Some people are fans of the Seattle Seahawks. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Seattle Seahawks. This 2015 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: the Seattle Seahawks.
I mean… is there any athlete on Earth you pity less in defeat than this man?
Your 2014 record: 12-4. NFC Champions. But fuck all that. Let’s get right to the pick…
The best part of this is how Pete Carroll and Darrell Bevell have doubled down on supporting that stupid call. WHY, WE’D RUN THAT PLAY EVERY TIME IF WE HAD THE CHANCE! Why do football people always do this? Why do they steadfastly refuse to EVER express anything resembling regret? It’s like a collective illness. Just once, I would like a coach to say, “Holy shit, was THAT ever the wrong call! Boy, did I fuck that up!” You’re on the one-yard line, and you’re counting on Ricardo Lockette to out-muscle someone for the ball? He’s not Megatron, you know. He’s just some asshole.
My favorite thing about this play is that it not only cost Seattle the Super Bowl, but cast a pall on their previous Super Bowl win as well. Sure, you won a Super Bowl. But you could have had TWO, if only your play-calling hadn’t sucked. Hard to focus on the positive, isn’t it? Hard to be grateful for the success you have when you know you were THAT close to having a goddamn dynasty in the palm of your hand. You fucked it up. You can’t get back. It is final. An inside slant route to Ricardo Lockette. Christ, what a stupid call.
Your coach: Pete Carroll, who will happily second-guess the demolition of the Twin Towers while turning a blind eye to fixing this team’s two-minute drill. Pete Carroll will always be jussssst arrogant enough and jusssst dumb enough to keep you uneasy about your team’s chances. When you’re the Seahawks, you BETTER win your Super Bowl by five touchdowns, because you can’t afford to give this man the opportunity to fuck you sideways before the final gun. WHAT IF THAT PLAY CALL WAS AN INSIDE JOB?!
Your quarterback: This tone-deaf, sentient branding device:
Russell Wilson should get down on his hands and knees and give thanks every day that Washington didn’t draft him. Because if Washington drafts him, he is RG3. He is injured and exposed and out of football within five years. It’s dumb luck that he landed with a team that could find a way to work around his transparent phoniness and pathetic need to be America’s Choirboy.
As it stands now, Russell Wilson is a great player, but also a soulless, inane, dumbshit goody-goody who has all the emotional accessibility of a replicant. He is Darren Rovell in pads. He is football A-Rod. He is a latter-day Will Smith: the one that makes shitty movies and is a poorly-closeted Scientologist. I can’t even imagine how many of his teammates make a wanking gesture any time this guy walks into the locker room and is like IT’S A GREAT DAY TO BE SPECIAL, YOU GUYS! Look at this Rolling Stone profile for proof:
Wilson is wearing a T-shirt and shorts with a Gatorade towel draped from his waist when he grabs a cup of purple liquid and downs it in a single gulp. He locks me in his gaze and smiles.
“Isn’t Gatorade the best? Just the best.”
What kind of fucked-up posthuman gasbag says shit like this without irony? This is how you end up being a weirdo who thinks a bottle of Recovery Water can prevent CTE and treats a screening of Fifty Shades of Grey like some kind of biblical stroll through the valley of temptation…
You guys can’t REALLY like this man. All of Wilson’s supposed “best” friends are probably stock models assigned to him by the marketing team for Abercrombie & Fitch. I wish I knew nothing about Russell Wilson outside of what he does on the field. The more I learn about him, the more intolerable he becomes. Never trust anyone who has done an Entourage cameo.
Also: he’s TOTALLY soaked it in Ciara. I know how bullshit displays of public chastity work.
What’s new that sucks: Oooooh, look! It’s Jimmy Graham! I bet you fans are just dying to see Graham catch jump-balls in a fully armed and operational Seattle offense. Can’t you envision a season in which this man catches 20 touchdown passes? Can you just SEE it, right in your mind? Good, because that’s as close to reality as you’re going to get, because Jimmy Graham will hurt his foot in Week 4 and Wilson will spend the rest of the season running for his life because Seattle dealt away its best interior offensive lineman.
On the other side of the ball, you no longer have Byron Maxwell manning the corner opposite Richard Sherman. Half the defensive backfield had their arms mangled last season. But there is good news! You drafted rookie defensive end and certified woman-puncher Frank Clark! Oh goody! The Seahawks drafted Clark, feigned ignorance about his woman-punching habits, and have somehow gotten away with it relatively unnoticed because NFL reporters treat Seattle like some kind of distant military outpost located across a sea filled with dragons.
What has always sucked: Marshawn Lynch. Did you know Marshawn Lynch made a movie about his life this offseason? Not a documentary: an ACTUAL movie, with a script and stuff. And he starred in it. As himself. Jesus.
Listen: it is Deadspin editorial policy to support Marshawn Lynch in all his petty feuds with the media because people ALWAYS take sides against the media because the media is fucking terrible. This is why Donald Trump is winning in the polls. I get that and agree with it. But that doesn’t mean I have to actually like Marshawn Lynch, because I don’t. He is in the mold of Chad Johnson and Dwight Howard and a million other “funny” athletes who are not funny at all. Also, the whole Skittles thing is stupid. Eat a steak, you fucking child.
As for these fans…
You can dress up all you like and have all your stupid noise records, but the rest of us know the truth: You are a bunch of Johnny-Come-Lately dipshits who are contriving your own little new dopey traditions (that 12 jersey) to convince the world that your fanbase is right up there with the Packers and Steelers and other venerated teams. ALL LIES. Once Wilson gets murdered by his offensive line, you people will be back to chugging down watered down beer at the Clink, getting in knife fights, and being the NBA’s most reliable sucker city for leveraging other cities out of arena money. As storied franchises go, you are all amateurs:
See? And fuck Macklemore. Fuck Macklemore always.
What might not suck: If Doug Baldwin makes a poopy after scoring a touchdown again, I will pay his fine money (NOTE: Offer not valid!).
Hear it from Seahawks fans!
Brian:
GOD DAMMIT lkdsajmf;ldsfjm;ldmmmmm;erwqf.e ,f;
Tom:
As a proud Seattlite I know I’m supposed to love Russell Wilson and all, but give me a fucking break.
Will:
80% of our fans are the worst kind of bandwagoners. Most probably think Brian Blades is a TMNT villain and Cortez Kennedy was a Massachusetts senator.
Joe:
Pete Carroll is a walking douche who deserves nothing but the worst in life.
Josh:
Listening to Russell Wilson talk is like listening to a condensed form of every ESPY award speech.
Ed:
I’m pretty certain CenturyLink still uses Jim Crow laws so that blacks can only sit in the upper levels.
Aaron:
We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop of Russell “GOD DID IT” Wilson, and expecting it to be something as big as the Tiger Woods fiasco. Is he fucking ladyboys on the side? Selling children into sex slavery? Is he really a cyborg? A cannibal?
Zach:
Wait until all the fans turn on Lynch when he finally falls off a cliff.
Trevor:
95% of Seahawk fans think Ballgazhi happened during the Super Bowl.
John:
Instead of investing money into a better O-line to make Lynch unstoppable and give our receivers more than two seconds to get open, we traded our only good lineman to get a tight end who can’t block based solely on the purpose of having a guy to throw to on the one yard line.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Fuck Percy Harvin with a meat cleaver.
Natalie:
Macklemore and Tiesto both have custom Seahawks gear :(
Kyle:
We just got a puppy a month before the Super Bowl. Because of this, we had a very small Super Bowl party at my fiance’s parents house along with her other siblings who spent the entire game in the other room playing World of Warcraft.
I had bought some fireworks for the game, because it worked last year. At the end of the game... And I had to go finish off the rest of the fireworks because her dad didn’t want them at the house (and we couldn’t drive home). So I was outside in the dark, by myself, shooting off fireworks after the biggest choke job in Super Bowl history. Then the dog shit diarrhea all over their carpet and I had to clean that up. All this would have been fine had we won. So fuck you Pete Carroll...
Kevin:
I still say this is the year Russ snaps and fills up the trunk with dead hookers.
Nate:
Our WRs are so laughably bad that I’m not sure they would start for a top 10 college football team.
Zach:
There are three kinds of Seahawks fans, and they all suck in their own way. There are, of course, the legions of bandwagon fans who come out of the woodwork any time any team is good. Those don’t set us apart. Then there are the die-hard fans who, despite living less than 10 or so miles from Seattle seem to have been imported from whatever backwoods Southern bog recently flooded: drinking the disgusting mass-production beer flogged at games and cycling between racial and gay slurs at a frankly astonishing rate, given how low in alcohol said beer actually is.
The group we have to ourselves, though, are the people like me. Folks who not-so-secretly long for the days when the Seahawks were either shitty, or at least under the radar. The time before our players were on the covers of video games and getting talked about in tabloid magazines, when we could whine about the East Coast bias and how no one took us seriously. We are football hipsters, which is frankly the most pathetic thing I can think of, besides maybe the soccer hipsters, and trust me we have tons of those too.
Aleister:
I bet a Seahawks fan a paltry $15 that the Patriots would win the Super Bowl this year. Motherfucker still hasn’t paid me back.
Duke:
I’m a 45 year old lifelong Seahawk fan, and this is Norb. With a “b”. And he is the worst.
Brandon:
Every team in Seattle history has either moved or tried to move at some point because people in this city are fickle bitches, and don’t give a shit when they suck. However, “the 12’s” think they’re the best fans in the world, and single handily made help this team to the Super Bowl.
Russell Wilson dresses like a 60 year old man, has the sex life of a 60 year old man, and makes the Pope seem agnostic.
Fuck Jerramy Stevens.
Devin:
The 1993-94 Sonics had the best record in the NBA, lose to 8th seeded Nuggets in 5. Mariners tie the record for most wins in baseball history, don’t even make it to the World Series. And of course, we could be back-to-back Super Bowl champs...fuck it, I’m depressed now.
Kylie:
Without the glow of a Super Bowl win to distract me, all I see in Russell Wilson is a frat bro robot manufactured by Big Jesus.
Andy:
I flew to Seattle for my first ever Seahawks game. I got way too drunk and fell down on the rain-slicked metal bleachers. I then went to the bar closest to the stadium, got thrown out for standing on the table and shouting, and barfed on the floor on my way out. Then I went to the bar second-closest to the stadium and got thrown out for barfing in the booth.
Kofi:
I was driving home from work one day and drove by a Kia dealership. This place was selling multiple Kia vehicles with the number ‘12’ plastered on the front driver and passenger doors like fatheads. Also fuck Macklemore. With that haircut he looks like he’s part of Hitler’s Youth.
Jack:
Russell Wilson made an appearance in the Entourage movie, which is bad enough on its own merits. Instead of trying to be funny though, he actually tried to give an inspiring speech in the middle of the fucking Entourage movie.
Mark:
The “12th man” or “12’s” as they like to be called are a bunch of drunken divorced dads that spend 1/2 of their annual income on tickets and Rolling Rock drafts in the stadium. After every home game these hammered dipshits pile into their raised rigs, and swerve an hour and a half back to one of the hell holes surrounding Seattle.These miscreants then park their clunkers on the lawn, take a piss in their above ground pools, and pass out face first on their carpeted stairs. Fuck the “12’s”.
Grant:
Every time I cheer for the Seahawks, I am instantly accused of being on the bandwagon. And I don’t blame those accusing me. Our team, stadium, and city have been overrun with people wearing counterfeit 12th man jerseys, having no idea that the team existed before 2011. We just drafted a guy that graduated from the Ray Rice School of Etiquette, and our fans couldn’t care less. One of our friends lives in CA and is a longtime Dolphins fan. Even he has jumped on the bandwagon, and we have to suffer through constant selfies of him wearing Seahawks gear. I have the same Sunday allegiance as reject Dolphins fans.
Brad:
Ok, so we all know what happened on the last play of the Super Bowl. But let’s take a minute to look at how they got to that position in the first place:
They struggled at the beginning of the season, and would have finished behind the Cardinals except that Carson Palmer and Drew Stanton both got injured. I’m assuming that Arizona’s QB coach had off-season workouts in a cursed mummy’s tomb, and that QBs on high school teams who’s mascot also happened to be the Cardinals were probably getting hurt by proxy.
They managed to avoid the Cowboys in the playoffs (who had curb-stomped them on their home field during the regular season) thanks to an especially bad blown call against the Packers.
They beat the Packers in the NFC Championship game only because someone on Green Bay’s kick coverage team completely forgot how onside kicks work.
And the reason they were on the two yard line at the end of the game is because of an impossible miracle catch:
There will never be a more perfect example of a team’s luck running out at the absolute worst possible moment.
Dan:
The problem with us Seahawks fans is that many have begun to imitate the intensity of our team i.e. being loud, aggressive, and full of illicit substances when in reality they are weak, easily frightened, Starbucks fuckers. If the NFL had the Hunger Games with fans, I guarantee you that the Hawks representatives would be the first to get murdered.
Matt Ufford:
The #12 “FAN” jerseys are awful, but every fan base has its swath of morons. I’m fine with Pete Carroll being a 9/11 truther. I don’t mind Russell Wilson sounding like if Tom Cruise got hooked on the Bible. As competent NFL teams go, the Seahawks are more eccentric than criminal, and the long decades of mediocrity make me thankful that the team is on the national stage at all. The problem is that they failed on that stage in a way that was easy to second-guess.
Do you have any idea how often the word “pass” comes up in everyday conversation? “Pass the chips.” “That guy passed me going 95.” “Have you seen my passport?” “I forgot my password.” Pass, pass, pass: it is a common word, and every casual utterance gives modern-day Borscht Belt comedians the opportunity to say OH LIKE PETE CARROLL DURR HURR HURR. There’s no surprise to the joke, and certainly no nuance — it’s just a blunt instrument to wield against my weary head. There’s no room to discuss the down and time remaining, or why there wasn’t a bootleg with a run/pass option to throw to the back of the end zone, or all the other razor-thin margins that determined such a close game. (It’s just as well, I guess. I’d rather not talk about it.)
But that’s why the Seahawks suck. Because I have to deal with that shitty, boring interaction for as long as idiots who remember that game walk this earth. I don’t get to remember Jermaine Kearse’s belief-defying circus catch with fondness, and I never got the sublime pleasure of Marshawn Lynch accepting the Super Bowl MVP award from Roger Goodell and then casually cup-checking the Commish. (I suppose Michael Bennett could have won MVP in this alternate universe. That speech would have been just as incredible.)
Ohhhhh, and look at this. Look at the shitty, sucky fan I’ve become: complaining about a lost Super Bowl a year after steamrolling Peyton Manning to win a championship. A spoiled fan who dared to dream about his nouveau riche team creating a dynasty after a lifetime of mediocrity that SHOULD have lowered expectations. Fuck me. Sports are bad and dumb, and so are the Seahawks.
Submissions for the 2015 NFL previews are now closed. Next up: the New England Patriots.