gergroy said:
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Imho the Seahawks won't be back next year. My reasoning is that they are losing their DC, their OC will probably get fired (deservedly so), and it sounds like they still have some issues to work out with in regards to team chemistry.
Wilson is being seriously misused, the gameplan for the SB was botched so horrendously that I honestly can't believe it. With a strong running game, it's an investment that you have to make, and you have to keep to it, pummel over and over, even if in some cases it seems crazy, like running on 3rd and 5. If you in fact DO have an effective bruising running style, it begins to open the defense up a bit as they compensate by bringing more players to the box. It's no coincidence that strong running teams often start breaking big plays as the game wears on, and the defense starts to buckle a bit.
With the SB, they were able to get up by 10 points, and then on successive drives they kept running ill advised pass plays, even after getting some decent success with the running game. It doesn't even need to be said what a travesty that final call was. Stopping Lynch again by that point was going to be unlikely, particularly if they had a prepared play, rushed to the line, and rammed it through. Hell, even sell a great fake handoff up the middle and have Russell do the end around, he had been making defenders look slow all day.
Where Wilson is NOT great at, is a lot of areas of the passing game. While I do believe he is a smart and hard working guy, he cannot be a Brady or a Peyton style QB. The sit in the pocket throw a bullet or a perfect deep spiral is not in the cards (not that Peyton seems capable of that any more lol).
Imho they need a dynamo TE, they need another solid OL workhorse, and they need to keep Lynch, and give him more to work with. Their WR talent is not great, and really anything much more than 25-30 yards out is a prayer with the eternity it takes for those slow high arcs to get there. A game plan designed to maul you for about 4-5 yards on every play is going to be a lot more successful than constantly trying to use Wilson in a way that doesn't work all that well.
One has to admit with great enthusiasm that the Seahawks great success (and let's be honest, winning a SB, then coming within a play of winning a 2nd the very next year IS a great deal of success) is due HUGELY to their defense. However, we can see that even with one or two players dropping out causes the entire thing to start crumbling. Yes, Sherman still dominated his area so completely that he basically shut down part of the field on Sunday. But what else happened? With Lane going down, the backup wasn't up to the task. Overall speed on that Zone was bad. It got so awful in the 2nd half that Brady didn't even have to work to score. Defenders were 4+ yards OFF of the receievers, giving up huge yardage on every down almost uncontested. Speed to tackle was horrible, tackling quality was horrible, it was just a disaster. Both teams played so poorly on the whole in that game that it was honestly an embarassment of a championship game. Exceptions were out there for extraordinary efforts, but blegh, it was an ugly affair. Even more troubling was the fact that the game vs. the Packers was also incredibly ugly. Close, yes, but close doesn't equal GOOD.
As bad as the Seahawks played on Sunday, if it had been Green Bay, Dallas, or even Detroit playing one of their top games, they would have beaten NE. And conversely, the Seahawks were so awful that pretty much any top AFC team would have had a solid shot at dropping them. Very disappointing for the top seeds of each conference. I know that both teams are capable of far more than what we got.
Anyway, I wouldn't mind being wrong, but I think the new staff and personnel management issues will mean a rocky ride for Seattle later this year. They have a lot of great pieces, but they need to be put to better use, and they need to fill some holes and build some depth.
