Same ol' Mariners, some new Seahawks and my fine friends

Those words were said by Mike Holmgren in October 2002.

At the time, it was treated like a confession. Holmgren himself seemed to acknowledge he may have done things back asswards in his first three years with the team.

Then, when the Seahawks marched to their first Super Bowl behind a veteran offense and young defense, there was a certain amount of validation.

Now? I fear it’s a bit of a prediction for the 2025 Seahawks. I’ll explain more in a bit, but first a quick round-up.

The Mariners acquired first baseman Josh Naylor from the Arizona Diamondbacks in what the baseball men are tabbing as the first “big” move of the trade deadline.

Good. Naylor’s a solid hitter, and he can be a fiery presence on the field. He will help, and all it cost was a pair of pitching prospects.

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t fall to my knees in gratitude, however. The Mariners are following the same script they have for a solid three years now: 

• Start with an underwhelming offseason in which payroll is not added so much as rearranged.

• As the season approaches, concoct statistical arguments that make it seem the team’s offense has been better than we think.

• Once the season starts, use any hot streak as an opportunity to gloat.

• Any losing skid, however, is time to vanish from sight.

• Rent a bat or two as the trade deadline approaches so you can tell everyone you tried.

•  Miss the playoffs by a game, maybe two and do the whole thing again.

I’m not complaining about the addition of Naylor. I’d like to see it followed by a trade for Eugenio Suarez, too. But if and when that does happen, I’m also going to point out that the only reason the Mariners parted with Suarez after the 2023 season was because of the budget.

I am fairly certain they would have made the playoffs last year if they had kept Suarez on the roster, and while his return might be enough to boost the Mariners into the playoffs this year, the whole episode kind of confirms why the Mariners remain a team just good enough to break your heart.

The Seahawks began training camp on Wednesday, and I’m such a sicko that I’ve already spelled out the three things that absolutely must happen if the Seahawks are going to do more than just compete for a playoff spot this season. 

• The three things that would take the Seahawks from good to great

  By Danny O’Neil | The News Tribune

⛰️ Rocky Mountain high ⛰️

What I remember most viscerally about Aptos High School was how utterly and completely out of place I felt my first day on campus.

This was September 1990. I was 15 years old, my mom had remarried earlier that year and we had moved from the small town in Oregon where I was born to Santa Cruz County. I showed up on campus not knowing a soul.

I was paranoid about my clothes. My jeans were tighter than the other kids. They were also aggressively bleached. I had too many neon T-shirts.

The thing that made me feel most conspicuous, however, was that I carried my books in a duffel bag, which was black and turquoise and made by Macgregor.  In California, everyone—and I mean everyone—wore a backpack.

At age 50, I can still feel the anxiety, the near-panic I felt about not having a backpack, and I have come to understand that there is always a part of me that will be that lonely 15-year-old kid utterly petrified about my own perceived lack of social standing.

This feeling, while poignant, is not an accurate reflection of my overall experience in California.

There is a great deal of objective evidence that the move to California turned out to be a very good thing for me. It raised my expectations for myself, what I thought was possible. I also made friends. Lifelong friends, and we convened in Colorado last week, renting an Airbnb in Estes Park at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park.

One day we hiked up to Sky Pond. The next day we went to Emerald Lake. I saw a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater for the first time. It was an absolutely incredible trip with seven guys I’ve now known for more than 30 years.

So why haven’t these friendships and other objective measures of success minimized or even outright obscured the fear and uncertainty I felt my first day on campus?

Well, I think that’s because I’m a human being, and for a variety of reasons, human beings tend to pay more heed to negative experiences than of positive ones. We don’t just remember those negative experiences, we feel them.

This can impact our decision-making, making us more willing to fixate on potential negative outcomes as opposed to recognizing the full range of positive possibilities. It can also influence how we see ourselves.

I tend to think of myself as someone who is overly timid, uncertain of himself, despite ample objective evidence that this is no longer case. I fear being lonely despite ample objective evidence that I have a great number of close, true friends. Hell, I worry that I worry too much over all of this.

For this past week, I’ve focused on being cognizant of how extraordinarily fortunate I have been to find such dear and close friends and grateful that we had the opportunity to spend five days in the mountains together. We even saw a bear walk by our rental house, and it didn’t try to eat us!

It is tempting to use 2012 as a reference point for this Seahawks team. 

There are certainly some parallels:

The are significant differences, though:

• Milroe isn’t anywhere near as NFL ready as Wilson was;

• Mike Macdonald has already declared Darnold the starter;

• QB was pretty much the last piece the Seahawks needed to get right back in 2012, this offense is very much a work in progress.

I actually think that 2011 is a much better reference point.

So why am I bringing this up? Well, if you remember that 2011 season, the first two months were a fairly hot mess.

Seattle was shut-out in Week 2 at Pittsburgh and lost 6-3 at Cleveland in Week 7. That second game was most memorable for Red Bryant getting ejected because he head-butted an opposing player, subsequently revealing this player had called him fat.

The Seahawks failed to score a touchdown twice in the first six games that season, and were held to fewer than 20 points six times in the first eight games as they went 2-6. 

So why am I bringing that up now?

Well, I believe the Seahawks offense is going to be a work in progress for the first half of the season. I don’t think the team is going to go 2-6 like it did in 2011, but I don’t think it’s going to be 6-2, either. think this will cause a number of people to lose their ever-loving mind, wailing about John Schneider’s willingness to tab Darnold as a franchise quarterback.

This is the wrong measuring stick to use.

The best way to judge Darnold is in comparison to Geno Smith or more accurately, how well you think Smith would be playing for Seattle had the Seahawks met his asking price.

The Seahawks did not sign Darnold because they are completely sold that he’s going to be this team’s starting quarterback for the foreseeable future.

They signed Darnold because they could not re-sign Jackson. The reason they did not re-sign Jackson is they were not confidence enough he was the long-term answer to meet his asking price.

Could Darnold be the team’s long-term quarterback? It’s possible. Certainly the team is hoping he will be. It would be very convenient for the franchise if he was, but as far as quarterbacks, this is not one of those make-or-break decisions like when a team uses a top-five pick at that position.

Mostly, I don’t think that the first half of this upcoming season is going to be nearly as indicative of Seattle’s long-term trajectory as the second half of the year will be.

Does this offense start to come together? 

It did back in 2011, and while everyone points to 2012 as the turning point for the franchise under Pete Carroll, I would argue that it began with the Seahawks going 5-3 over the final eight games of that 2011. They had turned the corner, setting the stage for the five straight playoff berths and back-to-back Super Bowl appearances that would follow. They just needed to find their quarterback.

Now perhaps Darnold will make it easy this time around. It certainly would be convenient for Seattle if that were the case.

But I don’t believe that Seattle’s long-term prospects hinge upon Darnold being that guy. That would be too much pressure to hang on any one player let alone someone like Darnold, who’s changing teams for the third consecutive offseason and fourth time in five years.

The Seahawks offense is going to be young. Of the 11 players the Seahawks selected in this year’s draft, nine of them play on offense. That’s the most players Seattle has selected on one side of the ball in any year since 1994, when the current seven-round format was instituted.

Now of Seattle’s offensive rookies, only Grey Zabel seems likely to start. Still it made me think of that time in October 2002 when Holmgren conceded that going young on offense results in some growing pains.