The Seattle Seahawks are collapsing.
Again.
In case you hadn't heard.
It usually takes until about October for this narrative to emerge, but, because NFL Nation needs something to obsess about during a half-year offseason, I suppose, the Seahawks are prime fodder once again. Listen to some national radio or check out some of the year-round studio shows, and you'll find no shortage of analysts more or less ready to write off the Seahawks as true contenders, again. What's driving this narrative? The fact that there's finally nothing going on in the NFL -- I'm sorry, OTAs don't count -- and the confluence of the recent ESPN article delving into some of the personality clashes in Seattle coming at a time when Colin Kaepernick, that community-service driven scoundrel of all scoundrels, visited the Seahawks. That pretty much explains the semi-annual proclamations about the imminent demise of this team and its locker room full of big egos and outsized personalities.
Eventually, I suppose, some of these Seattle skeptics will be right. For once. I mean, the Seahawks won't continually make the playoffs every season -- even though they are one of just three franchises to qualify in each of the last five years -- and maybe they will one day collapse amid the weight of all of those Alpha Males. And, so the story goes, Pete Carroll is so laissez-fare that soon enough the team leaders will cannibalize one another until there is nothing remaining except some leftover play sheets from Super Bowl XLIX and some scattered Skittles in the corner of the locker room from when Marshawn Lynch was still there and maybe, like, one of Russell Wilson's shoelaces will survive as well.
But, make no mistake, these guys will devour one another. Just listen to the echo chamber out there. Carroll won't instill enough discipline and the locker room mutiny will be complete. It's coming. All of the lingering angst from losing the title game to New England on a goal-line interception like two years ago is still boiling over and threatening to tear the very fiber of this team apart.
Except, well, I'm not buying it. I'm not disputing that there isn't a unique and somewhat bizarre culture in Seattle, and that the protocols certainly wouldn't work everywhere. But it has worked well enough, long enough, for this group that I'm not betting against them yet.
I'm not buying that Richard Sherman is so toxic, and such a threat to Wilson and others, that things will finally go over the edge now. I'm not buying that now, after reaching the playoffs twice since that legacy-rattling defeat to the Patriots, and after advancing in the postseason each of those Januaries as well, that this is the time the Seahawks are at critical mass. Seems to me the back-biting and in-fighting would be and was most acute in the months directly following Malcolm Butler's game-winning interception.
Seems to me that if Carroll and esteemed general manager John Schneider, who have had this team's pulse throughout their regime, felt like Sherman was that much of a cancer, he'd be gone, for whatever they could get for him. Instead, they held out for extreme value for him, they did it with class and grace in a manner that did not provoke or enrage Sherman, and this is actually one of the rare times when a player of this stature has made the rounds on trade talks and has returned to his team without turmoil. That's a lot different than, say, the way Jay Cutler reacted to finding out the Broncos may have had some interest in Matt Cassel back in the day.
It seems to me that this team has always played with an edge and often withstood overly emotional incidents -- like the sideline near-battle royale among defensive players in the Falcons game last year -- and tended to thrive from them. Seems to me that tension drives them, is part of their DNA and explains why a defense that has accomplished so much already still plays with a massive collective chip on its shoulder. Seems to me that every time they are around .500 a few months into the season there are no shortage of reports about strife and chaos and a team on the brink … and then they are one of the last teams standing at the end of the season.
So, here's what I know about the Seahawks.
They are one of only three teams to reach the playoffs the last five years, along with the Patriots and Packers. They have a record of 56-23-1 in that span, behind only New England (62-18) and Denver (59-21). They get better as the season goes on, like in 2016, for instance, when they closed 6-3 to take the NFC West Division crown. Since 2012, the Seahawks are 34-9 from the start of November until the end of the regular season. That doesn't exactly seem like a club on the precipice of falling apart or one that succumbs to bickering when the pressure ramps up.
In the last 20 years, the Seahawks are one of only six clubs that lost the Super Bowl then came back to win a playoff game the following year. Carroll has actually led two teams that have accomplished it, doing it himself in 1997 after replacing Bill Parcells in New England. And the way the Seahawks lost was so wrenching, that, frankly, not enough was made of how they rebounded in 2015 as far as I'm concerned.
As for Wilson, he is just entering his prime and playing the best football of his career. The offensive line was atrocious in 2016, but I don't think Schneider would let that happen two years in a row and few executives in the league deserve more benefit of the doubt when it comes to assembling talent and filling holes. If anything, the loss of Earl Thomas had more to do with some of the franchise's slide in 2016, and if he can return close to peak form at any point in 2017, look out.
I also know that the NFC West ain't close to what it was three or four years ago when the Cardinals were on the rise as a contender, the 49ers were an elite franchise with Jim Harbaugh at the helm and the Rams could at least point to their youth and defense as reasons for them possibly turning the corner. Now the 49ers are in complete rebuild mode, the Rams are still the Rams, and it's the Cardinals, not the Seahawks, who are the team at an absolute cross in the road in 2017, with their quarterback and Hall of Fame receiver likely in their final campaign and their defense suffering major hits in free agency.
Oh, and the Seahawks only have to travel to the East Coast twice all season -- Giants and Jaguars -- and they get the AFC South and NFC East on the schedule, which I believe bodes in their favor. Yes, they will need to retool and tweak the roster moving forward, needing to add young pass rushers and gradually overhaul The Legion of Boom, but Schneider and Carroll are exactly the men I'd want on that job.
If anything, this franchise hasn't received the accolades it deserves -- which I believe continues to fuel the players and coaches -- and it hasn't been embraced by the average football fan, as I see it. If anything, it's baffling to me that the Seahawks' ugly Super Bowl defeat still seems to be more newsworthy than, say, the Falcons' collapse that just happened and could doom them this upcoming season if coach Dan Quinn -- Seattle's defensive coordinator in its last Super Bowl defeat -- cannot find a way to deftly navigate the aftermath of that collective choke job.
Maybe it's the swagger the Seahawks show and the intimidating nature of their game and the fact the defense has led them in an era of unprecedented offensive flair. But they aren't done winning playoff games and Wilson has another Lombardi Trophy or two in him. Sherman being on the trading block isn't going to damn their season, and I wouldn't bet against the outspoken cornerback still being around for at least one more parade in Seattle.
