NFL Offseason: Garbage time

January 13, 2013 - Falcons 30, Seahawks 28.

Reset. Season is over, offseason begins. Days from loss in Atlanta until Week 1 of the 2013 season: 239. Time to start anew and put the kids to bed, some people who have waited their entire lives waiting for a Seahawks Super Bowl will pass away before the next year. We mourn them.

Ravens beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl. We cheer. 218 days until the Seahawks play the Panthers in Week 1.

Free agency, trades, Percy Harvin, Cliff Avril, Michael Bennett, Antoine Winfield. We tweet. "Suck it, NFL!" "SEA-PER BOWL!" "Offseason Champions!" A good team gets gooder. We're happy. Also, Brady Quinn somehow sneaks in there. 144 days from the day that Winfield signs until Week 1.

The draft. Preparation. Senior Bowl. Combine. Pro Day. Drug tests. Confessions, impressions, digressions. Rumors, trades, shakers and/or movers. Day one passes. A boy named Christine. Eleven new team members, not counting ones that were not drafted and likely will not be more than summer buddies. Plans to "meet up at TGI Friday's later!" The collective is basically set. Start paring 91 to 53. Days from end of draft until Carolina (which is the new Chicago): 134.

The dust settles. We grade the rookies. It doesn't matter but we did it anyway. The excitement of the new players subsides. Mini-camps on the horizon. Very little else to talk about. Some of us have survived until May 3rd, when the playoffs have concluded, free agency is all but over for the Seahawks, the draft is complete. And 300 stories about Tim Tebow.

I mourn us.

128 days until the Panthers.