Albany Hawker Posts

There's an old saying that goes 'if you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters, sooner or later one of them will type the works of Shakespeare.'

Five months ago, AOL Sports combed the internet and gathered and eclectic group of monkeys from the best NFL Team blogs on the web and created the NFL Fanhouse. I was honored to be chosen as one of three simians dedicated to the Seahawks, and I tried to provide my own unique blend of insight, humor and sarcasm in the articles and observations I posted throughout this season.

We were all told at the beginning that this was a one-season work in progress, as nobody involved, from the AOL suits to the newly deputized primates, had a clue what would become of this venture. With the NFL season winding to a close this Sunday, most of us were recently notified to pack up our tire-swings and typewriters, as AOL has decided to take the NFL Fanhouse in the direction of their other sports superblogs, with a few dedicated bloggers covering the entire sport, rather than on a team-by-team basis.

So before I left, I wanted to thank my loyal readers and fans, all both of them, and to honestly say I've enjoyed my season as an official Seahawks blogger on a major corporate site. Making a little money for each post didn't suck either! I'm also grateful for the getting to know the other bloggers from our rival sites, and hope that we can continue the pre- and post-game smack-offs from our home blogs next season.

Anyone who just can't get through the day without reading what albaNY Hawker has to say about the Seahawks can catch me flinging my poo over at the 12 Seahawks Street blog or the SeahawkBlue fan forum.

To Jamie and those who will be continuing the NFL Fanhouse, I say thank you and be sure to maintain your edge! I'd hate to see this site morph into just another East-coast biased, corporate media site regurgitating the same tired sports news as ESPN, FoxSports and even NFL.com.

GOOD LUCK!

HISTORY: the only thing worse that seeing Big "22.7 rated" Ben hoisting the Lombardi would be Rex "0.00 rated" Grossman holding it.

CURSES: four words: Super Bowl Loser's Curse, which should eliminate a potential Conference rival from the 2007 playoffs.

WHITE NOISE: because Seahawks fans have already tuned out the media love-fest with the Colts, so the incessant off-season media hype of a Colts repeat will be easier to ignore.

PRIDE: the Bears would otherwise be the first #1 seed from the NFC to win the SB, something the Seahawks failed to do last season.

HUMOR: Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning make better commercials.

1. LOYALTY: Seahawks fans are loyal, so if your team can't be in the Super Bowl, you at least root for your Conference representative.

2. HEALING: it softens the blow to know the Seahawks were eliminated by the eventual World Champions.

3. PLANNING: the Bears are on the 2007 schedule and recent SB winners have had bad seasons the following year.

4. ATTRITION: SB winners usually have their coaching staff poached by other teams, again weakening a potential Conference rival.

5. SEX: because Alex Flanagan is covering them during SB week for the NFL and she's much better looking than Kara Henderson!

I've been a Seahawks fan since they came into the league in 1976, but I've been a professional football fan my entire life. I used to always look forward to the Super Bowl each year, and actually enjoyed all the hype leading up to it. That all changed last year.

As a fan of the 1976-2004 Seahawks, you could always enjoy the Super Bowl. I mean it usually occurred a good month after the last meaningful Seahawk game, and since your team was usually mathematically eliminated from the playoffs sometime before Christmas, it didn't really matter who was playing in the Super Bowl, you could psyched about the game.

Then came the 2005 Seahawks, and my expectations have been irreparably changed forever.

The 2005 Seahawks not only brought the first Super Bowl birth to Seattle, but also brought the realization of three decades of hope and optimism to millions of Seahawks fans around the globe.

Last year I watched every minute of NFL coverage between the final gun of the NFC Championship game and the opening kick-off of Super Bowl XL in Detroit. And what I couldn't watch, I TiVo-ed. Now it's hard to get excited about the big game when my team is not participating in it.

I'm not sure how Cowboy, Niner and Raiders fans have dealt with these feelings all these years.

The rotund figure in the picture is none other than child-star Emmanuel Lewis of the hit TV Series Webster.

So what does he have to do with the Seahawks? Nothing really.

But the Tennessee Titans are currently interviewing two Seahawks Executives as candidates for their open GM position, Vice President of Football Operations Mike Reinfeldt, and another Seahawk Vice President named Ruston Webster.

Are you with me now?

Reinfeldt might seem to have the inside edge on the position, as he's got a favorable track record with the Seahawks, and was an All-Pro Safety for the Houston Oilers, which is what the Titans were known as prior to the owner moving them to Tennessee.

Webster, a protege of current Seahawk President and GM Tim Ruskell, signed on with the Seahawks last off-season after leaving the Bucs, but nobody is quite sure what he does.

Reinfeldt on the other had is credited with hammering out the 11th hour contracts prior to the start of free agency, that locked up Matt Hasselbeck and Walter Jones to long term deals, and slapping the franchise tag on Shaun Alexander, assuring that his MVP season would come while wearing Seahawk blue. And for an encore, he was instrumental in working out a very cap-friendly long term deal with Alexander at the end of the 2005 season, most likely assuring that Shaun's retirement party will be hosted at Qwest field as well.

What this means is that the very thing that probably makes Reinfeldt a much more attractive prospect to the Titans is the very thing that makes most Seahawks fans pray that they'll select Webster instead.

And we're not above invoking the image of a 1970's 1980s TV icon to help improve our chances that our prayers will be heard.

A major news item in the lead up to the Super Bowl is the judge allowing Tank Johnson to travel with the Bears and play in the Super Bowl, even though he's facing serious weapons charges.

A minor news item reported on KFFL is that new commissioner Roger Goodell is moving ahead with plans to install radios in the helmets of offensive linemen to combat the effects of crowd noise. The piece below is from the KFFL.com Hotwire:

NFL | Offensive players to have radio receivers in helmets?
Sun, 21 Jan 2007 08:59:04 -0800

Mark Gillispie, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, reports the National Football League is developing plans to put radio receivers in the helmets of all offensive players, which would enable them to hear the quarterback's signals and line calls. The system is scheduled for testing during the 2008 NFL season.

As a fan of the Seahawks, who boast arguably the loudest home crowd in the league, I am opposed to this new technological wrinkle, as should all fans. This is basically discouraging the fans from coming to the games, because other than a handful of wealthy supporters in the good seats, it's much better to view a game on TV than from the nose bleeds in most stadiums. One of biggest reasons to go to a game, especially for Seahawks fans, is knowing you can have a small but direct impact on the proceedings if you just yell loud enough and long enough for the home team.

Starting in 2008, this will be 'much sound and fury signifying nothing.'

Now onto a more important topic and the higher exposure headline. The league also spends a ton of time and money protecting its image, as evidences by the expanded drug testing policy and stringent uniform restriction. But while they're focusing on keeping the players 'clean and neat' they're missing an area that's potentially more devastating to the image and the on-going success of the league - which is players getting involved in weapons related incidents.

If the league wanted to seriously stop all this nonsense, it could do it easily by writing in standard clauses that nullify players contracts if they are involved in a weapons related incident. They already do this kind of thing for motorcycle riding, bungee-jumping, hang-gliding and other dangerous activities, to protect the player's health and the team's investment in them.

Why not do the same thing regarding guns?

And before I incur the wrath of the NRA or the Civil Liberties Union, I acknowledge that it's every American's right to bear arms, as it is to ride motorcycles and hang-glide, but it's just not a privilege you can enjoy if you want to pull down millions of dollars for playing a kid's game.

And in case David Stern is lurking, consider yourself carbon-copied on this memo. Your league has a much bigger problem with gun charges and the perception of your players as gangstas and thugs. You've got the most control of any of the four commissioners, so you could blaze this trail with just a snap of your fingers.

Make it happen before another football player is gunned down after a high speed chase, or another innocent chauffeur is blasted to oblivion in the mansion of some careless hoopster showing off his shotgun.

Last year the NFC representatives to the Super Bowl were the 13-3 Seahawks, who were constantly qualified as playing in the "weakest division in football" and having a cake schedule. As a matter of fact, most fans would still consider the NFC W as the weakest division in the NFL.

This year the NFC Representative is the 13-3 Bears, and I have yet to hear a peep from nary a media talking head about their division or schedule.

But taking a closer look at things, you may find something interesting.

The four NFC divisional winners were the Bears (North), Saints (South), Eagles (East) and Seahawks (West). However, if you look at the combined win total of the other three teams within each division, you'll see that the NFC North also-rans racked up 17 wins between them, the NFC South runners-up 19, NFC East wannabes 22, and the NFC West step-children 20. So while the Bears conference leading record of 13-3 looks impressive, it was built at the hands of the 3-13 Lions, 6-10 Vikings and lucky-to-be-8-and-8 Packers.

In fact, the West could even be touted as the second strongest division in the NFC, behind the East, even though they were the seeded 3rd and 4the within the conference. Both divisions put up similar W-L records, and the East managed to snag the two wild card playoff spots.

There's no doubt that the Bears beat the Seahawks twice this season, fair and square, so I'm not complaining about them getting to the Super Bowl. What I am complaining about is the media writing off the success of small market teams to schedule or divisional weaknesses, but when a large market team enjoys the same success, there's nothing mentioned about the JV-teams they pummeled along the way.

You can't fault any club for beating the teams they're supposed to, and taking advantage of weakened competition. They can only play the teams on the NFL puts on their schedule. And unless the NFL wants true parity, where every club finishes 8-8 and the playoff seeding is decided by coin-flips, every year you're going to have a handful of double-digit winners, which means that there will be just as many double-digit losers.

I'd just like to see small market clubs get the same recognition and accolades, instead of constantly having to to justify and defend their own accomplishments.

There's a Yogi-like saying in the NFL that goes 'if you're not improving, you're getting worse', and while it seems to be an overly obvious statement, it's actually quite profound.

Thanks to impatient owners, the salary cap, and free agency, the one constant in the NFL is change, and it's already started to affect the Seahawks, with three new coaches added to Holmgren's staff, and two key front office executives interviewing with other franchises.

The Seahawks have a championship caliber nucleus of offensive players with Matt Hasselbeck, Shaun Alexander and Walter Jones, and a stable of talented and interchangeable receivers. Watching these guys being hobbled by injury this year though begs the question, how many more years of dominance do they have left?

The Seahawks have a championship caliber coach in Mike Holmgren, but it's unclear how many more years he'll be patrolling the sidelines, and his questionable play-calling and clock management at times has fans wondering if the game has passed him by.

There are several key players on the Seahawks roster that will either be restricted or unrestricted free agents this year, including D.J. Hackett, Jerramy Stevens, Josh Brown, Bobby Engram, Ken Hamlin, Sean Locklear and Jordan Babineaux.

There are sever key players who wound up on IR this year, that may or may not make it back to the active roster, including Marcus Tubbs, Kelly Herndon, J.P. Darche, Josh Scobey, Craig Terrell, and Joe Tafoya.

There is bound to be a few impact free agents or talented draft picks brought in to challenge for starting positions, such as cornerback, safety, full back, offensive guard and defensive tackle.

The biggest question for the off season will be are the changes for better or for worse?

With the competition in the NFC West improving, the brutal 2007 travel schedule that include five trips into the Eastern time zone, and the league looking to install helmet-radios for all O-lineman to thwart the effects of the 12th Man, this version of the Seahawks may only have two or three years left to make it to another Super Bowl, before there are wholesale changes on the roster in within the coaching staff.

I just hope the players and coaches realize this, and don't flit away another golden opportunity for home field in the playoffs. As we saw in Chicago, it makes a very big difference.

Losing a two coaches who would have probably been fired anyway is no big thing, but the latest news on Mike Sando's blog should be cause for concern.

The Seahawks have given permission to the Titans to interview Seattle executives Mike Reinfeldt and Ruston Webster for a GM job. That's great news for Mike, Ruston and the Titans, but not for Seahawks fans.

Ruston, a long-time Ruskell associate, just joined the Seahawks organization at the beginning of the 2006 season, so it's not clear how much he's done for the franchise and what exactly the impact of losing him would be.

Mike Renfeldt, however, is a salary cap genius who pulled off the highly improbable feat of being wooed back to the Seahawks, after leaving during the Bob Whitless era, and locking up Matt Hasselbeck and Walter Jones to long term deals, and Franchising (note: NOT Transitioning) Shaun Alexander in his first week back on the job. These three players then lead Seattle to the first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history.

With several Seahawks starters at or near the end of their contracts, and the need to re-tool through free agency at key positions, not having a guy like Renfeldt around could be a significant loss.

Of course, this is a Titan organization that liked their chances with Kerry Collins over Steve McNair and Vince Young, so let's hope they apply the same level of talent evaluation prowess when selecting their new GM!

The one silver lining to losing the Super Bowl last year is that the Seahawks organization avoided the usual pillaging of the coaching staff that happens to most championship teams.

This allowed the Seahawks to enter the 2006 season with not only their roster of players pretty much in tact, but also with consistency on the coaching staff as well. Such is not the case as the page turns to the 2007 season.

The Seahawks have confirmed that defensive backs coach Teryl Austin has left to join Ken Whisenhunt's staff in Arizona, and much maligned Special Teams coach Bob Casullo has departed Seattle to coach the tight ends for the Buccaneers.

Over the past several seasons, the two biggest knocks on the Seahawks were their propensity for giving up huge pass plays and mediocre Special Team play, so this may wind up being addition by subtraction.

Austin may have become expendable when the Seahawks added former Ram Larry Marmie to their staff last season. Casullo, who seemed to be living on borrowed time for the past two years, even took the time to drop a parting shot at the media on Mike Sando's blog at The Tacoma News Tribune web site.

The contracts of both coaches expired this season, and the Seahawk organization didn't seem too eager to resign them, so they both may have jumped at the first opportunity rather than wait around to be fired.

No word yet on possible replacements, but it can't hurt to bring some new blood onto the coaching staff and hopefully breath some new life into the team and organization.

We'll see what impact these moves have next season, as both the Cardinals and Bucs are on the 2007 schedule.

*** EDIT: 1/19/2007 2:23am ***
Under the heading of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em', this article on the DallasNews blog says Cowboys Special Teams Coach Bruce DeHaven is in Seattle interviewing for the same position with the Seahawks. My thanks to 2*2*2 from the SeahawkBlue forum who tipped me off to this news.