I can't say it enough: XLIX broke this team. It broke their spirit, and when no one was held accountable, that broken spirit was normalized.
If someone--anyone--had been held accountable after that game, if the organization had made any gesture to say "this is not acceptable," then maybe it could have been salvaged. But instead they continued on like it never happened, sold out for Graham to catch the ball on a play that had already passed, and sacrificed the whole of the team to keep a few fan favorites around like a Vegas nostalgia show.
"We've got all your favorites! Kam Chancellor (who has never been as good after his extension), Earl Thomas (who can no longer play 16 games), Jimmy Graham (who has never earned his money in our offense)," and so on.
If they were smart, they would have broken up the band to fortify the running game and bred some new hometown heroes. We kept the band together, and the rest of the league moved on without us.
2013 isn't going anywhere. It's frozen in time. We can watch the highlights any time. Let's stop looking back and start looking forward. Don't build a better 2014 team; build a better 2018 team.
