Solving Seattle's Quarterback Dilemma

I know Schneider and Carroll are ego driven guys, but they each need a slice of humble-pie.
I’m just a fan, but I can see Tavaris Jackson is going to take this team farther down than it is now. I’m not sure why “competition” was so important at every other position besides QB. I thought it wasa EXTREMELY unfair to Whitehurst to be treated just like Pete Carroll & John Schneider were complaining about how Jackson was treated in Minnesota. They did exactly the same thing to Whitehurst – the exact same thing

Not that Whitehurst doesn’t deserve a shot, he does, we still don’t really know what we have in him. But, it’s obvious they’ve soured on Charlie, I doubt they’d be willing to make that trade with SD again, so that’s a miss.

It doesn’t bode well for the future.

before game one that they’d talked themselves into a corner with TJ and an injury was there only way out. I expect it to be an injury of the concussion variety that can linger and can’t really be verified.

The only other conclusion I can come to is that they wrote the season off intentionally.

Assuming there was some logic behind the decision, why was that needed or beneficial to anyone? Really strange decision.

the NFL has ever known? Sounds rather hyperbolic.

…is that it could have been done after the second preseason game, and a move made prior to the start of the season.

That would have been best for everyone involved, with the possible exception of TJax (and TJax has not earned any more professional consideration).

Welcome

then I’d full expect to see him in against Arizona. I don’t think saving face really comes into the equation with PC. He’s talked up the likes of Pistol and Branch before trading them, so I find it hard to believe public perception influences their decisions. The Florio’s of the World would delight in pointing out the hypocrisy of our staff “shitting on” T-Jax after complaining about how the Vikes treated him, but would they care? At the end of the day, Seahawks fans are the people they should be worried about, and there would likely be no tears shed if the decision was made to go with Charlie. Nice article by the way.

…unless you’re talking golf or home run derby, both of which the guy clearly dominates.

While I agree JSPC’s decision to make TJack the starter from the onset while deriding the Vikings organization was stupid and wrong, I don’t think we can or should expect much from this team regardless of who is under center. What would starting Clipboard Jesus accomplish other than signaling that the front office is panicking? Look, we can all agree that expectations for this team were pretty low to begin with (unless we’re talking the Andrew Luck sweepstakes). The loss of credibility brought about by a QB change after only two weeks following the lockout-driven clusterfuck would have a much more detrimental impact on the organization than the potential upside CW could have.

The best-case scenario would find the ‘Hawks 1-1 right now (they had something like a .0000003% chance of winning in Pittsburgh). They’d still only be a 5-6 win team (which sadly would probably get it done in the NFC West), and they’d still be pretty shitty. Winning now would do nothing for the future of the organization. Look, I wouldn’t trade last year in for anything (save 2005), but I would trade another year of a 7-9 playoff team for a better draft pick and long-term growth/success for the organization.

What I mean is that he wants to develop all the rest of the offense. The sooner the line starts to gel and make the right line calls, the sooner we are competitve. The sooner that the WRs and QB are reading blitz the same, the sooner that we are competitive. The sooner that all of the different pieces of the offense learn together the better off that we will be in the long run. From the fans perspective its not fun to watch, but better in play execution isn’t necessarily what will help this happen faster. If TJ was running around and making it up as he went we might end up more competetive, but the rest of the offense didn’t really see what they needed to except for how to run a pickup game. TJ knows the offense and can make the right calls at the line, he just sucks once the ball is snapped. For now though, the rest of the offense is learning and developing and not just playing backyard football.
At least thats how I am going to justify TJ starting in my mind this weekend.

is the new “it’s the o-line” or “it’s just an off year” for excusing Hasselbeck for playing like shit for 3 years. I’d really like an argument against TJax being better then Whitehurst because I have yet to see one.

Charlie outplayed TJax in every preseason game this year and in his two starts last year with an offensive coordinator that is no longer here or serving that same position in the NFL, played average to below average.

TJax has played this poorly on a team that is stacked with talent in Minnesota running the same scheme. Charlie has never played in this scheme, how can we say that his improvements in the preseason with progressions and pocket precense are not real actual improvements? We can’t.

I don’t understand why Whitehurst isn’t the answer if the question is can we play better today? Running the same exact offense for 4 preseason games, Whitehurst outperformed TJax, simple as that. You can bang the “it’s only preseason drum” but the skills that he showed were repeatable regardless of what month the games were played in.

I think they thought they had a better chance at being competitive with Jackson, I thought they did too at first, but that’s proving to not be the case. Jackson has two more games I think.

New and different, for sure. But they were basically doing what they could to make our team better. Screw what everyone else thought, they were going to pump up TJax’s confidence. Because that can only help his play. It failed, and now they should be considering dumping him. And screw the reactions, because it’s their job to win games. The gambit failed, and now they have to move on as soon as possible. I still think they’ll probably wait until the bye week though. We’ll see I guess.

A twist is that this is happening in Seattle. We all know the news doesn’t care at all about Seattle sports, so a sudden dumping of TJ is likely to be met with a small post about the change hidden deep in the confines of ESPN. And that’ll be the end of it. Probably a post from Sando as well. But they simply won’t care because they never do. For once it might work out in our favor.

that is, i’m not totally sure that the seahawks actually want to win. going with jackson gives the team plausible deniability when it comes to competing this year when i’m sure they’d be just as happy to lose and lose big. there’s an awfully big carrot sitting out there if they can suck this bad all season.

other moves they’ve made make me think this is a legit possibility because anyone that might have helped them win this year was shuffled out the door in favor of younger players. the beauty of the team is though, that even if they make the switch to clipboard jesus i think the odds of first overall pick are roughly the same.

He’ll get two games at home (to match starting on the road 2x). That should also help settle the OL a little bit. They looked decent in one of the more hostile environments in the NFL in Pittsburgh. I also don’t expect they’ll throw Charlie to the wolves against the Giants on the road, not after the way the last game last year went.

After that, we’ll have the bye week to get Charlie up to speed with the #1s. Charlie only really had chemistry with the #2 offense in the past. An extra week with the 1s will help get everyone on the same page, along with a softer landing at Cleveland and then at home vs. Cinci.

I think he’s a $4 million punching bag.

And believe it or not, sticking with Jackson just might be the best thing to do for this franchise, for the long term.

And I would be satisfied with just the decisive and accurate part. If Whitehurst starts a game, be it next week or sometime after and performs marginally or even far better than Jackson and we lose that game anyway, I say he’s our QB until he gets injured or we find someone better.

(folks who like cheesy sci-fi movies should get the reference on that last sentence)

How long will it take for the chants of “Charlie! Charlie!” to resound throughout Qwest CLink?

but I don’t see how it really hurts us. I expected this year to be utterly horrible. We are not contenders. Now is the time to experiment. Q/PM might not be playing for a draft pick but they can’t help but hope for one.

Besides, say all you want about Jackson, dude’s taken some hits. We need someone back there that can do that until our line gels.

…after watching Romo’s GREAT effort to win in over-time, and Cam Newton’s amazing first 2 starts, and the likes of Henne and Fitzpatrick play, let alone the greatness of Rodgers, Brady and Rivers, and the future stars Bradford and Stafford, and even Grossman playing well (although Orton has been a bit of a disappointment) its frustrating to field such an inferior talent as TJax when we know (some of us) that a better option sits on the bench.

I don’t even know how well CW would do. Maybe he crashes and burns, and looks no better then the league’s worst. But everything we have seen and know says otherwise.

PC has something against CW, and that means something, in that the rest of us on the outside looking in are missing an important ingredient to this entire decision process about who starts at QB, and it could be that if we knew what PC knew, we’d be reconciled to TJax.

But damn, I miss big passing plays. Did you see Bradford wing the ball last night? Eli looked suckish, but that’s not unusual.