. But the rest of this offseason is going to be huge.

In 2013, after the playoff loss to Atlanta, I felt like we were on the cusp of being a great team. My optimism level for the 2013 season was about an an eight out of 10. In 2014, I felt there was a great chance to repeat. In 2015, after acquiring Jimmy Graham, I was a solid 10 out of 10. I just felt we were far and way the best team in the NFL. Right now, I am at about a six out of 10, and feel like there's a lot of work to be done. But while I feel that way, I wouldn't be surprised if the 2016 season churns out the best Seahawks team ever.

Basically, it's tough to gauge where we're at right now.

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Even though I loved Seattle's offseason in 2015, it was actually last year that was the year of the question mark for me. How would Seattle fit Jimmy Graham into the offense? How would they adjust to a new DC and DB coach? How much lingering damage would there be from the worst SB hangover of all time? How would Seattle's OL fare with so many inexperienced players in an inline scheme while lacking any semblance of a blocking TE? Will our secondary be healthy? Will Kam's holdout torpedo the season?

Normally I feel pretty good about projecting wins for Seattle, but last year it felt like they could be anywhere from 16 wins to 10 wins.

As it turned out, 2015 was more painful than even the biggest pessimist could have predicted. But out of that pain came some extremely valuable lessons to build off of. It reminded me a bit of the 2002 and 2011 seasons in that it started as such a disaster but by the end you knew that some really exciting times were right around the corner.

Therefore, I feel the same way about the 2016 season as I did for the 2003 and 2012 seasons. Every season has question marks but whereas a dark cloud hung over 2015 from the very start, it feels like the sky is clearing and things are looking much brighter in 2016.