(Image Source: Grantland)
Amid the resounding national love the Seahawks are getting this year, and the resulting heightened expectations, I've struggled to articulate the nature of my own expectations for the team. That's because I haven't formed any yet. Since the end of last season, I've really only had one thought about the Seahawks: The Seabags are dead and gone. These are not the same old Seahawks. And this revolutionary development cannot go unappreciated.
The Seahawks have been on my TV screen nearly every fall and early-winter Sunday or Monday for the past 25-plus years. In some of my earliest detailed memories I'm sitting on the couch on Sunday, interviewing my dad about Dave Kreig, Steve Largent, passing routes, Curt Warner, downs and distances, penalties, clock management, field goal tries, division rivalries, and playoff scenarios.
As a child, I quickly grew to love the team that wore blue shirts and silver helmets. Like, really love. How else could I have endured rooting for a franchise that was so hapless for so long? The Seabags, my dad (who taught me to love them) would say, half affectionately. Even Chris Berman occasionally called them that name, abbreviating it to the 'Bags. I understood that perhaps the name, however mean, was deserved, but was never ashamed of the team. Embarrassed at times, yes, but always proud.
It's true that the franchise had a bit of legitimate success in the 1980s. I was born in 1983, and only vaguely remember that success, if I do at all. It was in the late 1980s and early 1990s that I began to really appreciate the ups and downs of Seahawks fanhood.
There have been more downs than ups. My first big down was Dan McGwire. Who's Dan McGwire? Look him up.
My nine-year-old eyes were glued to the TV for every single game of the 2-14 1992 season, in which one of the only bright spots was an improbable comeback win over the Broncos, engineered by former World League MVP Stan Gelbaugh. Look him up, too.
Let's not even talk about Rick Mirer.
Besides using the draft's first round to pick bad quarterbacks, one of the team's specialties during most of the 1990s was using the late 3rd and 4th quarters to squander winnable games, home and away, especially when playing inferior teams. Same old Seahawks, my dad would say after a particularly infuriating and/or heart-wrenching debacle.
We remained loyal, though, even occasionally trekking to Seatown to catch a game in the Kingdome—each of which the 'Hawks somehow won. The Warren Moon to Joey Galloway connection in the late 1990s was one of the highlights of my adolescence. Even Jon Kitna had his moments.
Still, Moon couldn't get them to the playoffs, and Kitna's home playoff loss to an over-the-hill Marino's Dolphins was just pathetic. Same old Seabags.
Mike Holmgren's arrival, in retrospect, was the franchise's important first step toward shedding its Seabagness. Ironically, though, some of the most intense "same old Seahawks" moments in history occurred during the Holmgren era. "We want the ball, and we're gonna score," was the most embarrassing, but there were several that were just as painful. Kitna's loss to Miami and the wildcard round loss to the Rams—the third loss to St. Louis that season—come to mind.
In spite of the losses, though, the string of playoff trips in the early 2000s began to change the team's image for the better. The franchise finally escaped the laughingstock label when Matt Hasselbeck dismantled the Panthers secondary to lead the team to an NFC Championship in January 2006. We all know what happened in the Super Bowl, but it still seemed the franchise had transcended, or was at least on the verge.
But following a huge front office blunder that caused Steve Hutchinson to leave for the Vikings that offseason, the team spent the next several seasons on the outside looking in, often looking like they were the same old Seahawks after all. The 4-12 season in Holmgren's last year was like a cherry on top of a Seabag Sunday.
Let's give the Jim Mora year the Mirer treatment.
I was admittedly skeptical of Pete Carroll when he was hired. But when he and John Schneider brought in Marshawn Lynch, it became clear things were different, in a good way. Lynch was not your father's Seahawk. During his historic "Beastquake" TD run against the Saints you could feel the very foundation of the franchise shifting.
The subsequent emergence of Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman, and Brandon Browner, individually and as a unit, is like nothing I've ever seen before in Seahawks history.
The most pivotal moment in the transformation came in the third round of the 2012 NFL draft when the Seahawks picked their very own cold-blooded assassin.
Last season we began seeing things—plays, wins, moments— that felt fundamentally different. New. The last-minute win against the Patriots, and the unveiling of the read option weapon in the dramatic win against the Bears. 150 points in 3 games. A blowout of the Niners on national TV. A comeback road playoff win. The near-miracle comeback against the Falcons.
Those moments are why looking forward to this season, it's been difficult to form expectations. Suddenly it seems there's so little history to draw upon. All I know is that the team will benefit from good quarterback play as long as Wilson is at the helm. Other than that, there's just a weird sense of calm.
In the past, I had came to expect certain things from the Seabags every season. After all, they were the same old Seahawks. Those expectations lingered all the way into the first four or five weeks of last season. But what I witnessed after that made them disappear. I can no longer find them.
These are not the same old Seahawks. The Seabags are dead and gone. That's a huge deal. Let's enjoy it.
