by fellow 12 Clinton Bonner
Faithful Flock it's been awhile and while I've missed tapping away on these keys, late at night, typically sipping a light beer or three, I must say, the time away was purposeful. This off-season has been a real beaut… or a real Munson depending on your perspective I suppose.
I'm grateful our ‘Hawks are getting healthy. I'm happy for, and yet sad about, Marshawn. I've laughed through the clickbait sagas of Big Perm, Big Sherm who was never, ever going anywhere. I'm on the China Food Chubster bandwagon with Adam and think the Lacy mula shoulda, coulda, and woulda been better off spent elsewhere. I love(d) the Malik ‘reach' (prior to a certain ATV story dropped!) and I'm pained by the Pocic pick as my moves like Jagger turned to tears as we watched very capable offensive linemen go by.
Listen all ya'll, it's a sabotage and I'm here to tell you that in a non-linear world, our offseason moves have been ‘Straight Arrow Genaro' linear… and that's a big problem.
Now, for an emotional representation of how I currently feel as a ‘Hawks fan…
“That's nice… you look like a Helen.”
Why the despair? Why the angst, anxiety, and alliterative ad nauseam of apprehension on what has been done, and more poignantly, what has not been done this offseason???
Because life goes quickly. Moments in the sun, eclipse. And in the wide world of sports or the extremely narrow universe of our beloved Seattle Seahawks, windows to launch, to gain escape velocity and to achieve what so many fail to, don't last. This team is not old, but we are in our prime with this current flock. The Lombardi is ours to win.
I'm an exponential optimist. The glass is not only half-full, it's half opportunity, and whether that is in fact superposition or simply a slippery soliloquy, I'm unsure. What I am sure of is that while quantum physics shows us a simultaneous existence persists, our Seahawks can't be in two states in one slice of time.
We are either a championship team… or we are not.
No Quantum Leap or Yoda speak needed to understand an instrumental, near Newtonian principle.
We are either a championship team… or we are not. Right now, we are not.
“Pop Quiz Hotshot”
Imagine you’re responsible for your company’s car fleet. You manage two models, an SUV that gets 10 miles to the gallon and a sedan that gets 20. The fleet has equal numbers of each, and all the cars travel 10,000 miles a year. You have enough capital to replace one model with more-fuel-efficient vehicles to lower operational costs and help meet sustainability goals.
Which upgrade is better?
A. Replacing the 10 MPG vehicles with 20 MPG vehicles
B. Replacing the 20 MPG vehicles with 50 MPG vehicles
Intuitively, option B seems more impressive—an increase of 30 MPG is a lot larger than a 10 MPG one. And the percentage increase is greater, too. But B is not the better deal. In fact, it’s not even close.
Now, I did not write the words immediately above… they come from this article published recently in the Harvard Business Review.
I encourage you to:
- Read the article
- Probably read it again, I had to
- Close your eyes and think about our beloved Seattle Seahawks
Our fleet, our current offensive line are a bunch of 10 MPG vehicles. Of course Britt is the outlier, but math don't lie and spidey senses don't fail us. As a unit, as a fleet… they're 10 MPG dumpster fires.
We have the best quarterback in the NFL when not ‘under siege' and a perennial top tier defense that can clearly propel our team to another division title. Yet, we again have failed to cease the opportunity to make the most meaningful upgrade we can make on this team.
If you read the HBR article, you'd understand that it doesn't require a Cowboys-esque line to reap the necessary gains. To keep the article's analogy going, we wouldn't need to trade in SUVs for Mopeds. No! We just need to trade them in for some full size sedans! On this team, it would be more than enough.
If our offensive line ranks around 24th or 22nd in the league in 2017, we will win the Super Bowl.
This is why when players like an aging Jahri Evans or Breno Giacomini slip through our hands I go all Tommy Boy inside! When we spend big money on Joeckel and decent cheddar on Lacy and decide that a 2nd year FANT-asy (I'm looking at you Flocktimus!) will suffice… I'm hear to scream, no dice!!!
Of course I could be wrong, but John Schneider… try gettin' me right.
Right now, this team will not win the Super Bowl. Our Seahawks will both over-perform and under-perform simultaneously and this superposition will leave us short of where we need to be. Yes, we'll be left out in the proverbial cold Purple Rain of Minnesota watching a party like it's 1999 inside U.S. Bank Stadium, knowing, feeling the entire time, that it shoulda been us.
There are so many moments in life where reclamation projects make good sense. The 2017 New York Jets come to mind 😉 … but for our team, at this time, we don't need to rescue the career of Joeckel and we shouldn't rely on the hype train driving a FANT-asy.
We just need to be the 24th or 22nd best offensive line in the league and we will hoist the Lombardi in February of 2018. Right now, we still need a few, mild upgrades.
Here's to being very, very wrong.
OK Flock, what's your ‘hot take' here?
Go ‘Hawks !!!
