Some people are fans of the Seattle Seahawks. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Seattle Seahawks. This 2016 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. And buy Drew’s new book here.




Your team: Seattle Seahawks.


Your 2015 record: 10-6, featuring a 31-24 divisional round loss at Carolina that marks the end of this team’s ability to make Super Bowls. Enjoy those two years of glory, Seattle. That was as good as it’s gonna get. After this there’s nothing but a long, slow regression back into terminal mediocrity. Frankly, you never even should have had the chance to spot the Panthers a 31-0 lead in January because Blair missed that goddamn kick. YOU SHITBAGS. God, I hate this team. They’re touched by Satan.

Your coach: This lunatic:

Even though we joke here a lot about Football Bill Clinton and his penchant for 9/11 truthering, I still feel like Pete Carroll doesn’t get enough shit. The guy brought a four-star general into his office just so he could hassle him and ask if the Pentagon was REALLY attacked that day! That’s amazing. Imagine storming the beaches at Normandy and then retiring and then having some demented football coach shine an interrogation light on you and be like, “So, D-Day… that was staged, right?”

Every Pete Carroll presser question should have a 9/11 question amended to it. “Pete, why were Marshawn and Fred Jackson drag-racing outside that daycare center, and how much money has the Saudi royal family paid our government to keep the controlled demolition of Tower 7 a secret?” I would like to know where he stands on fluoridated water, Sandy Hook, the moon landing, and Ted Cruz as the Zodiac Killer. I bet he’s ‘just curious” about a great many things. Wily ol’ Pete doesn’t just accept everything at face value, folks.


Also, Darrell Bevell, who has too many double consonants in his name, is still here. If Jimmy Graham ever comes back from shredding his patellar tendon (not likely!), I look forward to Bevell drawing up pass plays that force Graham to run directly off the field for no good reason.

Your quarterback: O ho ho ho… (claps hands and rubs them together furiously)


I’m 39 years old. In my lifetime, I have never encountered a bigger phony in sports. Not A-Rod. Not Dexter Manley. Not Lance Armstrong. Not Tiger Woods. Russell “Uncanny Valley” Wilson out-phonies them all. This man... this… this yacht rock video that God molded into human form… this represents the absolute nadir of modern man’s desire to publicly and transparently brand himself. Let’s go through all the gross shit Russ did this offseason…

•Cribbed lines from a Google search to tweet-serenade his lady (Here is friend of the blog Daniel Radcliffe reading that tweet aloud for comic effect).


•Was the worst Batman since Clooney.

•Hired a professional photographer to document his stupid vacation.

•Gave a graduation speech that was vigorously fact-checked by former teammates who can’t stand him.


•Instagrammed his potential future loss of staged virginity.

•Snapchatted the subsequent loss of that staged virginity.

Russell Wilson’s entire life is a reality show that no channel—not even E!—wants to air. He and his team of bush league ballslappers are somehow—against all odds—even lamer than the lameasses (Carson Palmer and the lead singer of Godsmack) who clown on them. Russ is the Ground Zero of corn. He smile makes me physically ill.


And how the hell did he make that throw to Lockett? Fucking prick.

What’s new that sucks: Marshawn is gone! Yes, every thirsty liberal blogger’s favorite running back has retired (OMG he literally hung up his cleats and tweeted them! YASSSSSSSSS KWEEN!), which means Carroll no longer has focus on ways to not give him the ball. Your new running back is Thomas Rawls, who broke an ankle last season is roughly as tall as a stack of pancakes. He’s a dead man.


Speaking of dead men, Ricardo Lockette broke his neck. This makes me sad because that means Malcolm Butler can no longer step in front of him. Going forward, the Seahawks will be more reliant on newcomers like Rawls and, uh, Frank Clark. Enjoy rooting for the Pacific Northwest Greg Hardy, kids.

Kam got trucked by Zeke.

What has always sucked: Your line! Your line is still a mess, especially now that Russell Okung is in Denver and won’t even have the chance to get hurt early in the season. Without Lynch, Graham, or a functioning line, this entire offense now consists of Russ throwing desperation passes to shitty wideouts and saying a little prayer while that shit hangs in the air.


This is the kind of unimaginative, rainy-day offense that Seattle deserves. I have been to Seattle, a place that answers the question, “Hey, what if God made the North Face store a city?” It’s a town that combines Boston’s inferiority complex with San Francisco’s wealth disparity and lust for oncoming geographical catastrophe. For real, I dunno how Seattle hasn’t slid into Elliott Bay already.

Also, I waited in line half an hour for a goddamn sandwich in Seattle and when I got into the shop, 80 percent of the sandwiches were crossed off the board. What is this shit? If you don’t have enough food, don’t open a fucking restaurant. Seattle is the King of Annoying Restaurant Cities. Portland is the better town. There, I said it. You 12th Fan buttholes are too drunk and too busy sending out dumb petitions and writing racist letters to Cam Newton and calling the cops on Kam Chancellor to do anything about it. These people are all wannabe Steelers fans and the strain is so, so evident. Watching these fans over-cheer is like watching Ciara fake an orgasm.


What might not suck: When you’re in the same division as Jeff Fisher AND Jed York, you get a four-win head start every season. This team will win 10-plus games without impressing anyone, and then choke on its own fleece pullover sometime before the NFC title game.

Let’s remember some Seahawks:

Curt Warner



Ray Roberts



Kelly Stouffer



Shawn Springs



Carlester Crumpler



Hear it from Seahawks fans!

Nick:

The biggest news of our offseason was our QB finally getting laid.

Kier:

RUN THE BALL FROM THE 2 YARD LINE FFS.

Brian:

I’ve lived in Seattle for 6 years now, the perfect amount of time to witness the sheer bandwagonry of this fan base. I’ll admit when I first arrived, I thought the 12th man was pretty neat and the stadium was pretty cool. But then I went and saw the Giants play a Matt Hassalbeck-less Seahawks team, and go up 28-0 before halftime. There were only Giants fans left in the building at that point. 12th Man my ass. It was a time of normalcy in the Emerald City and it was wonderful. Then these assholes get a Super Bowl and it’s been horrifying ever since. I can’t walk five feet without seeing a stupid 12th man flag. Every Friday I’m subjected to “Blue Friday” at work where these people wear their jerseys to work. 50% of them can’t answer who was QB prior to Wilson (I actually conducted this test last week in prep for this article). These fans are so brutal they showed up to opening night for the Mariners, the first game for Cano, in SEAHAWKS JERSEYS and chanted their stupid SEA-HAWKS chant. Then Russell Wilson threw out the first pitch and the attendance level dropped. These fans are the NFL’s version of new money; loud, obnoxious, high on their own farts, and completely unprepared for dealing with their new found success. Don’t buy the hype; only a fraction of this fanbase are true believers. The rest were a tipped ball away from buying Kaepernick jerseys.


Mike:


Hal:

I cannot think of a place I’ve lived (at least three NFL cities, including Washington DC) what appropriates its team the way Seattle fans do. Even during the offseason, most office buildings have a big “12" flag or poster in a window, letting everyone know that they’re “a 12". What does that even mean? It means Paul Allen wouldn’t pay Texas A&M any more to license “12th Man”, so they’re now just called “the 12s”.


Sochsun:

God I hate the self-righteous and pretentious fans acting like they’re carrying the damn ball themselves.


Bryan:

Ninety percent of our fan base actually believes it is on the team and they get that warm feeling when Carroll gives a shout out to the ‘Twelves’. But even worse are the numerous guys like this shitbird on Twitter posting about Kam Chancellor’s holdout last year. I am pretty sure he jacks off while wearing only a recently purchased ‘12' jersey, holding a picture of Russell Wilson, Pete Carroll and John Schneider, and saying this over and over while staring at himself in a full length mirror:


Will:

There are two types of Seahawks fans: the blue collar old Seattle fans and the tech bro Amazombie bandwagon new Seattle fans. Here’s a tip: they’re both the worst. The old Seattle fans say they’re the “real” fans because they, before 2005, had the longest playoff drought of any NFL team but they NEVER GAVE UP. Old Seattle fans hate the Broncos, wear Largeant jerseys, and drink Rainier because it’s cheap. New Seattle fans are Amaholes or other tech bros that moved to Seattle within the last fives years and have only known a winning Seahawks team. They drive their Teslas to tailgate, hate the Niners because SEATTLE IS BETTER THAN THE VALLEY BRUH, wear a 12th Man jersey, and drink Rainier because it’s hip. Also Russell Wilson is definitely into some weird sex stuff. In a couple years it’s going to come out that he can only get off if he has one of those end zone pylons shoved up his ass while someone yells, “Your hands aren’t too small for the NFL” at him.


JC:

The likable star is retired. What we’re stuck with is a perfection robot married to Ciara, JV Deion Sanders, and a truther for a coach who’s basically NFL Phil Jackson: a great coach because he has better players. Plus, those of us who have been there since they sucked have been usurped by a bunch of entitled bandwagoners who think they’re better than everyone else because their billionaire owner had the stadium designed to channel sound to the field.


David:

Moving to Seattle a few years ago has absolutely ruined this team for me. Actually going to a game is miserable. Doing so basically entails shelling out a small fortune for a ticket to sit in the rain with about a million drunk assholes who all drove there in from the surrounding semi-rural areas in their giant lifted trucks with 12th Man vinyl wraps, thereby fucking traffic for the entire city on the way in, and double-fucking it on the way back out as their drunk asses crash the aforementioned bro-dozers into trees, buildings, pedestrians, and occasionally the Puget Sound. Worse though, is the false sense of entitlement that every fuckstick in a 12 jersey has because they suddenly started to give a shit about the team sometime around week 6 of the 2013 season, and feel that their entire 2.5 seasons of devotion to an eminently successful team has been some sort of Herculean feat. When Russell Wilson is literally dismembered in week 4 by Muhammad Wilkerson because our offensive line is about as solid as wet toilet paper, and the team goes 6-10, half the city will act like it is the greatest tragedy to befall mankind, even though they didn’t realize there was a football team here five years ago.


Scott:

I guarantee that the following things will occur simultaneously multiple times during Seahawks games this year: 1. Announcers go on and on about how Tom Cable, SUPERGENIUS, has done wonders with an offensive line consisting of two offensive linemen [who can only run block], a former linebacker, a third-string tight end, and a bouncer he found at a Tilted Kilt, because he knows you can’t trust NCAA programs to train offensive linemen like he can. 2. Russell Wilson runs for his life after the other team’s entire defensive front seven enters the backfield in an eighteenth of a second.


Ufford:

Read enough WYTS, and you can predict the punchlines before they’re written. There will be, of course, jokes at Pete Carroll’s expense, for his reported belief in 9/11 conspiracies. But I’d rather have a coach who’s a 9/11 truther with enthusiasm and team-building skill than some conservative retread like Jim Caldwell or John Fox. And yes, Russell Wilson is just the Christian version of Tom Cruise: undeniably talented, relentlessly upbeat beyond any accepted version of sanity, and married to a celebrity looking for a bump in Q-score. I find all of this easy to ignore, as Russell Wilson is a hell of a lot of fun to watch on the field, spends his off days at a children’s hospital, and — unlike Future — shows interest in being a good father to Future’s son. There is also the Seattle front office’s troubling lack of interest in offensive line talent. In 2015, the Seahawks had one of the worst O-lines in the league, and the unit was the obvious culprit in the playoff loss at Carolina. Naturally, they let the best player of the bunch (left tackle Russell Okung) walk in free agency by refusing to match the ZERO GUARANTEED DOLLARS offered by Denver and replaced him with ... no one? This despite a crowded free agent market that made talented tackles relatively affordable. Yet even so, I accept that Carroll and GM John Schneider must have insights that I can’t grasp. And that’s when I realized: **I** am the awful thing to be hated. I am the fan who ignores bad (unforgivable?) aspects of a beloved coach. I am the self-described hater who loves the cheesedick quarterback ending every cliché-ridden interview with “GO HAWKS!” I am the fan so comfortable with and confident in the team’s success that I can look at their glaring weakness and instead double-down on my confidence in the management. Good God, I’m fucking terrible. Describe me to myself, and I’d want to jab a meat fork in my ribs. I hope I fall down a well. p.s. I would vote for any presidential candidate who vowed to ban #12 FAN jerseys.


Andy:

The two worst people to start talking to you on the bus are people who refer to themselves as either “12's” or Bernie Bros. Good thing Seattle is full of both.


Jacob:

When the Seahawks lost SB49, my friend ripped off his newly purchased authentic Russell Wilson jersey, threw it out my apartment window onto the street, and screamed “WHAT’S EVEN THE POINT ANYMORE”. He left it there. Our entitlement, for some reason, is still unmatched. Actually, now that I think of it, it makes perfect sense in a Seattle sort of way: 1) Because we have spent so much time being unsuccessful, we are entitled to success now because of course it is our turn. 2) The Mariners suck, which means we must live in a football city. We deserve to have one thing go our way. 3) Professional sports is, as proven by the Sonics, against us; therefore, our victories are earned against the wishes of the evil administration. 4) Last year was the worst possible scenario for the Seahawks, which of course means this year is going to be a bounce back and more deserved, earned victories we are entitled to because it is our turn and we’re going to do it our way. I live in the university district of Seattle. The only thing worse than rent inflation and constant construction is the neighborhood shutting down whenever “RW3” (dear god, man) and Ciara stop by Yeti for a cup of Taro FroYo. I can still see the mass of white people in salmon-colored khaki shorts whipping their phones out and taking Snapchats of the happy couple. I can see it in my nightmares. It haunts me. I think that’s where all the awful entitlement and jersey throwing comes from. The Seattle Seahawks are indicative of a city undergoing extreme amounts of repugnant gentrification, masked only by a false perception of adversity through past failures. We are the NFL’s nouveau riche; we are football’s millennials with iPads who don’t know what a CD is, raised in split custody by parents who divorced back when the Kingdome was still up. The worst part is the team is peaking now, and if we don’t win another Super Bowl in the next 3-5 years, all we’ll have to remember this time by is one of the most boring Super Bowls in the history of the game (or at least that’s what everyone tells me; I was too busy crying tears of joy after halftime). P.s - I honestly do not know who is going to play offensive line. I honestly do not want to think about it. P.p.s - If Jimmy Graham plays week one, I fully expect his knees to explode a la the Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard.


Jon:

Only Russell Wilson could make sleeping with Ciara feel like the most bland, soulless experience on the planet.


Mike:

If Seahawk fans were Christians, “12's” would be Westboro Baptists. Take the Superfan “Seahulk” for an example. He went super broke from going to all the games, and has been begging for money outside the stadium and online. He even rented out his chest for a local electrical contractor to advertise on him. Seahawks, go back to being irrelevant and quit acting like a high schooler who finally had sex and makes sure everyone knows about it.


Mark:

I was on a flight in May from Seattle to LA, with a 50-year-old man in a Seahawks jersey, sweatpants, and what appeared to be grass and shit stained New Balances. At cruising altitude, the carnival barker attempted to start a slurred “Seahawks” chant. That was one of the few moments in my life as a passenger when I wanted the pilot to torpedo the plane into Mount Rainier. These type of degenerates are all too common thanks to Alaska Airlines permitting early boarding for Seattle-departing flights if you’re wearing a Russell Wilson jersey during football season. These dipshits are already sitting practically in the lavatory of the plane, and now have the distinct pleasure of shoving their duffel bags in the overhead compartments 20 rows up from where they’re sitting. Deadbeat dads forgo child support payments to instead buy a Wilson jersey and board early for once in their worthless life. Alaska Airlines has found a remarkable way of rewarding failure. The Seatac Airport now looks like a giant casting for “Where are they now” edition for every high school fuckup.


Kyle:

Everyone seems to think that the entire Pacific Northwest will collapse into a singularity when the Seahawks finally miss the playoffs again. But that’s not what will happen. Instead, we’ll just conveniently stop giving a shit, and pretend like we never cared in the first place... No more blue Fridays, no more GO HAWKS on Dental Office reader boards or “hawked out” cars on the freeway. The bandwagon 12s will just find something else to be passive aggressive and unfriendly about.


Brian:

did you know the seahawks have an official fungus water look at this shit that’s a year old and i didn’t even know about it Kombucha is completely disgusting and is only drank by white girls who teach yoga i know because my girlfriend teaches yoga and brews her own Kombucha, if we ever break up i’m using the 2 gallon jar of scobee as raison detere


Noel:



In the spring of 2012 I moved to Seattle for work. One of the first things I needed to do was buy a new mattress. While paying for my new shitty mattress set, I told the salesman that I was just getting settled in after moving to the Seattle area from Denver. “Well, I hate you because you are a Broncos fan,” he said as he swiped my credit card. (Note that I am not actually a Broncos fan as I was born in Wisconsin and hail from a long line of insufferable Packers fans.) While I was mildly taken aback, I wasn’t really bothered. In fact, as time went by, I learned to respect that awkward mattress salesman’s Seahawks fandom. Upon arriving at my new office a few days later, I asked my coworker if he was a Seahawks fan. He chortled and giddily explained that he didn’t even know who was on the team anymore. He turned down an invitation from our boss and myself to watch what soon be known as the “Fail Mary” game at a local sports bar. At the office the next morning, our boss—a Lions fan—and me were discussing how ridiculous the ending to that game was when my coworker interrupts “Wait! We won?” Sometime in early December, dude shows up wearing a Marshawn Lynch jersey that might as well had the price tag still on it. “I’ve had this since 2005, but I haven’t worn it much.” Never mind that Marshawn Lynch was still in college in 2005 or that the jersey my coworker was wearing was clearly one that was first unfurled in 2012. A Deadspin commenter last year coined the term “12s Since ‘12” and was totally fucking right. What makes this fanbase so awful is that the vocal majority of them are not only woefully ignorant about football itself but, also, the history of their own goddamn team. Explaining to a bandwagon fan that Curt Warner is one of the Seahawks’ career rushing leaders generates the same facial expression as trying to explain evolution to the average Kansan. My head hurts. [Pours double shot of bourbon with a Recovery Water chaser]

Trevor:

For anyone in the world who truly believes Russell Wilson is genuine, just remember he tried to sell miracle healing water. People here bought it in droves. I need to move.

Matthew:

I’m probably going to shoot myself week 10 against New England when they show the final play of SB49 six hundred and sixty six times. Fuck Jerramy Stevens always and into eternity. Fuck 99% of this fanbase.

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