This team is being undersold, greatness is coming!

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If you ask just about anyone, the vast majority will tell you the Seahawks are done, they’re rebuilding, they’re going to be irrelevant next season.

None of it is true. None of it.

The argument is this team has lost a lot of talent and while I don’t dispute that, that talent will be replaced as well as giving players the opportunity to emerge as the future star of tomorrow. Seriously, this team has been so full of top tier players at so many positions, rookies and outside free agents rarely got a look in, they didn’t really get a chance to show what they could do. The practice field rarely identifies future stars, I don’t know why but historically, stars have emerged by players ahead of them on the depth chart going down to injury forcing the teams hand to put them out on the field.

That is when you identify talent, in real game time, when the lights are on, the cameras are rolling, hundreds of thousands of eyes on them, that’s when stars are born. That simply cannot be emulated in practice. The adrenaline, the focus, the competition is all just that little bit more ‘real’.

I think it’s a case of momentum. Storylines and ‘news’ can travel like wildfire and I think that’s exactly what has happened with the 2018 Seahawks. People have said they’re rebuilding and to not expect much and people have just ‘gone along with that notion’. Nothing wrong with that at all, people believe what they’re told all the time. Just this week I read a Seahawks blogger had said that Shaquem Griffin got a 4-year rookie deal with a 5th-year option, then the following day said that John Schneider gave him a ‘very rare’ 4-year deal as rookies usual 3-year deals. Neither are true, at all. But people in the comments section took it as fact and were praising John Schneider for giving Griffin a 4-year deal as opposed to 3 to split his signing bonus over more years thus lowering his cap hits. It infuriates me when people misquote and simply ‘make stuff up’ for the reasons I’ve already highlighted, people read this stuff and believe it, why wouldn’t they? If I didn’t know anything about cats and someone who ran a cat website told me they only sleep for 8 minutes a day, I’d likely believe them. Shame on people misquoting and misguiding Seahawks fans who show a genuine interest in the team by reading their sites.

In years past it was pretty hard to get ‘too’ excited (relatively speaking) over training camp and preseason. Sure it was fantastic to see how the rookies perform but you knew the majority wouldn’t be able to outperform the core guys whose roster spots were as much of a sure thing as possible. If anything, I just welcomed football back into my life and felt reassuringly calm that I knew the ‘main’ guys would be starting and the camp battles were, for the most part, the depth and back up guys battling for a roster spot. And don’t get me wrong, that is exciting in its own right, but I find people genuinely battling for starting spots far more intriguing and exciting, maybe I’m alone in that but I suspect I’m probably not.

You’ve also got to appreciate the talent that was on this team last year and is still here. Last year this team was legitimately one kick away from a 10 win season. 10 wins. You ask the bottom half teams of the NFL if they’d be happy with 10 wins? They’d be ecstatic! I get it, though, this team is better than that, this team is bound for greatness and is held to a higher standard than most and I can say with the up-most confidence that the 2018 Seahawks will like up to that label and not the label that many are trying to stick on them that quotes “rebuilding, be back in 2019 or 2020”. Don’t believe them, ladies and gentleman, don’t believe a word of it, seriously.

We still have Russell Wilson, Doug Baldwin, Duane Brown, Frank Clark, Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright, Shaquill Griffin and Earl Thomas to name but a few.

We still have players that are bound for fantastic seasons in Tyler Lockett, Dion Jordan, David Moore, Bradley McDougald, Justin Coleman and J.D. McKissic to name a few.

We have rookies that can and likely will have an immediate impact on the games in Rashaad Penny, Will Dissly, Shaquem Griffin and Michael Dickson.

And then you have the guys that everyone has counted out or aren’t aware of. The guys that were still finding their feet in seasons past and will finally grab the bull by the horns this season and put it all together. I obviously cannot predict who that will be as I am yet to be able to predict the future (yet), however at least a few of these names could really emerge as ‘tomorrows stars today’

Nazair Jones
Germain Ifedi (remember how Justin Britt looked after 2 seasons)
Nick Vannett
Ethan Pocic
C.J. Prosise
Rees Odhiambo
Barkevious Mingo
Ed Dickson
Jaron Brown
Marcus Smith II
Delano Hill
Tanner McEvoy
Jordan Roos

You may laugh at a few of those names on the list but remember this…If this season past was the 2010 season and the 2011 season was fast approaching, you’d have seen Kam Chancellor's name on the list above. A 2010 rookie that did nothing in his first year outside of special teams play that absolutely exploded in his second year. That can and likely will happen again this year, it’s just so much better set up to accommodate that kind of magic happening with so many roster spots being wide open. You can’t identify future stars if they’re sat on the sidelines after all and that has been the case over the last 3 or so years, players simply haven’t had the opportunity to emerge and it’s why this team was on a slow but painful decline and, in my opinion, is on massive upwards trend moving forwards.

I’m sure you’ve heard some people comparing this upcoming season to the 2011 or 2012 Seahawks and I agree with that thought completely, however the biggest difference, in my opinion, is we have a whole lot more talent on the roster than we did back then. A whole lot more. Take the quarterback position for example, Pete Carroll has said it takes quarterbacks 7 years to fully develop, guess what year Russ is entering? That’s right his 7th season. The whole roster is better from top to bottom at just about every single position so it’s a very fair assumption to say we are starting off in a better position.

OOPkmAN

All of the above has focussed on the players and how they will develop and how new stars will likely emerge this season, but one aspect that absolutely cannot go unmentioned is all the coaching changes. A huge amount of men lost their jobs this offseason paving way for new guys with new ideas and tactics. Pete himself called the moves ‘franchise altering’ at the NFL Combine back in February. It seemed that the offense, in particular, had gotten a bit ‘stale’ so I very much welcome these changes and while I wish the absolute best to Darrell Bevell, Tom Cable, Kris Richard and the others, a change was necessary. The main reasons behind these changes seem to be to get more out of Russell (wow!), get the run game fixed and hold the players accountable. Russ seems to respond very, very well to criticism and I get the impression Bevell very much pandered to him, it doesn’t seem that will happen with offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and QB coach Dave Canales, when Russ slips up and makes a bad read, he’s going to get called for it. This alone could propel our franchise quarterback into levels of play that we have not yet witnessed, quite exciting when you think just how good Russ is and what he has done for this team to date that he could still get better.


Mike Solari could very well be the most important cog in the box, though. This offensive line needs to block better and moving to a power run scheme as opposed to a zone blocking scheme will help them out no end. I won’t go into the intricacies of both but In summary, a power run scheme plays to the strengths of the lineman we have available on the roster, for the most part at least. The zone blocking scheme, at times, seemed to play to our guys weaknesses. Expect big things from Mike Solari.

You also can’t underestimate what Ken Norton Jr brings to the field. We all know this is Pete Carroll’s defense but what Ken brings is a tone, a standard, and those are the sorts of things that NFL players respond well to. Richard rarely got in the players faces screaming at them when they mess up, you can bet Ken will! He will be in their face, pushing them and quite literally forcing them to play better. It all comes back down to accountability, this team is making the players accountable for their successes and their failures, and that means something, it really does.

I may be in the minority when I say this team is absolutely not rebuilding, but I am yet to see any proof that this team does not have the potential to put it all together and go on a long run deep into the playoffs. I’m not saying we are going to win the Super Bowl, that takes all sorts of things to happen, including a good dose of luck, however if a few balls bounce our way, we are lucky with injuries and a few players emerge as stars, I can say with upmost certainty this team is going places. Of course things could be derailed in week 1 if Russ were to get injured but you cannot predict these things.

This team is bound for greatness and the 2018 season will be no different. Go Hawks!

TVrYAMM
 

Popeyejones

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original poster":kut17zpa said:
The argument is this team has lost a lot of talent and while I don’t dispute that, that talent will be replaced as well as giving players the opportunity to emerge as the future star of tomorrow. Seriously, this team has been so full of top tier players at so many positions, rookies and outside free agents rarely got a look in, they didn’t really get a chance to show what they could do. The practice field rarely identifies future stars, I don’t know why but historically, stars have emerged by players ahead of them on the depth chart going down to injury forcing the teams hand to put them out on the field.

It could very well end up being different, but this is precisely the story that 9ers fans insisted on telling themselves after the great bloodletting of 2014-2015. I don't think the Seahawks will fall NEARLY that far, but that narrative is a story that fans like to tell themselves, but which rarely pans out.

I think the problem with this argument is that with a lot of turnover you're relying on a lot of projection, and to feel really confident you kind of have to hold your nose and believe that all of that projection is going to go in the right direction.

It practically never works like that, though.

Basically, take all the coaches who you think will be improvements, all the rookies who you think will contribute, all the buried on the bench players who you think just need their shot, and all the young guys who you think will improve because they're young, and turn that into a long list. You've basically already got the start of that list going.

Now, for about 5% of the names on this list you get to assign a big step up, but for 5% you have to assign a big step down. For 10% you get to assign a small step up, but for another 10% you have to assign a small step down.

The other 70% is just meh -- they're just guys who can hang out on a roster or in a starting lineup or as a coach but they don't really meaningfully contribute in any overtly good or bad way.

This doesn't mean that 2010-2011 can't be reproduced (it's possible), but the reason why that was maybe the best draft run in NFL history is that it has only happened once in NFL history. Projecting it to happen again just really defies the odds.
 

Anajimmc

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A lot of people have given up on draft picks from the last few years. Remember their breakthrough ceiling was much higher than when the current batch of superstars came up through the ranks.

I don't have the benefit of seeing the players practice, I don't have the benefit of seeing which younger guy is pushing which vet.

I have to believe that no personnel move is made with out a deal of confidence that who remains has been considered capable as a replacement, it's now up to them to succeed.

I am stoked by this years draft, I wanted Penny, Green and Griffin. Everything else is icing on the cake.

So as they say I am pumped and jacked. The future is filled with opportunity.
 

Own The West

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I don't know how much of it's projection.

On offense you have Wilson, Baldwin, and Lockett. With Carson ready to go and Penny for 'depth'. No projection there.

An OL of Brown, Pocic, Britt, Fluker, Ifedi. 3 of those 5 guys are solid vets, and you don't have two guys next to each other learning their position for the first time in years. Also, with Dickson we finally have a TE that can play the entire position. This line will be better.

On defense you have Clark, Reed, Jones, and Jordan on the DL. All of whom played well last year.
The best LB duo in the league in Wright/Wagner, with the vet Mingo or the super-athletic Griffin to cover the third spot.
And Griffin, Maxwell at the corners -- who both played well last year; as well as All-Pro Thomas and McDougald at the safeties.

That's a solid starting 22, and the only projecting I see is with our depth.

I'm not expecting any bench players to breakout on offense, but it could happen. After week 1, I don't expect to hear the names of our backup OL men.

I do expect some pleasant surprises on the defensive side -- just because our defense is simple and once it clicks, an athlete can make a difference. I can see Green and Ford making significant contributions after the bye week 7.
 

TwistedHusky

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This team won because it had better players than the other teams.

Period.

Look at those old rosters.

If this team is going to win enough to be 'great' it needs to have better players than most other teams. Right now, the roster looks pretty thin. We have some great players on our team but we do NOT have a great roster. Or based on what we know now.

So, if 'greatness is coming' we better have some amazing players in the wings that we do not know about or instead you are looking at 'okness'/'goodness' is coming.
 

jammerhawk

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I was saying something close to this earlier.

I suspect the experts are wrong and this team will come together s a team b/c they have a lot of very good players at key positions and a great number of younger players who could quickly become very good players.

it will depend a great deal on the early schedule which isn't particularly favourable but with that many road games early the team should hang together as a team more than in other seasons and this with a few early Ws could make this team something that needs to be contended with later in the season.

I'm pumped and jacked to see what this young group looks like when the final cuts are made. They will surprise a few folks without a doubt.
 

Vaclav44

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I don't know how many games they are going to win - too many variables to count I think from new players to new coaching staff - but I think that they are going to be in their games to win and a lot of fun to watch. More fun to watch than that train wreck of last year. I'd take a 9 win season that's fun to watch over last year any day of the week.
 
OP
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original poster

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Vaclav44":1jwkrjqg said:
I don't know how many games they are going to win - too many variables to count I think from new players to new coaching staff - but I think that they are going to be in their games to win and a lot of fun to watch. More fun to watch than that train wreck of last year. I'd take a 9 win season that's fun to watch over last year any day of the week.

Here here!

I’d honesty take a 1 win season that was fun to watch over past season.

*Whispers Nick Bosa in the 2019 draft*
 

Seymour

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original poster":20h3mzdn said:
Vaclav44":20h3mzdn said:
I don't know how many games they are going to win - too many variables to count I think from new players to new coaching staff - but I think that they are going to be in their games to win and a lot of fun to watch. More fun to watch than that train wreck of last year. I'd take a 9 win season that's fun to watch over last year any day of the week.

Here here!

I’d honesty take a 1 win season that was fun to watch over past season.

*Whispers Nick Bosa in the 2019 draft*

Oxymoron IMO.

I'm not ready to claim greatness, but I do believe it will be interesting to see how this team unfolds. I stand by 8-8 +/- 2 games either way as the barometer without seeing who sticks and how they look against competition.
 

James in PA

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“Why not us??”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

HawkGA

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I suspect the offense will take a good sized step forward with the defense taking a pretty decent step backwards. How those two shifts play out when it comes to game time . . . . who knows . . . but I suspect the doom and gloomers are just seeing the defense stepping backwards. But the offense has been so horrible for so long now that I can't really blame them.

But just think how good the defense would be if the offense did something outside of the last 2 minutes of each half?
 

TwistedHusky

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You are correct.

The offense HAS to be better. By just math.

But only if Carroll lets it be better. Part of me is still going to be skeptical that Carroll is going to let this team become the Saints NorthWest where we win because we ride our QB to victory. Maybe we can be Steelers NW with a similar type of approach and still a good defense but if I see moonshots and milking the clock again...we will know this was part of the plan and was not the fault of our old OC. (I am so hoping that it was all his fault!)

The defense is going to be worse. Almost a given.

The offense has to be better. There is no other option.

One small thing to be aware of. If we are going to blame our old offense for not producing for 3 full quarters, then we also have to acknowledge it was still #1 in the NFL in the 4th quarter. New coordinator, new offense - all those changes mean that likely changes too. I don't think you can bank on us just being #1 in scoring in the 4th like we were.

We cannot just say that if we start scoring in the 1st 3 quarters we will win all those games. Still, I am happy to see us actually freaking scoring in the 1st 3 quarters.
 
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FlyHawksFly":11qtfw9c said:
original poster":11qtfw9c said:
Vaclav44":11qtfw9c said:
I don't know how many games they are going to win - too many variables to count I think from new players to new coaching staff - but I think that they are going to be in their games to win and a lot of fun to watch. More fun to watch than that train wreck of last year. I'd take a 9 win season that's fun to watch over last year any day of the week.

Here here!

I’d honesty take a 1 win season that was fun to watch over past season.

*Whispers Nick Bosa in the 2019 draft*


Hear hear...

Twoshay
 

pittpnthrs

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Fun to be optimistic but i'm seeing anything over 8 wins as an overachievement.
 

jammerhawk

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Ahh, a pessimist checks-in.

In reality, even without a running game, the team was two missed kicks short of 11-5 last season.

Even accounting for the personnel losses the increase in experience of some average to slightly better than average players in the lists supplied above by OP, but improved ST play the team should perform as well as last season or better. I regard the expectation of only 8 wins or better being an overachievement as a very negative and pessimistic viewpoint. Feel free though, although the glass being more than half empty is a sad approach to living. I guess you can't be disappointed b/c it's already built in.

the point made is that we could find ourselves surprised by how good this team might turn out to be this year.
 

KiwiHawk

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I look at it this way:

Offense:
The offense can only get better than it was last year. It's literally impossible for them to regress in the running game, and for all that Wilson had a career-high season, he also had some brain-explosion games where he was frustratingly ineffective, and was so for the first half of most games. We lost 10 touchdowns in Graham and Richardson, but since we had stuff-all from the running game last year, that should be no problem to replace. In the event we can run the ball better than last season - and it's impossible not to - there are a lot of field goals that would be turned into touchdowns.

Defense:
This is the area that is seen as taking the largest losses. While that may be true, the fact is we played without those guys for large parts of the season, and the defense wasn't really a problem. I'll asterisk that for the frustrating games that we lost in the 4th quarter by saying the opposing team was only within reach because of the abysmal first-half offense we had all season long. We can improve our defense by improving our offense. We were also incapable of running out the clock last year to protect a lead. Don't take much form the Rams' game last year where we pretty much ran out of healthy players. The defense will be there.

Special Teams:
If we can make a field goal here and there we can win some close games. Losing Walsh improves our special teams. I'm a big fan of Ryan. Love his personality, and he has heaps of talent. However, Michael Dickson is next-level. Rule changes to kickoffs should provide opportunities for Lockett, and won't hinder our coverage much because it was predicated on speed and solid tackling.

Summary:
In 2013 we had a dominant, suffocating, historically-good defense, excellent special teams, and an offense that was pretty much along for the ride. While some players have left, the architect of that defense is still the head coach, and as long as he's involved, the defense will be good. The offense and defense should be better thanks to having a running game. Special teams should be greatly improved. To win big takes a healthy team. Going younger hopefully means fewer starter-games lost to injury, but things happen.

Now for the bad news...
Things we cannot control include the strength of opposition. There is no free pass in the NFC West this year and any of the teams could end up on top. Facing those teams 6 times this year will take an inevitable toll. However, you don't get good by beating up on creampuffs. Adversity is the crucible in which greatness is forged.
 

scutterhawk

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Popeyejones":27smtq4g said:
original poster":27smtq4g said:
The argument is this team has lost a lot of talent and while I don’t dispute that, that talent will be replaced as well as giving players the opportunity to emerge as the future star of tomorrow. Seriously, this team has been so full of top tier players at so many positions, rookies and outside free agents rarely got a look in, they didn’t really get a chance to show what they could do. The practice field rarely identifies future stars, I don’t know why but historically, stars have emerged by players ahead of them on the depth chart going down to injury forcing the teams hand to put them out on the field.

It could very well end up being different, but this is precisely the story that 9ers fans insisted on telling themselves after the great bloodletting of 2014-2015. I don't think the Seahawks will fall NEARLY that far, but that narrative is a story that fans like to tell themselves, but which rarely pans out.

I think the problem with this argument is that with a lot of turnover you're relying on a lot of projection, and to feel really confident you kind of have to hold your nose and believe that all of that projection is going to go in the right direction.

It practically never works like that, though.

Basically, take all the coaches who you think will be improvements, all the rookies who you think will contribute, all the buried on the bench players who you think just need their shot, and all the young guys who you think will improve because they're young, and turn that into a long list. You've basically already got the start of that list going.

Now, for about 5% of the names on this list you get to assign a big step up, but for 5% you have to assign a big step down. For 10% you get to assign a small step up, but for another 10% you have to assign a small step down.

The other 70% is just meh -- they're just guys who can hang out on a roster or in a starting lineup or as a coach but they don't really meaningfully contribute in any overtly good or bad way.

This doesn't mean that 2010-2011 can't be reproduced (it's possible), but the reason why that was maybe the best draft run in NFL history is that it has only happened once in NFL history. Projecting it to happen again just really defies the odds.
Lost your Head Coach, Lost your Franchise Quarterback tried revamping both Offense & Defensive systems, brought in a new Head Coach that was hell bent on restructuring the 49rs identity.
here's the main difference between the two clubs, total rebuild vs, Reload with SAME Head Coach & SEVERAL of the same core players in place, and for REAL Franchise Quarterback Russell Wilson.
Might just be me, BUT, I believe that they should have KEPT Smith, (who was just starting to come into his best years as Quarterback) and used Kaepernick as his backup.
So to me?, your comparisons are without basis, and are kind of funky.
OP has it right...This wasn't a complete "Blood Letting" like the 9rs was.
 
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