While rarely informative, I always enjoy hearing athletes talk*. While some of that stems from the entertainment value inherent in watching someone like Chris "Birdman" Anderson try to deliver holiday greetings (or Brandon Jennings running his mouth), these opportunities give you a better idea of the person in question. John Carlson took three minutes out of his life to talk to ESPN, and I think you'll enjoy hearing what he has to say. The content is fairly standard, but then again you shouldn't expect to learn Seahawks football strategy from one of these blurbs. More than anything, it's a chance to learn that John Carlson sounds like (sample size: three minutes) a well-grounded and intelligent young man.

* The notabe exception being on-court postgame interviews. Even the most well-spoken athletes (Tim Duncan comes to mind) just refuse to give any information away despite the labored insistence of the reporter.It's like watching a methed-up Quebecois try to bleed maple syrup from a spruce tree.

I'll keep it brief as I'm limited on time this morning. Football Outsiders (Aaron Schatz, specifically) assembled a list of the 25 most overrated and 25 most underrated players of the last decade. Thanks to ESPN snapping up FO, you'll need to be an Insider to view all 25 and the explanations, but the top 10 from each group are listed. Any surprises on that list for you? It warms my heart to see the Halls (Dante and DeAngelo) sharing adjoining suites in the top 10.

If we were to compile a list of the most overrated and most underrated Seahawks in the last decade, who deserves a mention?

More photos » by Elaine Thompson - AP

"Hmm, Dockett gets to the QB 44% of the time he beats his lineman. This referee has been a little slow to notice my hand placement, and Dockett already has his shoulder by me. The coordinates of the corresponding point are then below a line with slope .81, so I'd better grab that mofo. Why is Matt on the ground holding his knee?" (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

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Probability is neat. Brian Burke, the wizard behind the Advanced NFL Stats studies, strikes again. If you don't know the drill by now (follow the link!), you probably voted "13-14" on the poll yesterday. Also, you should stay away from sharp objects.

Using conditional probabilities based on first quarter game data, Burke shows that holding is actually an advantageous strategy more often than you'd think. The math involved is pretty straightforward, so go read. This boils down to game theory that can't possibly be used in a game situation as the odds of holding detection are not known aquantity. Holding detection involves all sorts of factors, like the egregiousness of the hold and the visibility of the interaction to the corresponding referee. Still, it makes an interesting case study. If you assume that getting beat results in a sack even 30% of the time, it's only worth holding if you the ref will blow the whistle 25% of the time or less. Bump  p(sack | beat) up to 50% and you'd still have to hope the ref swallows his whistle on all but 40% of holds. Now assume your quarterback enjoys holding the ball and DeMarcus Ware is currently on his way by you (let's be honest, you aren't stopping Ware). Take him down.

It's too early in the offseason to have a serious go at looking at schedules in the attempt to figure out how many games the Seahawks can expect to realistically win. Sure, part of that is the general uncertainty with respect to NFL teams, but  the Hawks have way too many moving parts to know what to expect in the upcoming season. It's pretty easy to envision scenarios in which the Hawks win as few as five games or as many as 10-11 (that's where the poll comes in).  A piece at the SF Examiner got me thinking about parity; what is a realistic expectation for how many wins it will take to take the NFC West?

Completely ignoring games outside of the division, it's fair to expect some better competition within the West. The Rams, 49ers, and Seahawks were all in the bottom 8 in Weighted Team DVOA last year. That's bad. The Cardinals? Only the 20th best DVOA. That's a bad division. With even some minor progress by the 49ers and Rams, win expectations decrease for both the Seahawks and the Cardinals. For the sake of argument, let's say it takes 9.5 wins to make the playoffs out of the West.

Over the last couple of weeks, John has occasionally put up a FanShot with a Win Probability graph from Advanced NFL Stats. As cool as those charts are, Advanced NFL Stats has taken it to another level. Using the WP numbers already in place, they have created Excitment Index and Comeback Factor scores for every game since 2000. Maybe you should have a seat and take some deep breaths.This is just way too cool to take standing up.

The comeback index was easy. For any given game, the 'CBF' is based on the lowest win probability at any point for the ultimate winner. To make bigger comebacks have bigger CBFs, I made CBF be the inverse of the lowest WP.

For example, if a team is down by 10 with 10 minutes left in the 4th quarter, they'd have around a 0.13 WP. This means the trailing team has a 1 in 8 chance of winning, and the CBF is therefore 8. A team that comes back from a 0.01 WP, would have a CBF of 100, the largest possible.

That's a logical way to measure the magnitude of a comeback,  but how would one measure the excitement of an NFL game?

EI is simply the sum of the WP graph's movement throughout a game. That's it. Despite the simplicity, this method captures much of what makes a game interesting. Games with large swings in WP will end up with large EIs, while blow-out games where the WP quickly climbs to 0.95 for one team will have smaller EIs.

What are the top 5 most exciting Seahawks games since 2000? J.T. O'Sullivan is a jerk.

More photos » by Ted S. Warren - AP

Billy McMullen will have to do a lot more of what it looks like he is about to do if he intends to do what it looks like he is about to do on an NFL roster in 2009 (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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Every so often, Eric Williams puts together a look at the Seahawk roster and how the various positions shake out. He provides the average number of players kept at each position in the past, and who he believes is safe, on the bubble, or in trouble. Since the man has a full time job covering the Hawks, it's interesting to see his observations set out in this format. You will click through and read the entire piece because that's how you were brought up.

A few positions have little intrigue to them:

• QB. We know who the starting and second string QBs will be, and it's down to Jeff Rowe and Mike Teel to figure out who plays third fiddle. I'm rooting for Teel.
• RB. While Eric has five locks at running back with Devin Moore and David Kirtman in the hunt, I can't imagine a situation in which Moore loses out to Kirtman. With Schmitt and Griffith on the roster in a mostly one back offense, it makes little sense to carry a third FB. If the Hawks keep six running backs, Moore should be  the guy.
  
• Offensive line. Wrotto should make the cut, and that would leave Williams and Vallos vying for a potential last spot.
  

Positions of slightly more intrigue:

• Cornerback. Kelly Jennings is an almost guaranteed 5th wheel on a team that usually keeps 4.5 corners. I guess that makes sense, as Jennings is exactly half of a corner.
  
• Safety. Which of the three young safeties will hit the practice squad and who will stick around?
  
• Wideout. Outside of the obvious four, the Hawks will have a lot of paring down to do out of the rest of the underachievers. In other exciting news, two white men try to make like Bill Schroeder*.
  

What roster spot battle most makes your pulse quicken?

*Poor Bill Schroeder. From his Wiki page:

Roger Goodell has become notorious for doling out fines and suspensions to NFL Players. He has drawn criticism from a fair number of players for the zeal and inconsistency with which he hands down fines for hard hits, even hits that are deemed legal by the referees on the field. While the line between what is and isn't a legal hit has become murkier, one thing is abundantly clear: Roger Goodell wants his league to be straight-laced.

I've never met Donte Stallworth. I saw him play a few times in college, and I've seen a few of his games in the NFL. I don't know if he speaks with a Scottish accent or prefers soy milk to dairy. Like everyone else, I've read the publicly released facts of the incident he was involved in. Before spending his court-determined 30 days in jail, a contrite Stallworth made amends with the family of the man he struck and killed. That doesn't in any way excuse what happened, but it does show that Stallworth at least cares enough to try. What you may not have yet seen is that Stallworth has been suspended indefinitely by the league.

After Lofa Tatupu was arrested for a DUI, he received no suspension. Odell Thurman initially received a 4-game suspension for his latest DUI, which then was stretched into a year because of his fairly extensive history. Jared Allen received a 4-game suspension only after his second DUI within a year. Marshawn Lynch was involed in a hit-and-run incident and received only 3 games of suspension. I understand that Stallworth's actions had a much more grave outcome, but the mistake he made is identical to that of the other four players while the punishment will likely be vastly different.

The suspension then is based not just on the decisionmaking of Stallworth but rather on the bad luck of the circumstances. What happened is sad and regrettable, but to some extent Stallworth is being punished for generating bad PR. I understand that it's within Goodell's right as Commissioner to make that call, but I'd like consistency out of the man running the league. Just because Jared Allen and Odell Thurman were lucky enough to not hit someone doesn't mean they made better decisions. In fact, they made the same bad decision multiple times. Lynch hit a pedestrian and drove off without accepting responsibility for his actions, yet somehow it's Stallworth and his zero prior incidents are set to become an example of the league.

*It's worth noting that I have very little sympathy for Stallworth. He will have to live with this for the rest of his life, and hopefully he does something good with that.

Two weeks ago, we looked at how teams manage their salary cap. Since the Hawks have not yet signed all of their players, let's take a look at how teams generally structure deals for players taken in the second day of the draft. J.I. Halsell, the FO salary cap guru, is about to drop some knowledge all over you. I'll try to encapsulate the general gist of the piece, but do read it through in its entirety; I learned something and you just might too.

In terms of the mechanics of the deal, the first-round contracts are the most complex. Second-round contracts are not as complex as first-rounders; however, second-round contracts are structured differently than those of rounds three through seven. Contracts for third- through seventh-rounders all have pretty much the same structure, with the only difference being the duration of the contract.

Teams either sign their second-day picks to three- or four-year deals. While the shorter deals are cheaper up front, the fourth year provides teams with an extra year of team control over their players. For players that don't pan out, the fourth year is disadvantageous from a team perspective. Staving off free agency for another year is quite valuable if a player does produce, however.

Years one through three of both contracts are for a minimum annual salary; in year four, though, things get interesting. In Year Four of the four-year rookie contract, there is a salary escalator that, in the majority of instances, allows the player's salary of $565,000 in 2012 to adjust to the restricted free agency Original Round Tender (in 2012 this amount is $1,308,000) if they achieve certain performances in the first three years of the contract. Additionally, some clubs allow for escalation to other dollar amounts or other RFA levels such as the First Round Tender (in 2012 this amount is $2,846,000). The performance mechanism to induce the escalation is a combination of the player's participation percentage and the club's improvement in one of three negotiated statistical categories.

Beyond the percentage of plays a draftee plays in, teams generally have to make statistical improvements in some categories for the player to earn more money. If the team stinks and continues to stink, the player's contract won't get escalated. What I find interesting is that the difference in the number of years is not a player-by-player decision or even a year-to-year decision by teams. A handful of teams only negotiate three-year deals with their later picks, and the rest only negotiate four-year deals. The Seahawks are in the four-year group. Isn't learning fun?