Seahawks Thoughts, With A Little Kevin Durant Thrown In
A couple weeks ago, sitting at Qwest Field during the Seahawks’ opener, I mentioned to a colleague that Seattle just might win its division. Not that the Seahawks are good or anything, but the NFC West stinks. I thought somebody might win this division with an 8-8 record. This week, Bill Simmons lowered the bar to 7-9. Here’s what he wrote about Seattle, drifting into a brilliant analogy that involves Kevin Durant:
Seahawks (1-1): Won nine games total in 2008 and 2009, overpaid a college coach, gutted their team and somehow ended up with the league’s fifth-highest payroll ($138.8 million). Throw in a general Washington sports malaise — the Mariners might lose 100 games, the Zombie Sonics look like a title contender, Kevin Durant flashed GOAT potential in Turkey, the Jake Locker Heisman Bandwagon careened off I-5 and flipped 35 times and the state’s two biggest sports highlights of the past three years involved the WNBA and MLS — and it’s hard to imagine the Hawks winning more than six games.
You can’t overstate how devastating the Sonics/Durant double whammy has been for Seattle fans. After my gushing Durant column last week, my former editor KJ, a lifelong Sonics die-hard, sent me an e-mail that simply read, “Cue up Eddie Vedder: ‘I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life, I know you’ll be a sun in somebody else’s sky, but why can’t it be mine?'” Any time sports drives a fan to quote “Black,” the single most depressing song by a Seattle band other than “Black Hole Sun,” you know something truly hideous has happened.
That lyric is perfect, just perfect, for Sonics fans. And, painfully, for Blazer fans.
But back to the Seahawks. Simmons’ column includes a breakout of the cumulative record for each NFL division since 2002. Care to guess which one is the worst? Go ahead, guess. It’s the NFC West, which has a .419 winning percentage over that time. That’s putrid, and Seattle was genuinely good for a couple of those seasons.
So, yes, the Seahawks conceivably could make the playoffs. If they can win their division games at home and win one or two on the road, that’s four or five wins right there. It’s not that far from four wins to seven, and seven just might be enough for a playoff berth in the NFC West.
