Commentary: Seahawks might have done the improbable and avoided rebuilding
SEATTLE – When Russell Wilson was traded last year and the Seahawks were left without an evident quarterback solution, the notion was widely advanced that Seattle was about to enter an inevitable period of painful transition. To put it bluntly: A rebuild was afoot.
They had missed the playoffs for the just the third time in Pete Carroll’s tenure in 2021. Bobby Wagner was released on the same day as the Wilson trade, in one fell swoop ridding the organization of the last links to the Super Bowl glory days. There did not seem to be any visible path to a quick resurrection.
That is, to anyone besides Carroll, and by extension his partner, general manager John Schneider.
Carroll was genuinely incredulous at the notion that the Seahawks would do anything but continue to compete for playoff berths and titles. He couldn’t even fathom the thought process of punting on the present to focus on the future.
Granted, Carroll is constitutionally incapable of anything but unbridled optimism and ceaseless positivity. But the upshot is that the coach was right – at least in the short term. In a season with minuscule expectations, the Seahawks finished 9-8 and squeezed into the playoffs as a wild-card team.
As the 2023 season dawns with a much loftier outlook for Seattle from the football intelligentsia – and growing confidence from within – it seems at least within the realm of possibility that the Seahawks can pull off the improbable: Sustaining contention through multiple generations of players without the steep slide through which most elite teams must suffer.
Just look within the Seahawks’ own division at the Rams, who sold their football souls to win the Super Bowl, plummeted to 5-12 a year later, and face a difficult climb back to respectability. Or the Cardinals, who made the playoffs in 2021, sank to the bottom of the division last year and are now widely believed to be tanking for the right to draft Caleb Williams. The 49ers will try to again hold off the Seahawks to remain atop the NFC West, but they’ve been wildly fluctuating over the years – going 17-47 from 2015-18 in the wake of a Super Bowl appearance, soaring back to the Super Bowl in 2019, falling back to 6-10 in 2020 and then rising back to the playoffs the past two years.
The NFL is a league built on planned obsolescence. One of the core principles is that parity is not just a good thing, but an essential one. The enduring paradigm is that no team should stay too good, or too bad, for too long.
Every aspect of the league, from the salary cap to the draft to the scheduling, is designed to give all the woeful teams a chance to rise up – which only comes, of course, at the expense of the upper-echelon teams coming down a peg.
It’s rare, therefore, to see a team do what the Seahawks firmly believe they’re in the process of accomplishing – staving off the crater portion of a team’s evolution. Having developed longtime backup Geno Smith into a quality starting quarterback who they think is still on the ascent and having augmented the roster with an outstanding draft 2022 class (followed by one in 2023 they hope is just as impactful), the Seahawks put themselves in position to again dream of bigger things.
This is not to say that the transition from the Super Bowl years has been seamless and flawless. There have been bad trades and poor drafts along the way. While they made the playoffs most years, the Seahawks have been unable to advance beyond the divisional round since losing the Super Bowl after the 2014 season. The attempt to replicate the defensive dominance of the Legion of Boom years has never fully clicked. And if Detroit doesn’t rise up to knock off Green Bay last year with seemingly nothing to play for, the Seahawks miss the playoffs and likely the narrative is different.
But here we are, with a 2023 Seahawks team with ambitions that don’t feel concocted out of thin air and false hopes. Yes, there are enough concerns and potential weak points that it could all unravel. There is also a legitimate path one can envision for the Seahawks to get back to the playoffs for the 11th time in 14 years under Carroll.
No doubt that is why the coach, with 50 years of coaching on his résumé, has had a bounce in his step this camp that belies his age (he’ll be 72 on Friday) and might be even more pronounced than normal.
Carroll says he is embracing the opportunity to motivate a team that is nearly 50% comprised of young players while leaning on veterans like Smith and the returning Wagner for leadership.
“It’s interesting because we feel new,” Carroll said in camp. “There is a newness about us. You can feel it, and it’s been maybe part of the excitement all along. … We had pretty good success when we were a young team, so I’m OK with all that. It is maybe part of the reason I’ve been so jacked about this because I’m constantly teaching. I’m bringing the mentality and the approach and how we do things.”
In a philosophical moment earlier in camp, Carroll said: “Every year when you come back, it’s a new life. It’s like a whole life starts all over again.”
For the Seahawks, the new life continues to be framed with realistic hope, in defiance of NFL convention.