Before the season started, Football Outsiders projected Seattle to win 9.9 games.
As a Seahawks analyst, I analyzed those things Football Outsiders' excellent system couldn't easily factor in: the weaknesses lost, like Shaun Alexander and Chris Gray, and the strength or their draft class, good. I was justifiably optimistic about this season.
Five games in, I have no rational hope for this team. Something has invaded this organization, its coaching, its talent, its management, that has poisoned it to its core. It's no longer a matter of a good team underachieving, this is a bad team playing to form. If I could pin this on one man or even a few, if I could see a way to fix this team, or scapegoat someone or find not an easy solution, but any solution, I would, but Seattle is failing in so many ways, so often, and the root causes are so disguised, the Seahawks have become a team I can't cure or even recognize.
Green Bay is a mediocre team that's banged up and thin at key positions and they just took Seattle to the woodshed. At home. Did Charlie Frye starting contribute to that? Yes, but Frye is a Seattle's backup quarterback. That's a decision the team made and today it paid dividends. One could see it as a management mistake, or one could see it for what I think it is: constructing a team for the future. Tim Ruskell and company didn't care he had a liability at backup quarterback because Frye can be gone after this season. When Mike Holmgren's gone. And whatever it is Ruskell is building towards can begin to emerge.
Because the myth of Seattle going out on top, putting it all together to give one back for Holmy, has been debunked in searing fashion. Pragmatically, I think Mike Holmgren retires before the season is over. If I had money and no heart, I'd put it on Seattle winning six. But I'm irrational and passionate and stupid enough to care so much about a football team, and improbable and probably-shouldn't-be has about defined my whole damn existence so you'll excuse the tiny death I endure each Sunday because I still expect this fucking team to win.
Game Ball: Gonna have to start giving these out on losers too, so game ball goes to Josh Wilson who I think still plays a major part in Seattle's future. Wilson was nails in the return game and avoided a Meadowlands style smoking by Greg Jennings and the Packers.