NFL: The Seahawks Breakthrough: The Timely End of an Era

The Seattle Seahawks mark the end of a major era: Michael Bennett’s trade and Richard Sherman’s dismissal mark the end of the chapter on the most dominant defense of the decade. Seattle may now be facing an unusually bumpy transition phase – but it was necessary sooner or later and the Seahawks have come at the right time. An assessment by SPOX editor Adrian Franke.

Continued dominance is an almost unattainable goal in today’s NFL. The draft system and the salary cap are fully balanced, and in most cases this works impressively well. That’s why teams like the Rams, Jaguars or Eagles make a remarkable breakthrough within a very short time, the Browns try aggressively and finally also with a quarterback to take this path successfully.

However, there are some successful exceptions that still manage to be successful in the long term. The Patriots with Brady and Belichick are certainly a prime example of this, but if you look at this decade, you have to call the Seattle Seahawks in this category at the next breath at the latest.

On the back of a historically dominant defense that has been the measure of all things for more than five years and has been shaped almost entirely by self-drawn and developed players, the Seahawks belonged to the circle of title contenders year after year. Seattle won a Super Bowl and was a yard before the title defence.

This time is now over for the time being.

Seattle was on the brink of upheaval, that was foreseeable. The uncertain future of Kam Chancellor and Cliff Avril on the one hand, and the serious injury to Sherman in combination with numerous expiring contracts (McDougald, Shead, Maxwell, Richardson) on the other, put the Seahawks in a fairly clear situation with two clear options.

Either throw it all back into the scales again, hoping that the weakened columns will come back and that you can financially create the rooms to hold players like Richardson and reinforce the offensive line. Just like last year, when Richardson and Duane Brown were brought in via trade. Or start the upheaval now.

In other words, the Seahawks, who are facing another difficult draft from the trades without a second and third round pick, have decided that the title window for the most dominant NFC team of this decade is closed. And they’re right about that.

For Seattle there was hardly any way in between, but the squad is simply too thin. Seattle has been lacking in talent for a number of years now, with its own draft picks shining on cheap rookie contracts at weddings.

Poor trades (Percy Harvin, Jimmy Graham) but above all several catastrophic drafts have brought Seattle to this point. The Defense doesn’t have superstars in their prime on every level anymore, and when the aging stars become question marks and don’t meet young, promising players, the title window in the NFL closes quickly.

This is all the more true in Seattle’s case, when the rams in the same division are upgrading like mad and that ultimately leads to a question that is just as important as it is difficult to answer: when is the right time to initiate a change? As well as, and this can ultimately cost teams years of cleanup work, the addition: when did you miss this point?

Seattle has chosen the right time for the final attempt in the pre-season. Instead of attempting one last desperate run with various – from a health point of view – risk players, they will now give young players the chance to prove themselves and develop. Too often teams in the NFL choose the first way, hardly ever this is crowned with success. And Seattle is well-positioned to make the transition right now.

The Seahawks have a franchise quarterback with Russell Wilson, a league-wide top 10 QB. That per se is the strongest counter-argument to the now so aggressively driven upheaval, after all, one wants to make the best possible use of the years in which one has such a quarterback. Paradoxically, however, it is also a good argument for this.

A franchise quarterback makes everything in the NFL easier, including a radical change. Wilson, who will now be even more at the centre of attention as leader due to the departure of undisputed leaders Bennett and Sherman, will make the Seahawks competitive. Even as the team pushes ahead with change.

Seattle went off-season, including cap rollovers from previous years, with a salary cap of $177.7 million. The fifth lowest score of all teams. Only after the release of Sherman and the Bennett-Trade did Seattle climb to 30 million dollars in terms of Cap Space and thus towards the league average (34.3 million) did Seattle now have the fewest number of players signed up for 2018 (44, as many as Jacksonville).

Making the squad cheaper now and putting themselves in a better position for the next few years – Wilson’s contract extension is also on the horizon next year, and Frank Clark’s contract is also coming to an end – makes no doubt sense.

Seattle combines this with an internal change of guard through the clear cut, for example also through Michael Bennett’s trade. Wilson, Bobby Wagner and Earl Thomas are likely to be the clear leaders of the team.

At the same time, these three personal details are a first hint that Seattle will not have to wait several years to be able to attack again. Wilson, Wagner, Thomas, K. J. Wright, Doug Baldwin, Shaquill Griffin, Frank Clark, Jarran Reed – the Seahawks still have a core of players that many teams envy. In the person of Griffin, Clark, Reed and Defensive Tackle Malik McDowell, the image will now also be dominated by young players who have themselves been drafted.

No team in the NFL can afford to rest on its laurels, because while one may be at its peak, another team is in the process of making a breakthrough for the next few years. The Seahawks have long been the team that was hunted – Seattle is now back in the hunter’s position again, at least for the time being.

Head coach Pete Carroll summed it up a few days ago:”We’re going to tackle every off-season in the same way: we want to keep up as best as we can when it comes to getting our boys in the best possible position, making the right decisions and keeping up with what’s going on in the league. Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions to get it done.”