A salute to Seattle's Boss Hawk

There is an award given to the league’s top executive.

It is voted on by the Pro Football Writers of America, and is scheduled to be announced on Thursday.

I think there’s a very good chance Schneider will receive it.

Good. He deserves it.

He is the one who has steered this franchise through a thoroughly treacherous stretch of water in which he’s traded away the team’s starting quarterback (twice) and been tasked with picking a successor to Pete Carroll.

Two years later, the Seahawks are in the midst of their deepest playoff run in 11 years and one win away from a fourth Super Bowl appearance.

To call this season a vindication of Schneider is a stretch. While there has been criticism of recent drafts and his strategy along the offensive line, I don’t think anyone thought he was a bad GM.

The question everyone had was similar to the one facing Carroll in his final seasons in Seattle: Was he capable of getting the team back on top?

That question has been answered this season in fairly definitive fashion, and in this week’s column for The News Tribune, I got a chance to revisit what is my favorite story about Schneider.

It involves an early-morning trip to the airport, a rental car and a glimpse into the part of a GM’s job we don’t get to see:

• At the brink of another Super Bowl - give John Schneider big props

  By Danny O’Neil | The News Tribune

It always struck me as remarkable that for all the success Seattle experienced from 2012 to 2016, the Seahawks were not singled out for any individual awards.

Not Pete Carroll as coach, not Schneider as an executive. There wasn’t even a Rookie of the Year or Comeback Player of the Year tucked in there though Bobby Wagner did receive one MVP vote in 2014. That came from Tony Dungy.

As tempting as it is to point to a geographic bias, I don’t buy that as the reason.

Cortez Kennedy and Kenny Easley were each named Defensive Player of the Year while playing in Seattle. In Kennedy’s case, it happened while he was playing on a two-win team.

Shaun Alexander was named the league’s MVP in 2005 as the Seahawks marched off to their first Super Bowl.

Yet while Seattle won a playoff game in five successive seasons and allowed the fewest points in the league for four successive seasons, no one was singled out.

It was, in my opinion, a testament to the depth of talent on that team. Was Richard Sherman the key to that defense or was Earl Thomas the one who really made it possible for Seattle to play the style of zone they preferred? Or what about Kam Chancellor? He was both the heart and the hammer of that group.

And on offense, Russell Wilson was the most valuable, but Marshawn Lynch was the most revered, and while Pete did a hell of a job keeping all those personalities pulling in the same direction (most of the time), the Coach of the Year usually goes to the guy who authors the biggest one-season turnaround.

Schneider is the one who I believe wound up being overlooked.

He should have won it for the 2012 season when he had one of the very best draft classes of the salary-cap era not just for choosing Wilson in the third, but drafting Bobby Wanger, Bruce Irvin, Jeremy Lane and J.R. Sweezy.

Instead the award went to Ryan Grigson. For drafting Andrew Luck.

The following season, as Seattle was stomping its way to the first Super Bowl in franchise history, Kansas City’s John Dorsey was the one named Executive of the Year.

Some of that was because of the organizational structure. Carroll technically had final say, which may have obscured Schneider’s importance in running the draft.

Now, there’s no doubt: The Seahawks are here because of not just the players Schneider picked, but the coach as well: Mike Macdonald.

Note: the Pro Football Writers of America will also announce a Coach of the Year. Earlier this week, the Pro Football Writers of America selected Jaxon Smith-Njigba as the Offensive Player of the Year. The Associated Press voting, however, is what the NFL considers its “official” awards for those two categories. The AP doesn’t hold a vote for “Executive of the Year.”

Just finished: “Every Day is Sunday” by Ken Belson. This book bills itself as telling the story of how Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft and Roger Goodell into a cultural and economic juggernaut. It’s more like a series of disconnected portraits of issues those three encountered as the NFL exploded to a business that rakes in $25 billion annually. At its best, the book explains the tactics the NFL employs when it runs into a PR disaster such as the Ray Rice suspension or the sitting president urging NFL owners to fire players who are kneeling for the national anthem. (The cycle is to don a wrinkled brow and say, “We’re listening,” in a hushed tone. Then you throw a bunch of money at an array of charitable causes associated with the isuee. Then you just hope like hell it blows over.) At its worst, the book reads like a series of newspaper articles that are bound together in a 336-page reader. Three stars.

Now reading: “Football” by Chuck Klosterman. If you’ve read Klosterman, you know what to expect. Lots of meandering philosophy. I absolutely love it, but I know not everyone will.

Next up: “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel. This was recommended by former UW coach Chris Peterson when we interviewed him on “Say Who, Say Pod” earlier this month.