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Some people are fans of the Seattle Seahawks. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Seattle Seahawks. This 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.



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Your team: Seattle Seahawks.

Trot Into Summer With a Fresh New Pair of Running Shoes Read on The Inventory


Your 2017 record: 9-7. Here’s a clip of justice unfolding in real time…


I told you Blair Walsh would fuck you good, and he did. HOW DOES IT FEEL, YOU FUCKS?!!!!! See how you like it for once! I feel whole again. The best part is that Blair’s shank here ended up being the difference because Pete Carroll, for Pete Carroll reasons, ran a fake field goal at the end of the first half in that game from the 35-yard-line.

“It would have been a really good call if we would have made it. It was something we saw, that we wanted to do. It was a terrific opportunity, right where we wanted it. The defensive tackle made a better play. He wasn’t supposed to be there.”


But why was he? Simple defensive execution against a hilariously stupid play, or WAS IT THE BELL-LUMINATI?!

This was Seattle’s first year out of the playoffs since 2011. If I were you, I’d get used to that sort of thing because the 2017 season represented the beginning of the end of these Seahawks. They lost at home to the Skins. They got rolled by Blake Bortles. They had to sit back and watch as the Rams became what they were just a few years ago. Two of their best defenders openly beefed in public. Their rookie lineman showed more aggression getting arrested than he ever showed on the field of play. Their 2017 second-round pick got hurt in an ATV accident and will never play football again.


There’s more. They snuck Russell Wilson back into a game after the Cards nearly murdered him, and the league tagged them for it. This league NEVER punishes concussion protocol violations. You could trot a headless QB back out onto the field and the league office would be like, “After an exhaustive 10-minute investigation, Commissioner Goodell has concluded that proper procedure was indeed followed,” but they nailed the Seahawks because everyone already hates the Seahawks anyway. [Six-fingered man voice] How marvelous.

Your coach: It really does say so much about the NFL that the resident “cool” coach is a guy who hangs with Canadian Andrew Sullivan, thinks robot spiders did 9/11, and had to turn over the entire roster because no one was bothering to listen to him anymore.


Pete Carroll is already trying to spin the demise of the Seahawks as some bold new jazz odyssey phase where every practice is a competition. He’d like you to think he’s got 60 hungry undrafted scrubs ready to step up and become REAL MEN, but the spell has worn off. No one’s buying this man’s bullshit anymore. Did you read this? Imagine if Gregg Popovich sucked. That’s what that thing reads like. I guarantee you the subtext of that manifesto is “Don’t be mean to Nazis.” I feel it in my loins.


The good news is that Pete finally got rid of Darrell Bevell. You’re finally gonna run the ball now!


Okay maybe DON’T do that. Baby steps.

Your quarterback: Ugh. Fine. Show the photo.


Now show the dancing…


Why hasn’t anyone stopped this man yet? PLEASE STOP THIS MAN. Ivanka Trump is a more genuine human being. You know what floors me are the comments on these horrible, horrible posts. There are always 700 horny dudes waiting on Insta to cry out SO BEAUTIFUL! the second Ciara and Russ post a staged video of themselves riding along a beach together on a white horse. I feel insane watching this entire dynamic unfold in real time. None of the people involved are real. The end of America will come not at the hands of Nazis or racists, but rather dead-eyed self-branders who would rather display fake emotions online than feel actual emotions in real life. This is a life directed.

Anyway, Football Hootie here is basically all that’s left of the good Seahawks, so he’ll be left to drown in mediocrity for the rest of his career while occasionally posting videos of himself handing his wife a single red rose, or shaking hands with Ari Emanuel, or engaging some other act of creepy, android dipshittery. Like Tom Cruise, Russell Wilson is only interesting when he’s running for his life.


He’s still better than Matt Stafford though.

What’s new that sucks: They’re all gone. The entire Legion of Boom has been liquidated. Kam Chancellor retired. Richard Sherman went to the hated Niners. Earl Thomas’s holdout will last until the sun dies. And the rest of the team has been gutted as well. Cliff Avril is gone after contracting neck cancer last season. Michael Bennett was traded the second his production wasn’t deemed worth his advocacy. What’s left in Seattle, on either side of the ball, is a motley assortment of goons, has-beens, flops, scrubs, and disgruntled vets searching for a way out. Imagine being Brandon Marshall’s 97th team and thinking that’s a positive development for your roster. Oh, and Sebastian Janikowski is here now, just in case Frank Clark ever gets low on GHB. The team also brought in Tom Johnson and Shamar Stephen from the Vikings to shore up the interior. If those signings go as well as the Blair Walsh experiment, I think we’re all in for a treat. This team is finally back to being a Palouse-area rest stop where people go to get murdered.


They drafted a running back in the first round but he just had surgery and I can already guarantee you that they will fail to give him consistent carries regardless of how healthy he is when he returns. The line is garbage and Wilson will end up being the team’s top rusher every year for the rest of his career. Their only promising defensive prospect has one hand. Their former backup QB broke his girlfriend’s jaw.

What has always sucked: Germain Ifedi! He’s really fucking bad! He led the league in penalties last season and got reamed out by Cliff Avril in public for being too entitled. Imagine being the most entitled Seahawk. That’s like being the dumbest Baldwin brother. Good thing Ifedi isn’t in charge of helping protect the franchise’s only remaining valuable asset or anything.


This franchise-wide collapse is long overdue and, frankly, a relief. The rest of America would like the all the self-appointed 12s to fall into Cascadia subduction zone. I was one of many, many saps who thought the Seahawks were not only an exemplary NFL franchise in terms of functionality, but also in terms of social progress as well. All of that turned out to be a lie. Carroll is a snake-oil salesman. The team is full of phonies and wifebeaters. The fans are racist logging hermits. And Seattle itself is a slanted dystopia where a third of the housing in the city belongs to a company run by Lex Luthor. They asked Amazon to chip in to help the homeless in that city and that company IMMEDIATELY threw a shit-fit that would have made Richard Sherman blush. Seattle is emblematic of a disintegrating country, in which the rich overtake entire cities and wall them off in solid gold, and the hinterlands are populated by destitute Nazi zombies. Where the fuck are all the NORMAL people supposed to go?

Well, I’ll tell you: they’re supposed to die off. The implicit grand plan is for Jeff Bezos and his ilk is to starve out and stupid-ify the population until they’re malleable enough to use as cattle feed until the end of time. And it’s working.


Some Seattle fans bought into that photo, just like they’re gonna buy into a rebuild that will go nowhere. You people contracted Pete Carroll’s trutherism. Nice going.


What might not suck: Wilson is still an absolute wonder when he breaks out of the pocket, which will come in handy this season because there won’t BE a pocket.

Let’s remember a guy who sucked: Koren Robinson’s career is tragic in that alcoholism basically ruined any chance he had at stardom. But also… he was really, really bad at playing football. That’s important to remember.


HEAR IT FROM SEAHAWKS FANS!

Kieran:

Who or what is left that doesn’t suck?

Brian:

I’m not saying Pete Carroll is responsible for the destruction of the Seattle Seahawks, I’m just saying we need to investigate it. Fuck this team with a brick of thermite.

Evan:

I think it’s fair to assume that Russell Wilson is probably some kind of serial murderer.


Jon:

Pete Carroll makes Alex Jones look like Sam Donaldson.

Willis:

The Rams are the jet fuel. The Seahawks fans are the steel beams.

Will:

We deserve what’s going to happen to us this season.

Andrew:

The only thing people will remember about the Seahawks is how they handed Tom Fucking Brady his 4th championship.


Dain:

Russell Wilson wouldn’t pass a Turing test.

Andrea:

What the fuck could that Jordan Peterson workshop have looked like?! What the ACTUAL fucking fuck. Fuck.


Trevor:

This team is just a Russell Wilson preseason ACL tear away from an 0-16 season.

Jon:

We finally got rid of Tom Cable and replaced him with Brian fucking Schottenheimer in the world’s cruelest monkey paw wish.


Jackie:

The Seahawks have an official kombucha.

David:

I mourn and yet, I am optimistic that the Seahawks will re-establish themselves as NFC favorites in no time flat. I have been enabled, much to the detriment of my quickly vanishing self respect.


Tim:

I’ve been scolded at work multiple times for not wearing a Seahawks jersey on a Friday.


Matthew:

Nobody can afford to live here anymore and everyone’s addicted to heroin but at least the local government is taking a militant stance against plastic straws.


John:

Everyone on the team low-key hates Russell Wilson and no one hides that they hate Pete Carroll. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a wild card spot to watch the Mariners lose.


Ian:

Last season, I got last minute free tickets from my wife’s coworker. Because it was last minute, we were 30 minutes late. Upon arriving in our section, the woman in the aisle seat reluctantly stood up to let us by and in the most passive-aggressive Seattle way possible, reminded me, “remember, the game starts at 7.” This was a preseason game.

Rashanii:

So, I was in Seattle last winter for a conference and while I was there, I went to Ivar’s to get some fish. Sitting behind me was an old woman and her husband, I suppose, and she was talking to a server, who was also an old woman. These two women seem to be somewhere between the ages of 70 and 78. I sat and listened to them talk about their grandchildren, their sewing circles, and how life was going in general. Then one of the women looks at the other and says, “they really fucked over our Seahawks this year, didn’t they?”


Gabriel:

There’s a scene in the timeless Frankie Muniz flick “Agent Cody Banks” where his CIA handler (or whatever), in an effort to make him more appealing to Hillary Duff’s character, puts a Seahawks hat on him. It’s played for laughs and it’s a very minor scene yet I often think about his expression and meditate on it. I think of the one time I went to a game at Century Link (then inexcusably named Qwest Field) where Charlie Whitehurst who, I assure you, is an actual man, led the Seahawks to an absolute pounding by the Giants 41-7. I remember looking into the stands and seeing every braying dipshit from Tukwila and Puyallup morph into this vision of Frankie Muniz. Confused, upset, humiliated. This is the true image of me and every other “12" out there. We like to think of ourselves as an integral part of the team, screaming our dongs off so offenses get false-start penalties. When in reality, we are Agent Cody Banks frozen in that moment. We will never woo our Hilary Duff. We will never explode our enemy’s base in a mountain lair. We will never have our cool-ass gadgets. Look upon Frankie’s face. This is me, this is Seattle, this is every poor soul who has to suffer the true ghoulishness that is the hyper gentrified city that is now the metropolitan equivalent of a bottle of Fiji Water.


Shane:

Let’s go through this: Drafted a consensus knucklehead with their top draft pick who injures himself in an ATV crash and will never play a snap in the NFL. They signed Blair Walsh despite knowing better than anyone how bad a kicker he is, he proceeds to cost at least 3 games. Michael Bennett was nearly shot dead by the Las Vegas police. As an Irish fan I stayed up until 3am to watch us lose a vital game to the Falcons because Pete Carroll tried the most ridiculous fake field goal in history. Neil DeGrasse fucking Tyson intervened to call Wilson’s lateral against the Eagles ‘a legit Galilean transformation’. Two different players were ejected on different plays for starting different fights as the Jaguars were kneeling out of the clock. One of those players then tried to climb into the crowd to fight a fan.


Sarah:

Our truther coach spent so much time over the break refashioning himself as a stoner Jordan Peterson knock-off that he forgot to build a fucking credible O-line. Or a defense. Or a running game. Or anything other than Russell Wilson running for his fucking life every fucking down and hoping for the best. Fuck Pete Carroll and fuck this team.


Ben:


Tom:

Drive 30 minutes in any direction and you’re in MAGA-hat-wearing, Calvin-peeing-on-a-Chevy-logo-ville. And 12s from these towns seem to have exclusive rights to 90% of the tickets.


Carl:

All the cool shit about this team is gone. The O-line is like a recurring rash that you never get a prescription for.


John:

Just trade Earl to Dallas for a Hooter’s Gift Card and get it over with.

Jay Willis:

This offseason, they gave away their two most outspoken black players and chickened out on signing Colin Kaepernick when he declined to swear a solemn oath that he’d stop the peaceful protests that made him so very available in the first place. Meanwhile, after they cut their domestic abuser backup quarterback—curiously, a policy to which they do not adhere when it comes to players with better draft pedigrees—their only remaining backup quarterback is a Browns washout. Oh, and Pete Carroll invited Jordan Peterson to address his staff this offseason, because as everyone knows, NFL locker rooms have become echo chambers of intolerant feminist thought, and it is important to ensure that men’s rights dipshits everywhere feel welcome in the sport, too. I miss the days when our coach’s penchant for inanity began and ended with 9/11 truthering. A two-liter of Russell Wilson’s concussion water would instantly become his most talented offensive lineman. Earl Thomas is basically wearing his Texas jersey to every practice. Kam Chancellor looked at the roster and was like, “Nah, fuck this.” Sebastian Janikowski might be the highest-scoring offensive player. All of our running backs are Madden create-a-players who will rush for 100 yards in one week and then disappear off the face of the earth. The fans who expect double-digit wins and have made grotesque, oversized football jerseys into once-a-week business attire—including before preseason games—are going revolt so hard this year when the team finishes 5-11, and they’ll still probably blame Bill Leavy for it.


Eamonn:

Pete is the NFL’s version of Doc Rivers – he’s going to remain continually employed for as long as he wants to be based on having won a championship that probably 90% of coaches in the league would have won with that roster. Since 2012, they’ve drafted terribly. The best player they’ve picked in that time is probably Frank Clark, who also happens to be a completely reprehensible shithead who I would be delighted to not have to root for. They continue to find new and exciting ways to squander their first-round pick, such as: Using it to trade for Percy Harvin (2013) Using it (along with probably their best offensive lineman at the time!) to trade for Jimmy Graham (2015) Using it to trade down several times to ultimately draft a guy who promptly flipped his ATV and will never play one snap in the NFL (2017) Using it to pick a fucking running back (2018)

Ryan:

Our athletic, running QB got FAT this offseason and we will undoubtedly have the worst O-line in the league for the 4th year in a row. We have the highest paid safety tandem in the NFL yet it’s unlikely either will actually play a down of football for us this year. Earl Thomas hates the team so much that near the end of last season, after a road win to keep us in playoff contention and put the Cowboys out of it, he went to their head coach and asked that he come save him from our lunatic coach & moron fanbase.


Alex:

Moving to Portland, Oregon is the best thing I could have done for my Seahawks fandom. No one here gives a shit about pro football which is AMAZING because I don’t have to deal with the self importance of 12's who act like they’ve been blocking for Russell Wilson (which would be an upgrade over our current line of “projects” and college basketball players). In Portland you still get the same Pacific Northwest vibes, performative progressiveness, and 8000 craft breweries without your shitty corporate coworkers openly talking about their excitement for Blue Friday. Being a Seahawks fan AND a Washington State University football fan is choosing between a truther nutjob like Pete Carroll and Mike Leach’s rebranding as a kooky MAGA dad who can’t figure out how to run the ball more than five times a game. Watching both those teams is a special hell I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.


Josh:

I don’t care what their record will be; this is going to be the worst season since 2008, when they went 4-12 and Mike Holmgren was looking at a job with the Cleveland Browns as an upgrade. Carroll brought in incel-lord Jordan Peterson to give a pep talk to the team and probably convince them that they should sign Ray Rice because that whole thing was overblown and the elevator video was a false flag. The fans have always been backwoods extras from Black Sheep. We secretly hated Sherman despite him being one of the best at his position because he’s smarter than 112% of us. We gladly overlook abusers like Frank Clark. Hell, local business owners in the Pacific-Fucking-Northwest will adapt the design of the uniforms into a fucking confederate flag. I want to sink this fanbase to the bottom of Puget Sound.


JC:



Russell Wilson is a very good player that can’t quite carry a team, but has duped the locals into thinking he can. He’s good for one astounding second half play a game where Collinsworth will scream TARKENTON so hard you’ll forget he only generated 38 yards in the first half. They haven’t been able to draft since guys Pete knew from USC aged out. They have a first round playoff ceiling, essentially making them the JV Packers. They squandered a generational defense by the misplaced faith in Tom Cable’s ability to turn large bags of flour into NFL lineman, while Darrell Bevell stubbornly tried to make Jimmy Graham a blocker for RB’s who were unemployed days earlier, yet couldn’t hand the ball off to peak Beast Mode in the Super Bowl. They replaced half of that regime with some guy that was fired by Jeff Fisher for not being good enough, who is the son of a man mostly known for playoff futility. They’re on the backend of the Pete Carroll ride that USC fans are familiar with. Upside is the bandwagon has moved onto the Mariners, so the stadium demographics will switch back to mountain people from tech bros, and we can go back to just being pleased with our ability to yell very loudly while inebriated and bitching about the officials in Super Bowl 40. On that note, may Bill Leavy have permanent hemorrhoids and a diet of only Flaming Hot Cheetos for the rest of his days. Go Sonics.


Tobias:

Our coach is a literal 9/11 truther in a political climate where conspiracy-crazed nutjobs are hellbent on grinding our collective grip on reality and truth into dust. I find myself fiercely sticking up for how wholesome Russell Wilson is and how he’s such a great role model compared to, I dunno, the numerous literal wife beaters in the league, but he’s really just a huge fucking dork. I hate this stupid ass team and this stupid ass sport. I hope we go 6-10 and Richard Sherman has the best season of his career.


Brad:

You know that episode of the Simpsons where Lisa wrecks Homer’s BBQ and sends the roast pig on a series of misadventures while Homer chases after it yelling “It’s still good”? That’s what it was like being around Seahawks fans last year. “It’s just a loss to the Redskins! It’s still good!” “It’s just Richard Sherman out for the year! It’s still good!” Even late in the season, with the playoff window narrowing, a cascade of injuries, and the Rams well established as the dominant team in the division, nearly every Seahawks fan I talked to was certain that we were going back to the Super Bowl. I’m sure after the ‘Hawks are eliminated from playoff eligibility this year, there will be fans somewhere thinking “All it takes is one team’s plane to crash or a cholera outbreak and we’re right back in this thing!”


Devin:

Russell Wilson is the Michael Scott of quarterbacks.


Matt Ufford:

I have been lucky to spend the summer writing about my favorite sports team, and because it was the slowest part of the NFL calendar, most of what I wrote was either about the Seahawks’ failures in 2017 (depressing) or their chances for contention in 2018 (also depressing). It’s all out there — thousands of words on what analytics can tell us about the likelihood they’ll improve (unlikely!); on Brian Schottenheimer’s history as an offensive coordinator (not great!); on the extensive fallout of Malik McDowell’s drafting and subsequent ATV crash that the Seahawks have still not recovered from; on the horrifically slow offensive starts that made the Seahawks so infuriating to watch (In their eight road games, the Seahawks scored 7 first-quarter points. Total). This is my livelihood: reliving and regurgitating my misery, then looking ahead to more of it. What else? Richard Sherman got cut and signed a bad contract with the 49ers because he is the pettiest man this side of Russell Westbrook. Kam Chancellor and Cliff Avril can’t play football anymore because they got the same life-threatening neck injury. The front office is hell-bent to trade Earl Thomas, a future Hall of Famer still in the prime of his career, for a second-rounder at least in part because they’re upset they have to pay Chancellor to not play this year. (The new secondary has been dubbed “The Legion of Whom.”) Michael Bennett got traded for a sixth-rounder because of his activism. The team canceled a workout with Colin Kaepernick — absolutely the most sensible backup for Russell Wilson on a team in dire need of a backup — because of his activism. Doug Baldwin, another activist making a positive impact in the community, is probably only on the team because Seattle let every other pass-catcher walk in free agency. Meanwhile, alleged 9/11 truther Pete Carroll brought in Jordan Peterson to talk to the team. Neat! Malcom Butler’s interception was four years ago, and it somehow re-enters the news cycle every six weeks. But hey, no more Tom Cable! Fuck that guy with a blocking sled.

Joseph:

Two years ago, I was in Las Vegas for a Bachelor party. For dinner one night we decided to go to the delightfully trashy “Heart Attack Grill”, which offers free food to anyone weighing over 300 lbs. One of their many, MANY novelty “charms” is that they have their waitresses all dressed up as sexy nurses, and these women are supposed to straight-up paddle any customer who does not finish all their food. Inevitably, there will be some fat douchebag who, intentionally, doesn’t clean his plate, so some poor girl just trying to pay her way through college will have to grab a paddle and spank said customer. Seeing this in person is significantly more cringe-y than it sounds. Now on the night we attend, some dude apparently did not finish his dinner, so he was brought to the center of the hall for his paddling. He bends over to accept his punishment, and it arrived swift and LOUD. THWACK! At this point, instead of laughing or groaning or anything you might consider a “normal” reaction to this, the guy just shouts at the top of his lungs, “THANK YOU MISTRESS MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?” TWACK! Again — “THANK YOU MISTRESS MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?” TWACK! “THANK YOU MISTRESS MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?” You only get paddled three times, but that was not the end of it. Once it was clear the spanking was over, he looked up at the now painfully uncomfortable dining area and proceeded to shout “THAT’S HOW YOU DO IT YOU FUCKING F*GGOTS” and started marching towards the exit. And as the fucking cherry on top, as he exits the restaurant, I realize the guy’s backwards baseball cap is that of an NFL team. And then he pumps his fist, and shouts one last phrase that offended me more than everything else he had said that night. “GO HAWKS!” I was sure to finish my dinner.

Submissions for the 2018 Deadspin NFL previews are now closed. Next up: Dallas Cowboys.

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