Field Gulls Podcast: On Being a Fan

I don’t see them stuck with Hasselbeck. I mean you make a good point and it’s a point I made earlier this year. This team would have been better having been forced to start whitehurst through injury. I know, I’m classless because I’m clearly cheering for injury as I was accused of, but an injury would have ended any of the speculation and let the coaching staff off the hook.

However, You could resign Matt and load the position with a young guy from the draft, while still pumping young talent out of the draft and snagging high value cheap talents that do key things like Raheem Brock and Brandon Stokely.

….nice.

I agree with your sentiments. No matter how you try to sugar-coat it, the Seahawks are a bad team right now. Even if we do make the playoffs, who cares? I am sure some people will justify the inconsequential playoff run by saying “Good teams make the playoffs. The Seahawks made the playoffs. Therefore, they are a good team”. We aren’t going to beat the Eagles, Packers, Falcons, or Saints of the league. I’d rather field a good team with a chance of making a playoff run, than a bad team sputtering in mediocrity with glimpses of hope that are actually just a product of our terrible division.

With that said, I like what Pete Carroll has done thus far. And I think that John Schneider knows that in order to build a great football team, you need good young talent that can enter their prime at around the same time. Schneider has a good eye for talent. I think in 2-3 years we can become a competent team again. Hopefully sooner than later.

My last point brings up what you talked about John, what is the point of watching if you know you aren’t going to win championships for years to come? I think that not only is it the fact that people can be emotionally(and geographically) tied with a team, but also people don’t want to be the band wagoner fan. They think that in order to to be a true fan you must not only cherish the good times, but also stick around and endure the suffering of the rebuilding years. For the most part, I agree with that. I take pride in being a Seahawks fan because it means I am not like that guy who just suddenly started wearing Red Sox clothing after 2004. “What? I’ve always been a fan!”. The Seahawks are and will always be my team.

Related story: During my senior year in high school(earlier this year), I was talking with my friend Lauren at lunch. She was cute, I had a little crush on her, but I digress. We were talking about sports, and she said she liked football. So, I asked, which NFL team is your favorite? She replied “The Patriots”. To which I then asked, do you only like the Patriots because you think Tom Brady is good looking? She laughed and said “A little bit, yeah”. She then asked me my favorite, and I said the Seahawks. She laughed and said “why do you like them? They are terrible!”. I wanted to explain what fandom is, but I realized it would be to no avail.

I want the Seahawks to be the juggernaut that everyone hates. I want them to be the team who can put up 45 points on you just because they want to. I want the Seahawks, my Seahawks, to be great again.

You honestly echoed a lot of my concerns for this team at this point. I think we’re a few years away from meaningful football, but I do think we have the right front office to get us there.

…is that, mediocre or no, it’s not very easy to get a good QB. I think you’re right that it’s obvious that Hass is not a good QB right now either but things can still get a lot, lot worse. I’d go so far as to say that if you look at those teams that scuffle year in and year out, it’s often because they can’t find a quarterback worth his weight in rice cakes. Detroit had the Joey Heisman debacle. The Seahawks in the 90s had Kelly Stouffer and then Rick Mirer that they had to work through before finding guys who at least wouldn’t actively hurt them. You’ve got the 9ers with Alex Smith, the Texans with David Carr, the Bills with JP Losman. A lot of that is probably due to not-great QBs looking even worse because of bad supporting casts but those guys definitely didn’t help.

That, I think, is what kind of dismays me about this. Not that Hasselbeck is still awesome or whatever, but that we’re facing cutting ties with the third really solid QB in this team’s 34 year history and we don’t have anything right now on the horizon to replace him. Does Mike Williams stick around and/or stay in shape if nobody can get the ball to him? Do the issues with the line get better or worse with a QB less experienced at handling the pass rush?

I guess that’s why they hired Pete Carroll, but it’s not going to be easy. I know I sound a little like a broken record here but that’s also why I was hoping they’d pick up Matt Leinart when Arizona cut him; not because he was going to immediately replace Hasselbeck but because Carroll presumably knows how to make him look good.

Maybe I shouldn’t compare Schneider/Carroll to Ruskell, but I felt “win now and eff the future” was the Ruskell front office modus operandi. To be fair, he wasn’t brought to town to build for the future.

On the other hand, I’ve never felt that with this front office despite the “win forever” Tony Robbins sloganeering. I think their rhetoric about winning and being competitive on day 1 is pretty boilerplate NFL front office hoo hah.

In practice though, I’m not sure that “win now” is Schneider’s and Carroll’s collective blind spot as much as it may be commitment to their scheme. They part ways with guys who don’t fit the scheme with impunity it feels like. So it’s true that Seattle is playing a ton of established veterans™ but that’s what you get in the market for replacement level talent. Seattle has probably done as good a job as any front office in finding guys from that pool who are young enough to have upside.

Seattle may have a buttload of old, replacement level talent but it’s really not committed to any of it for any length of time. They haven’t extended anyone other than Whitehurst and Heater—to very short extensions—and haven’t even put out feelers about re-signing Hass as far as I know. Put it this way, I’ll be worried if these guys start making noises about extending Clemons.