Onward and upward

The Golden Gate Bridge is second-most used site for suicide attempts in the world. I’m not telling you this so you can go look up the one nearest to you after the Seahawks lost to the Falcons 36-20 on Saturday, ending their season, but for another reason. There is a 2006 documentary about this called The Bridge and one of my favorite quotes of all-time comes from it.

Ken Baldwin, a survivor of the jump (it’s estimated the 98-percent of all suicide attempts/falls from the Golden Gate Bridge are successful) recalled the moment he had leapt:

“I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable — except for having just jumped.”

That’s a really powerful statement. Much more powerful than what I would need to illustrate my point about something as silly as a football team, but I want to use it anyway. Everything about the Seahawks that seems unfixable is totally fixable. Everything that’s wrong with them can be fixed in the offseason, to enough of a degree to make them the best team in the NFL again, and fast. The things that aren’t wrong with them are what makes them a perennial contender:

• Most important of all, they don’t have bad ownership. Like San Francisco’s Jed York said, he isn’t going to fire himself. If you have a bad owner, you’re screwed. Just ask St. Louis, San Diego, and Oakland. In the regard of Seattle having the richest owner in the game, as well as one who really really likes to win, the Seahawks are lucky to have Paul Allen.
• They have a great coach/VP and general manager. If you don’t believe this about Pete Carroll and John Schneider, you don’t have good sports opinions. Sorry, I know that sounds like the harshest insult of all-time, but it’s true. Your sports opinions are bad.
• They have a franchise quarterback. Russell Wilson had more mistakes this year than usual, which meant that he had like 120% fewer mistakes than an average QB. About 10 teams in the NFL are as set at quarterback as Seattle is. And that’s special.
• As you go down the list of other players on the team, like Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett, Kam Chancellor, Doug Baldwin, Cliff Avril, Bobby Wagner, Jimmy Graham, Thomas Rawls, you start to see that even if they had those first three things they’d be starting from a better place than 75% of all franchises. With those guys and a bunch more, they’re doing better than almost all other teams. Not all. But almost all.
• Earl Thomas and Tyler Lockett will be back. Bones heal as easy as anything that ails anyone in life.
• Paul Richardson is actually phenomenal.
• The front office tends to react to problems in major ways. The outcry against the offensive line will result in the Seahawks making a big move or three with their offensive line. That is something I truly believe.
• Seattle picks earlier in the draft than the Rams this year. How about that?

Five straight trips to the postseason, five straight trips to the divisional round, one really obvious problem to address, a few other considerable but less serious things, and a whole mess of concerns that the Seahawks don’t have because they have Allen, Carroll, Schneider, and Wilson. Onward and upward in 2017.

Don’t jump.