| 09 September 2009
The Seahawks have a brand new fiery head coach, the best player from the 2009 draft, went through a tough training camp with relatively few injuries, and won all four of their pre-season games for the first time in their 34 year history. Time they got a little respect right?
Forget that noise. Same old Seahawks. SSDD (Same Situation Different Day).
The preseason power rankings still pretty much have them as a bottom dweller in the NFC. Looking at four of the major power rankings has WalterFootball with the best outlook having the Seahawks ranked at number 12 in the NFL with 5 NFC teams ranked ahead of them making them number 6 in the NFC. That's a pretty decent ranking and one which I think fits the team pretty well at this point. The Giants, Bears, Saints, Packers, and Falcons are ranked above them. That puts them in the playoffs. Someone at WalterFootball must love the Seahawks to actually be realistic about the rankings.
Now, back to the real world. To continue, press "Read more... below.
From there it's a slippery slope down. ESPN ranks them number 15 but only the 8th best team in the NFC with the Giants, Eagles, Vikings, Bears, Cardinals, Packers, and Panthers ahead of them. That looks like most likely no playoffs to me if it turns out that way and the respect factor is heading steeply downwards from there. At least with Mike Sando on their staff, you know someone at that site has at done his homework on the team this season before making these rankings.
Sports Illustrated puts the team at number 19 and 10th best in the NFC. The Giants, Bears, Eagles, Cowboys, Falcons, Cardinals, Packers, Vikings, and Panthers are all expected to do better than they are which firmly puts us out of sniffing range of the playoffs as well as back into contention for a top 10 draft pick of our own next April to go along with Denver's pick. I'm not sure these guys even
know how to get to Seattle let alone attended a practice or did a little research before relegating the Seahawks to the bottom of the NFC. It's really not that hard to find out a few things about a team before you just automatically relegate them to the bottom of the pile.
Finally, the one to crown it all. CBS has them ranked at 21st in the league and 12th in the NFC with only the Lions, Rams, Buccaneers, and 49'ers below them. Basically, that says the Seahawks will not improve much from last years team which is a real slap in the face. To think that with no real injuries as compared to last year and the great draft we had as well as the free agent pickups and good showing in pre-season we won't do any better than last years team that was decimated with extraordinary injuries is pretty poor journalism even with the famous East Coast bias at full strength. How much homework did these jokers do? That's such a ridiculous ranking that it just about has to be malicious. No one could be that dense even with no research could they?
OK, I'm a homer and so are most of you Addicts. We see things through rose colored glasses and give our team a couple extra games when predicting our record and bump the power rankings a couple of spots just because it's our team and we know things that no one outside our circle of knowledge knows right? That's alright and what a true fan is supposed to do. Some of these so called analysts who don't care a bit about the Seahawks could at least do a little reading from guys like Mike Sando who they should know goes to NFC West camps and actually observes before they come out with pure trash that is as much fiction as Star Wars is. They could do better with a dart board but even that seems to be too much effort. The Seahawks are one of the dominant teams in the NFC over the last 5 years even factoring in last seasons record if not THE dominant team. How could they ignore that even if they weren't aware of one other fact about the Seahawks from this season?
It's just astounding to me to see the team win four out of the last five division titles, be rated with an "A" draft by national sports writers and analysts, be given accolades for the free agent pickups they made by those same national sports personalities, win all 4 of their pre-season games including beating one of the top ranked teams on their own turf, and field a healthy team except for two players then get ranked as the 10th to 12th best team in the NFC and the 19th to 21st best team in the league by Sports Illustrated and CBS. If the Cowboys had such a record from 2004 until now, they would be considered to be one of the top 3 teams in the league, the best in the NFC, and an odds on favorite to make the Super Bowl with last year explained away by the injuries and coaching change and swept under the rug. The four division titles would be the justification to give them the benefit of the doubt and with the injuries to excuse the bad year, they would be "America's Darlings" again. Wanna bet on that one?
We all knew the tough task we signed on for when we took the job as Seahawk fans. We knew we would get little if any respect even if we won our games, beat talented opponents, won championships, and proved ourself worthy ten times over. It's never enough and every milestone can be explained away by the powers that be as luck, weak opposition, weak division, our opponents had an off day, etc. We hang in there because it's our passion and no matter how tough they make it, we're tougher and determined to see this team of ours get bestowed upon them the respect they've earned. So you say that they've not earned any respect yet? Have the Cardinals? They have one division title and one Super Bowl appearance in the last 5 years and they're ranked as the number 4 team in one ranking. How did they get so much respect so fast? Of all the 11 teams ranked above us in the CBS power poll, who has 4 division titles and a super bowl appearance in the last 5 years? No one. Well, actually one does.
Hasta,
BillT
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