We Are Standing on the Edge

There's been so much angst and frustration amongst Seahawks fans in the last few days, I feel sort of obligated to talk about the things I am EXCITED about seeing this season. Here we go:





-I'm excited to take my seat at Qwest Field next Sunday, and scream myself hoarse with 67,000 of my closest friends. No other venue in the NFL is as beautiful as Qwest Field, and no experience in sports is quite like being part of that roaring din when the enemy has the ball on a critical 3rd down in a close game.

-I'm excited to see Matt Hasselbeck try to regain his Holmgren-era Pro Bowl form. Beck is one of my favorite Seahawks of all time, and I'm going to savor every snap he takes this season (in part because every snap he takes might be his last as a Seahawk).

-I'm excited to watch Mike Williams and Leon Washington complete what would be two amazing career resurgences, one from two years OOF (out of football) and one from a horrific broken leg.

-I'm excited to see the development of the young talent that will lead us in the coming decade: We will watch players like Okung, Curry, Thomas and Tate take strides towards (hopefully) long and productive NFL careers.

-I'm excited to watch Seahawks legends Lofa Tatupu and Marcus Trufant return to form, and continue their twin march into the Ring of Honor.

-I'm excited to watch Pete Carrol and Jeremy Bates try crazy new shit. Yes, they will fail sometimes, but it would be nice to see the Seahawks take some risks, and I think that's exactly what we'll see this season.

-I'm excited to see all the unpredictable shit that always happens in an NFL season, for good or ill. We might lose a game or two we are supposed to win, but I'm damn sure we are going to sneak up and steal a couple games no one gives us a chance to win.

-I'm excited for that terrible, queasy, not-at-all pleasurable feeling I get for 3+ hours every Sunday when the Seahawks are playing. That feeling has become very familiar over the last 27 years, and I don't know what I'd do without it.

-I'm excited to watch this team learn and grow. If this is the start of something special, I will be able to say I was there from the start. Imagine if you were a Rams fan in 1997... a Patriots fan in 2000... and so on... and you were able to say "I was there when they started to turn things around. I was there from the beginning."

It begins next Sunday. Will you be there?

Bonus: Radiohead performing "Lucky"

"This is Your Team"

Here's the 53-man roster. What do y'all think?

So long, Housh.

Here I am again, defending a Seahawks front office move I don't like very much. Housh was probably going to be the best receiver on the 2010 Seahawks, even coming off one of the worst seasons of his career. TJH can get open and he can catch the ball in traffic. Those are not skills to be thrown away lightly.

But let's say that Housh matched his 2009 totals this season, while taking playing time away from Deon Butler, Golden Tate and Mike Williams. Let's also say that if the season went south, he started squawking about wanting the ball more, or wanting to be traded to a contender. These are headaches for a team that is looking to get young, and start fresh. The Seahawks are still on the hook for whatever part of $7 million Housh doesn't get from another team, but presumably this move will save a bit of money as well.

Like the Wilson trade, this is a move I don't like, but I can see some of the logic behind it and I can hold off judgement until I see what the results are on the field over the short, medium and long terms.

The reality is Carroll and Schneider are going to be running things for AT LEAST the next two years, even if the team plummets into abysmal crapulence. Most of these moves have left me feeling queasy, but I really have no choice but to hope for the best, and believe that the Master and Commander knows what he's doing. Getting younger and turning over a roster that won 9 games since I started this blog in January 2008 seem like good strategies in theory, but we won't know if the right decisions have been made for some time.

In other news, I feel like a schmuck for trading away Mike Williams in fantasy... Dude might just blow up this year.

What do you think, sirs?

"Where's the Fuck You, Where's the Black and Blue?"

I've been ruminating a lot about the bone-deep problems in the Seahawks fan base since the reactions to the Josh Wilson trade rocketed right into loony "Oh noes! My favorite band is breaking up" territory... I hinted at this notion before, but I wanted to explain it in more detail: Seahawks fans have a confidence problem.

When I was growing up and trying to date girls, I suffered from an overabundance of honesty. I was too honest about how I felt about them, and too honest about how I felt about myself (which wasn't very good). This led them either to bolt for the hills, or quickly and firmly place me in the "friend zone," as they dated giant assholes who had the virtue of self-confidence. I was told over and over that I had to "fake it until I made it."

I never got to that point with women. I was lucky enough to find one who liked me as I was, so I never had to put on that bullshit act. But I think this can be applied to Seahawks fans...

As a group, Seahawks fans have many great qualities. Compared to other NFL fan bases we are more educated, in better shape, more progressive, and REALLY FUCKING LOUD. However, in general, we posess a key quality of the geek and the nerd: A lack of self-confidence.

Just take a quick survey of other NFL fan bases... You will see a blizzard of bullshit false bravado at every turn, from Oakland to Jacksonville. Even if their team is doomed to failure, fans in most other NFL cities would get in your face if you shat on their team, or suggested they were doomed to fail.

I don't get that impression from Seahawks fans over the 27 years I've been a Twelve. Even since I was a kid, I've been appalled at how quickly and easily many other Seahawks fans will just fold in any argument with a fan from another team; how quickly THEY THEMSELVES will refer to the Seahawks with derogatory language like "Sea Chickens" or "Sea shits," etc. (Side note: If you pull that shit around me I will call you on it. And if you try to say that it's ok for you to say things like that about my team because you are a fan, I'll retort "Fuck you. you are very CLEARLY NOT a fan.")

I have friends who root for other NFL teams, and they are unanimously amazed at the negativity Seahawks fans bring into the tournament. Even if I don't believe what I am saying, if anyone fucks with the Seahawks, I will defend my team. I've been doing it since I was 8 years old, surrounded by a shockingly high number of Broncos fans in the Tri-Cities.. I lost untold riches making school yard bets on the Seahawks throughout the 80s and early 90s... I felt I had no choice; I had to back up my Hawks, even if it meant pissing away the quarters I had squirreled away to play Paperboy at 7-11 after school. I've spent the last decade out in the midwest defending the Seahawks from fairly regular & bizarre attacks, at the risk of looking like a goddamn obsessive lunatic.

Is it a Seattle thing? I didn't grow up there, and I've never actually lived there, so maybe there is something about the sports culture that eludes me? I'm open to enlightenment here.

I'm begging all of you... Even if you DON'T believe in this team right now, FAKE it. Tell the asshole at work that you think the Seahawks will make the playoffs. Come to Qwest and scream your fucking head off for 3 hours on gameday. Be a motherfucking mean Soldier of Twelve and stow this fucking insidious negativity, at least in public.

Side note: The title of this post comes from this kick-ass Sleater-Kinney song.. enjoy!

Hell is Other Fans

The Josh Wilson trade isn't my favorite move the Seahawks have ever made, but just from a brief survey of the internets, you'd think we just traded Dave Brown for a laundry hamper full of Ray Lewis' dirty jockstraps.

Look, on the merits, I'll freely admit we didn't get "enough" in return for Wilson. I'll also admit the move doesn't make the team immediately better. However, LEGIONS of Seahawks fans are already not only primed to throw in the towel for the 2010 season, not only declare the Carroll era DOOOOOOOMED, but also DECRY a possible 2010 playoff run as "lucky" and counterproductive to the team's long term interests (I'm not going to directly quote anyone, but spend 5 minutes on any Seahawks blog or message board, and you will see this sentiment bursting off your screen).

Say WHAT?

Here's the reasoning: Since Carroll/Schneider are building the roster "the wrong way," a playoff run in 2010 would simply be a mirage and convince the Front Office they are on the right track, setting us up for even greater failure down the road. The extreme version of this position, which I've seen posted by more than one person, is that making this "wrong move" is so deeply unforgivable, that not even winning XLV would make things entirely right.

I guess the converse of this is that these folks WANT the Seahawks to fail in 2010, so the team will fire Carroll and Schneider and draft their Twilight-like crush Jake Locker... I guess? The whole line of "reasoning" is pretty hysterical and stupid. It's reminiscent of what I've heard liberal friends say in the past, when they refuse to vote for Democrats and hope that under Republican rule things will get SO BAD that the people will finally rise up in glorious revolution (now you know why it's so hard for us Demmy-crats to hold onto power very long... a nice chunk of our base is very immature and short-sighted).

Seriously. My god... do these people have ANY idea how precious and special a playoff appearance is? You know.. that thing that the Seahawks only did ONCE between 1989 and 2002? The assumption that a 9-7 campaign that results in a home playoff game would be "lucking" into the playoffs really fucking irks me too... A 9-7 Seahawks team in 1983 made it all the way to the AFC title game.. a 9-7 team in 2006 was a missed open WR in OT from going to the NFC Championship game. You can't discount these accomplishments as "lucky." And if you do, you're shitting all over the cherished memories of this particular Twelve.

What I read a lot is some variation of "we have to burn the village to save it," that only by hitting rock bottom can we build this glorious, mythical Seahawks dynasty. You know what? Fuck a dynasty. I want ONE FUCKING RING. That's all. I don't care if it comes in a 9-7 campaign where we get hot like the '08 Cardinals, and then suck for half a decade afterwards. Win one goddamn Lombardi Trophy, and then maybe we can have "cloud talk" about building a "dynasty."

The bottom line is that I love the Seahawks, but I can't fucking stand a huge portion of the Seahawks' fan base. I can't fucking take the RELENTLESS fatalism and negativity that radiates off a lot of folks like a cloud of despair. Ever since I've been a fan, I've seen it over and over and over again: at the first sign of any trouble, they go all Eyore, moan "same old Seahawks" and wallow in self-pity and sadness.

I'll never forget when I was at the Wild Card game v Dallas in January of 2007... Remember when we failed on that 4th and goal midway through the final quarter? The mood in the stands got very ugly and very negative. When the granola guy in front of me made some comment akin to the game being over, I went shithouse on him.

“IT’S NOT OVER, GODDAMN IT!”

On the next play, Jennings forced Glenn's fumble, which turned into a safety.. and you know the end to that story...

So I say it again, to all of you: IT'S NOT OVER, GOD DAMN IT!

Can we at least fucking wait until the fucking GAMES START to declare this season a disaster? Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick... I am done with the vile knee-jerk defeatism of this fan base. If all you have to offer is dank, soul-crushing negativity, kindly fuck off and spread your bile elsewhere.

Who is fucking with me?

UPDATE: I didn't mean "Who is fucking with me?" in the context of "Who is screwing with my head." I meant it as "Who is with me?" with the word fucking used as emphasis. Sorry for the confusion! :)