New Site Features

I've been tweaking the site every day since its creation (every other hour, really), and here are some of the additions:


Seahawks Player Tracker (top) - This page will soon be listing every player transaction the Seahawks perform. This could be a busy page, for as I wrote here, these next three weeks could be all Seattle has to modify its roster. Check back soon!

Search Field (right) - Will search through every site I've linked to. An excellent research tool, as I try to connect to respectable sites with good information floating around. Speaking of:

Updated Links (left) - 

• Seahawks.net forum - Some seriously deep and well-researched information gets thrown around in this respect-based community. One of the members contributed the terrific banner you now see on the front page. Drop by and enjoy some great folks!
• Seahawks Draft Blog - Independent, tape-based draft opinions from the inimitable Rob Staton. Guy does his homework and has great insight into the minds of NFL teams.
• NFL Draft Reports - Scouting reports by Kyle Rota and Vince Mulcahy. Rota is a precocious judge of NFL talent and Mulcahy an experienced vet. A must-bookmark for knowing your draft prospects.
• Fieldgulls - Research, perspective, and discussion galore. If you want some independent opinions, devil's advocate John Morgan will supply.
• Seahawk Addicts - Good, solid updates and commentary on Seahawks developments, and a long-standing community.
• Hawk Blogger - Quality and substance in Seahawks opinions.
• Dave Krieg's Strike Beard - This guy epitomizes the underdog movement that is Seahawks fandom. Check him out and feel less weird.
• 12 The Hard Way - New blogger Candice Caldwell, a spirited gal who knows her Seahawks and knows her town. Stop by for interesting new angles on the 12th Man.

Share It (right) - Help spread the word about 17 Power by sharing it on Facebook or Twitter! (Or share specific articles as well with the buttons beneath each post!)


SATURDAY MORNING: The Looking Back series returns with Part 4.

Guessing Seattle's Offseason Strategy

February 7th is the date that NFL teams will be able to cut players under contract. March 3rd is the date free agency would normally begin, but it's pre-empted this year by the lapse of the league's Collective Bargaining Arrangement. No business can be conducted after that date - signing free agents, trading players, or any kind of negotiations.

In other words, teams have only three weeks to tweak their roster this year unless the NFL gets a new CBA in place - which, depending on whom you listen to, could be tomorrow or sometime in 2012.

This deadline has teams scrambling to sign players to futures contracts, stocking up on spare parts like my family loading the basement with canned green beans before Y2K. Futures contracts are given to players for 2011 who weren't on a team in 2010 and usually involve the kind of fringe talent that Seattle saw a lot of in 2010.

How will the situation affect the Seahawks' strategies of finding players? Will Seattle keep up its usual frenzy of wheeling-and-dealing in the three weeks that NFL business can still be conducted? Or will they stay relatively quiet in order to make the most out of the draft? There could be a way for us to predict their strategy by looking back on last year and getting a feel for GM John Schneider's modus operandi.

UPDATED: NFL Confirms Franchise Tag Available for 2011

UPDATE: The NFL Players' Association is disputing that franchise tags are available, based on the fact that the CBA that defines a franchise tag does not cover the 2011 season.

NFL teams have been informed by the league that the franchise tag will be available for use this year.

While this was not a surprise to NFL front office, the Seahawks have a number of prominent free agents to consider tagging. It's difficult to see any of these candidates as worth the money, but at this point, league-wide contract standards are so inflated that the only way to avoid overpaying for someone is to franchise K Olindo Mare (the most likely choice) or not use the tag at all.

Notable Seattle free agents include Mare, QB Matt Hasselbeck (whose would have a prohibitively insane franchise contract), DT Brandon Mebane, RB Leon Washington, and C Chris Spencer.

Looking Back on 2010, Part 3: The Long Hard Offseason

Continuing a series of posts re-capturing the moods, debates, and plot twists of Pete Carroll's first year in Seattle. You can find Part 2 here.

For fans of most teams, June marks the settling-in of the long NFL winter. The draft has come and gone, and offseason homerism is in full swing, but there's only so far the draft high can carry you. We're often grateful for minicamps or unexpected trades during this time, because otherwise, there isn't a lot to talk about until July's training camp.

But not for Seattle fans. Instead of a long, dry football winter, the 12th Man saw a regular La Nina of personnel transactions over the summer. One thing you can say about Pete Carroll: he keeps his fans invested in the team in all seasons.

The draft, hailed by most as a smashing affair, had Seahawks fans buzzing even as Carroll continued tweaking and Frankensteining the roster. Veteran SS Lawyer Milloy was kept on board. 2009 flier QB Mike Teel was released. RB Lendale White, the cheaply signed short-yardage back whose biggest fault with the Titans was being stuck behind Chris Johnson, caused a stir by getting cut for his attitude and his failure to devote himself fully to the team. The idea of "buying in" to Carroll's program, a phrase often lampooned by fans beforehand, now had a legitimate weight to it. Carroll was solidifying his presence. (Fans hoping for a reprieve from RB Julius Jones were sighing.)

Minicamps arrived, distilling the chaos into recognizable storylines:

Senior Bowl Quarterback Notes

Christian Ponder: NFL brain. Training bra arm. The deep ball he threw to Hankerson was caught, yes, but still exposed his arm as weak. His deep outs were equally weak. There is no questioning his intelligence, but the 18 yard deep out is an NFL staple, and he simply doesn't have it in his bag. His brains make him intriguing, but his arm says backup.

Jake Locker is still an athlete playing quarterback. He has moments, like his rollout left, where he squares his hips and makes a PERFECT pass, and you know only a few NFL quarterbacks can do that. But his seam routes on the hash are WR death throws. High and wide exposes a lot of ribs. I thought Mayock did a great job of exposing his baseball stride in the pocket. More hips, less legs, Jake. Can that be taught? Absolutely. The fumbling issue is a concern, part of his unsettled pocket presence could be due to poor ball protection. His time in Washington certainly didn't teach him that the pocket is a place to feel secure. I still think he goes in the top ten.

Greg McElroy, I just don't know about. He looks OK at everything, and great at nothing. His arm is not much better than Ponder's, though.

Andy Dalton didn't show much. Practice showed a better arm than Ponder and McElroy; his smarts are beyond question. After he got just absolutely SMOKED on what should have been an offsides penalty at minimum, I don't think it would be fair to evaluate what you saw anyway. And therein lies the rub with Dalton. Can he thicken up a bit so he can take an NFL pounding for 16 (or 18) games?

Colin Kaepernick. Maybe even more than Locker, he is an athlete playing at quarterback. The arm motion can only be described as Tebow lite. He does telegraph throws with his windup. He doesn't have Locker's deep stride issue in the pocket, however. I question his ability to make a 2nd or 3rd read, and his instinct to tuck and run is strong. He LIKES being a running quarterback.

His sideline interview during the game was enlightening. Media savvy players know that the Senior Bowl is an interview for a job, but don't emphasize that aspect, rather talking about "team". Kaepernick made no bones about measuring himself against the other 5 quarterbacks on the field that he thought were getting talked about more than him. Not sure how I feel about that.

Has straight line speed. He will wow them at the combine, he might even make Locker and Newton look slow. He will be selected later than Newton, but I'm not so sure Newton isn't the bigger project. Both are projects, however.

Ricky Stanzi has tools that fit the NFL, but almost appears afraid to make a mistake. He reeks of checkdown Charlie. Good pocket presence, makes two reads, throws all the passes with adequate zip, but somehow always leaves you wanting more. I think he reads short to deep, not deep to short. He looks like a clipboard will fit his hands for quite a few years into the future.

Caveat on these notes: North quarterbacks suffered from a poor pocket all day. South quarterbacks enjoyed a pristine pocket on most plays. Which is why using stats to break down this game is damn near useless.

A Little Story about Potential and Patience

One of the favorite tales to tell at the Super Bowl this week is Aaron Rodgers' rise to fame. His story has it all: College success, a precipitous drop in the draft, years of anonymity behind Mr. Madden's love child A.K.A. Brett Favre, the behind-the-scenes soap opera that played out with Mr. Favre and Ted Thompson with Rodgers stuck in the middle trying to say the right things, and Rodgers' meteoric success when he finally got his chance.

Now, the rest of the story. My apologies, Paul Harvey.

Aaron Rodgers fell in the draft because he had lots of potential, but during the draft process didn't show extremely well. His 6'2" stature didn't help, and he had very real mechanical issues in his delivery. His personality was off-putting to some. The 49ers, who had been watching his career from across the bay, reportedly passed on him because Mike Nolan thought the two of them would not get along.

It gets even more interesting.

Looking Back on 2010, Part 2: Daft Drafting

Continuing a series of posts re-capturing the moods, debates, and plot twists of Pete Carroll's first year in Seattle. You can find Part 1 here.


On draft day of 2010, Seattle fans turned on their televisions without any real idea of what to expect.

New head coach Pete Carroll had dashed onto the scene and made it clear at once that Seattle was moving into a new mentality, and that nobody's job was safe. He had followed his words with action by mowing a blazing personnel path through the tall dead grass that made up the Seattle Seahawks. Nate Burleson, Seneca Wallace, Darryl Tapp, Deon Grant, and Rob Sims were all gone. None of these were significantly responsible for Seattle's decline, but neither had they done much to stem that decline. Fans saw the radical changes in different ways - some called it moving forward and being willing to take risks, others saw a confidence in Carroll's plan, others called it "change for the sake of change" and observed that Seattle had obtained only mediocre free agents in return.