Why I support the Seattle Seahawks

The Seattle Seahawks, either you love them or you hate them.

One of a select group of “marmite teams” in the NFL, the Seahawks are my team, and in my very first article for this fantastic site, I’m going to explain how I came to follow them, some of my favourite moments so far during my tenure as a fan, and my thoughts on the season just gone whilst also looking ahead to the future too.

Hi everyone, I’m James Barker, I’m a 23-year-old sports journalism student and host of the We Talk Seahawks Podcast, and this is my NFL/Seattle Seahawks story. *Dramatic music plays*

Why Seattle?

Allow me to take you all back to the year 2012, you know, those early years of the 2010’s that we all acknowledge existed but none of us really have a clue what happened or what we we’re doing during them…

Well let me offer some reminders: London hosted the 2012 Olympics, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron and England’s football (soccer) team were knocked out of Euro 2012 on penalties to Italy – talk about foreshadowing!

Personally, it was a year of searching. 13-year-old me had just started his second year of big school and was looking desperately for an excuse to skip French class, whilst also searching for a reason to continue following my football team Middlesbrough FC, as they slid into English footballing mediocrity once again (I’ve lost some of you completely with these being my two teams haven’t I?).

So like Rapunzel herself, I looked out from my bedroom window, just waiting for the day someone would come and rescue me, and in Pete Carroll and the Seattle Seahawks, rescue finally arrived.

I’d just been allowed to upgrade from my very first flip phone, to a more extravagant touch screen one, and with that came the wonders of the internet.

Now it’s important at this stage that I reveal that my lucky number all the way back from when I was a child was the number 12. I have no idea why, perhaps I won a box of Quality Street in raffle as 5-year-old with that ticket number, all I know is that somewhere along the line, it became lucky to me. 

One day after browsing YouTube, probably looking for PlayStation six leaks and Call of Duty glitches, these strange videos of what I now know was American Football started to appear. And so I began watching, and I was instantly hooked.

The sport, the players, the fans, the stadiums, it was all like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I loved it. The player I found myself watching the most and one of my earliest inspirations was actually Calvin Johnson, or “Megatron”, so I probably should’ve been a Lions fan (some might say a bullet dodged there).

But then I came across the Seattle Seahawks. I watched a highlights video from one of their games, I’m pretty sure it was the 2011 Wild Card game vs the Saints from the season before, better remembered as the “Beast Quake” game,  and I couldn’t believe my eyes as I saw that this team and its fanbase practically worshipped the number 12.

And like it was fate all along, they were always going to be my team from that moment onwards.

Favourite players and memories

My favourite Seahawk off all-time is Doug Baldwin, and his was one the first jerseys I ever owned. I just loved the underdog story with him: undrafted, undersized, but confident and fiery too, and when he got his opportunity to play in the league, that chip on the shoulder mentality enabled him to enjoy a brilliant career whilst making a lot of people look very silly.

For my money, one of the most underrated receivers of his era, just like one of his former teammates and current Seahawk Tyler Lockett is today.

Some of my favourite memories would be: Doug Baldwin’s one-handed catch vs Vikings in the 2015 Wild Card game, Bobby Wagner’s 98-yard pick six vs the 49ers in 2018, and of course, beating Russell Wilson and the Denver Broncos in week one of last season. 

2022, what a year!

So what are my thoughts on the 2022 season? Well, I’m still trying to figure out how we managed to achieve what we did to be honest! Sales of humble pie sky-rocketed across the league that’s for sure.

Very few predicted that the hawks would be anything but tanking fodder this season, let alone be an even better football team than the one from the season before, on top of losing two Hall of Fame players in QB Russell Wilson and linebacker Bobby Wagner, whilst also losing other key players such as cornerback D.J. Reed and running back Chris Carson to an early retirement through injury. 

But somehow, we were, and don’t Head Coach Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider look like absolute geniuses for it too. From netting a huge haul for Wilson, freeing up cap space, making savvy free agent acquisitions such as linebacker Uchenna Nwosu (9.5 sacks in 2022), and landing what appears to be an all-time great draft class with early hits on Charles Cross, Ken Walker and Boye Mafe, to absolute steals in Abraham Lucas, Tariq Woolen and Coby Bryant respectively. The team nailed it on so many levels last season.

And of course, the biggest surprise of all, Geno Smith. A player who practically all Seahawks and NFL fans in general, myself included, thought it would be crazy for the hawks to name him as their starting QB, when we had Drew Lock who despite being far from elite, had won games recently in the NFL with the Broncos. But Pete Carroll obviously knew something that we all didn’t, that he was sitting on a gold mine all along. 

And didn’t we just strike big. Smith’s 2022 exploits saw him break the single season franchise record for completions (399 – previous 384, Wilson), passing attempts (572 – previous 562, Hasselbeck), completion percentage (69.8% – previous 68.8, Wilson) and passing yards (4,282 – previous 4,219, Wilson).

The future is bright

And so, looking ahead to the 2023 season and beyond, I don’t recall a time in which I was more excited for the future as a Seattle Seahawk fan. 

Seattle, at the time of writing, has four picks in the first two rounds of the 2023 NFL Draft, two firsts and two second rounders. That’s potentially a great deal of even more young, blue chip talent heading to the Pacific North West to add to what is already a youthful squad. The team also has approximately $27m in cap space, which is the eight most in the league at the time of writing. 

After suffering from repetitive, predictable and vanilla play-calling for the past few seasons, Offensive Coordinator Shane Waldron called a more balanced and well-rounded offensive game plan last season. He did so with the inclusion of tight ends in his 13 personnel system, (formation that features one running back and 3 tight ends) which worked wonders for Seattle’s passing attack, and undoubtedly helped play up to the strengths of Geno Smith as a signal caller.

A scheme change on defense from 4-3 to 3-4 bore fruit under first year Defensive Coordinator Clint Hurtt, and although they fell out of form mid-season and suffered teething problems with this transition, they resisted the temptation of reversing back to the old trusty 4-3 and pushed on with their new defensive philosophy, doing so with enough success to keep confidence levels among the 12’s high enough to maintain belief that this is the way forward.

The main question that is on every Seahawks fans’ lips at the moment is will Geno maintain this standard of play, or was it just a fairytale story that will come to an end next season? That’s tough to say at this point, but if he does, and you add in all those elements that I’ve previously listed, and you can improve the interior on both sides of the trenches, Seattle might just be about ready to serve it up to the NFL with another play-off run (assuming Geno re-signs), following on from a year when many thought their kitchen had gone up in flames.