Requiem for an Era

D’oh.

I’ve come to realize recently how extremely blessed I am to be a Seattle sports fan, and primarily because of people like John Morgan, Jeff Sullivan, and Dave Cameron. I love the fact that, after a day like yesterday, I can come here and read such well-versed, thoughful expositions of my own mental wranglings.

I could not care less who is under center for the next 2 games. What I want to see as a long-suffering fan of this team is Luck or Newton or Locker or anyone else we deem worthy smiling, putting on a Seahawks hat, and holding up a Seahawks jersey on draft day. In the first round.

Whitehurst!

So “we” do not necessarily want Charlie. If “we” means Fieldgulls that is fine, I can check back in the offseason or next year when this whole Hass v. Charlie argument is done.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/seahawksblog/2013725288_matthasselbecktoremainseattlesstartingquarterback.html

Winning games this year might have hurt the Seahawks. Or just being in the NFC West.

With as stubborn as they’ve been at the QB position this year, I’ve got to imagine they’ll be just as stubborn, or moreso, when it comes to Charlie Whitehurst in 2011, a player they targeted and invested a lot into via trade.

I mean … they’ve got no strings attached to Matt Hasselbeck, yet he’s been playing TERRIBLE football and he’s still the starter, come week 16.

Is Hasselbeck supposed to bench himself? Try harder? I was at the game and was shocked when the fans started chanting for Charlie. It is ok to want to see Charlie but I don’t see the point in pissing on Matt on his way out of the game.

He’s doing the exact opposite Carol is preaching. I don’t see why he should still be starting.

I don’t care what reasoning they have, if they think Matt can win the last two games then I am all for it. I assume they are making that decision based on taking the pulse of the coaches, players, and qb’s themselves. If they decided to go with Charlie I would have been ok with that too, seeing what he was made of would be a bonus. Bottom line for me as one of the consumers John wrote about is that I want them to do what they can to win.

Is he still going to be the #1 starter in week 17, our most important game of the season (most likely)?

Shoot! I had assumed we were all huge ‘Bloodsport’ fans and were chanting “Chong Li! Chong Li!”

Walter Jones was a “better” player. Better is in quotes because comparing QB to LT.. Walter Jones is a Hall of Fame player. Matt is a Hall of Really Good player. I think we tend to forget how rare it is for a QB to rightfully start in the NFL for the better part of a decade.

But Matt is my favorite Hawk ever.

No player is bigger than the team. Pete.. you have almost all of Seahawks nation behind you to bench Matt. Let’s move on.

we need to raise our expectations and standards. Hey, Matt was a good QB but let’s put it in perspective. He’s been our starting QB for 10 seasons. In that time he has won ZERO championships, played for one but lost. He has rarely performed under pressure a la the “we want the ball and we’re gonna score” debacle. He’s always been turnover prone and thrown terrible long balls. But the way some fans are acting, you’d swear that we were watching the downfall of the greatest quarterback who ever lived and we are not. I’m not trying to be slam the guy, but the Matt-worship needs to stop. No other city would be lamenting this decision like we are.

He’s approaching Old Yeller territory.

I threw my remote through the wall when they drafted Curry and passed on Sanchez because “quarter back wasn’t a problem yet” when it was damn obvious that Matt’s decline was hitting an extreme negative curve.

Matt will forever be to me: “we want the ball and we’re gonna score”. Never quite good enough to be a stone cold killer, just a goofy likable over achiever.

And for that matter, he’s no Dave Krieg. Krieg, like Favre would spit his teeth out in your face if you punched him in the mouth. Matt can’t chew nails.

Seattle fans need to demand more, you get more when you do. Like Philly, NE, Dallas: heads roll when they need to.

Just like when people started questioning Shaun’s RB abilities and gave all the credit to the line, now we’re debating if Matt was ever really good.

Hanging on for too long and declining badly on every play changes opinion quickly.

Matt is another Shaun and it might be worse.

As a fan this is what I want each year. Every team has one main goal at the beginning of the season – make the playoffs. We are on the cusp of of qualifying as a result of a completing inept division. Once you make the playoffs, anything can happen. Will we get smoked by the Saints at home? Probably. Could we have a defensive TD and a special teams TD and Brees get hurt? Who the hell knows. Make the playoffs..see what happens.

Putting in Whitehurst quarantees the team does not make the playoffs. This is justified by Carroll’s refusal to replace Hasselbeck to this point. Whitehurst has had countless preseason games, practices, meetings, etc. to prove he should be leading a team. He isn’t; and never will be.

I’m not in the pro-Hasselbeck camp. I’m in the NO Whitehurst camp.

Just a few games ago their fans were chanting very loudly for David Carr of all QB’s during a painful game on national television when Alex Smith was doing his usual Jeckyll and Hyde routine…Smith gets hurt they go with Troy Smith, Alex Smith gets healthy and routs the Seahawks and bang they all love him again. We all loved Hasselbeck this year when he carried us against Chicago and Arizona, most of us have loathed him over the last 3 or 4 games. But all it takes is one strong game and half of everyone will be back on his bandwagon. I will not argue that Hasselbeck’s career is more than likely over after this season. But I am still adamant that while we are still in the playoff hunt we’ve got to stick with the guy who has been there before. Hasselbeck is the heart and soul of the team. If we make the playoffs I’d rather have a guy at the helm who knows how to handle the pressure than someone who had never played in the regular season before this year. It’s probably loyalty to a fault, but I don’t care I still think Hasselbeck gives us the best chance to win. Scrounge up some sort of a running game to take the pressure off of Hasselbeck and his performance will drastically improve I believe.

when we do finally walk away from Hasselbeck’s mediocrity, it will hurt and be painful, and you’ll swear you can never get through it, and nothing will ever be the same.

Then the sun will come out, the tide will come in, a new better quarterback will lead our team, and eventually we’ll get a SB. Not behind Hasselbeck. This we already know, as he couldn’t get us there with a better supporting cast.

Probably not behind Charlie, but we don’t know the full ceiling of his potential yet. But we will eventually win one behind not a mediocre QB, but behind an all-time great. And we can start our march toward that future today. Or we can delay it 2 more weeks, or 4 weeks, or for two more years of Hasselbeck.

But that’s all it will be, a delay from the future. Because what it takes to win in this modern version of NFL is not the grizzled spent worn down shell of Matt Hasselbeck.

Since week 1, I’ve been seduced by the gamble of Charlie’s potential. I like the idea of potential, because I’m damn certain we’ve got none if we continue the Hasselpath we’re currently on.

5%

We want a future, not memories. We want change, even if that change doesn’t work right away.

I want to win and keep winning. I want every decision to be part of a process towards that and I always want change when it’s clear something isn’t working the way it should.

I heard interviews with BMW and Carlson after the game and they were fairly clear they wanted Matt to remain the starter.

Personally, I am totally good with a different kind of suck. I get the same feeling watching Matt run onto the field one series after throwing a pick, as I got when Holmgren called the FB draw on 3rd and 10. I’m totally resigned to the fact that the Hawks suck right now, but it would be nice to watch a different kind of suck than we have been seeing the last few years.

I think the decline of Hasselbeck might be the change in coordinators/injuries. In 08 he had the back problem but was great when healthy. In 09 he had another injury but also had a scheme change and a terrible line. This year it’s another scheme change and he’s getting old. You saw when Holmgren left Hasselbeck immediately broke. Maybe he was just a pure WCO QB. Not to pity on the guy, but quite honestly, we should have saw it coming.