Nothing really of importance in the interview. Ruskell is like most football personalities, giving out information in incredibly minute doses. We’ll find out what he wants to do this offseason as he does it, I think.

I’m waiting for the first Jim Mora interview to hear about the type of play he wants out of the team, especially defensively. Mora seems like he’ll open up a bit more than Ruskell.

at least, being self-aware enough to criticize himself on how that went down.

and remembered, as you point out above, that he had said essentially the same thing about Alexander… then Alexander was gone. If I was Hasselbeck I wouldn’t come away from those comments with a lot of confidence about the future.

you all seem to have missed:

-He blames most of the failure on injuries,

-Secondarily, these guys have played better (mostly the defense), they know it and are taking responsibility for it and are determined to do better and despite the losing, things never got divisive in the locker room therefore…

-Attitude changes, both in both the players and overall scheme should produce contenders again next season, so…

-tweaking of personnel, not wholesale changes will be made

The personnel tweaks will be

-Better pass rush since the pressure game is the heart of his defensive philosophy
-More speed, not more size
-Better defensive coaching philosophy, particularly being more attacking
-Improved run game (Don’t be surprised by a dramatic addition to the RB corps)
-The WR corps will definitely get beefed up
-He expects an immediate impact player from the #4 pick
-It’s Mare’s job to lose
-He believes in the OL depth
-He believes Branch will do well next season because he has “finally” learned the offense
-The current personnel overall pretty much fit the future schemes coming in

Kerney and Jones are progressing ahead of schedule. He thinks Walt will be ready.

One reason I call these “almost facts” is that things are always fluid in the GM business. a player on the team might decline unexpectedly in the offseason, a player might come available that they can’t pass up, etc, so nothing is in stone, but at least part of his wish list is clear.

he’s not sure what he can do, not because he doesn’t want to reveal what he’s going to do. All the stuff I listed above was pretty clear, no double talk. You’ll notice I didn’t include anything specific about Hasselbeck, because there was some double talk there. Everything I listed above has an enlightening aspect to it. For example:

All of the above is coming from pure Ruskell now. No Holmgren. We’ve never really known before what Holmgren was influencing and what he wasn’t.

Here’s what he said about the running backs:

On whether Greg Knapp’s emphasis is more on the run game than the passing game: "It could. You know, what they’re going to do a really good job of is based on the personnel. What can we do based on our personnel? [It’s] not so much, ‘Okay, just get the guys that fit our scheme.’ [It’s more about,] ‘Who do we have here, and what are we going to best be able to do?’ Obviously, with some of the things that we’ve done with the people we’ve brought in with the run game, with the addition of Mike Solari and Greg Knapp—those two guys worked together as well in San Francisco—I think we continue to improve our run game. I’m very much a believer in the run game, as is Jim, and if you get the run game going, and the defense, you look at a lot of these playoff teams, that’s a formula that works."’

This tells us that they are probably going to drop either Mo or Jones and pick up someone with great potential to have impact. Maybe not the first rounder, but possiblly the second or third, or a good UFA.

Here’s what he said about the WR corps, which is more direct:

On how, in previous years, he’s redone a few different position groups, like the linebackers and running backs, and whether that is in the cards this year: "I don’t think to that scale. I know this: we don’t want to get caught with the situation we had at receiver going into this year. That was more driven by the health deals, and we’ve got some guys that are recovering. But I wouldn’t put it to that level. That would be a point of emphasis."

So he’s not going to wipe out the WR corps, but he is going to make sure they aren’t low on serviceable vets like they were going into the season.

I could illustrate the rest of the stuff, but I’d rather point out that I think he’s wrong about the run game. Teams like New England and NY, the most recent successful NFL teams, have strong pass games more than strong run games, especially New England.