Another Sports GM Who Reminds Us of Bush

Without Holmgren's leadership, the emerging Cardinal threat presents a challenge to GM Tim Ruskell. Photo courtesy of Seattlest Flickr pool member Bernzilla.

Seahawks GM Tim Ruskell didn’t speak to the media all season. We can’t blame him; if we failed three times more than we won we’d keep a low profile as well.

Unfortunately Ruskell subscribes to the Bush doctrine of never admitting you were wrong, as opposed to turning horrible failure into a unique learning opportunity. In short, he’s bringing back two kickers next year and thinks the fact that we are the smallest and most injured team in football is completely unrelated.

Never mind the fact we just gave the NFC West crown to the Arizona Cardinals who have a couple of wide outs who regularly eat our defense for breakfast. Maybe Ruskell missed the last Seahawks game where Larry Fitzgerald dragged our secondary and later Philly’s all over the field. Size matters in football.

Speaking of shoddy defense, Ruskell will be replacing our Hall of Fame head coach with the guy who presided over the worst pass defense in football. If you aren’t depressed you aren’t paying attention.

Ruskell has been a proponent of small, fast, character guys. Unfortunately the NFL is dominated by big guys, not necessarily Sunday school teacher types, who don’t break down easily. If you don’t believe me compare our injury-prone wide outs to those of the Arizona Cardinals who are now in the Super Bowl. The Seahawks were decimated with injuries and if Ruskell doesn’t turn the Mora era into an instant rebound he too should expect to feel the wrath of the injury bug. Here’s to having the biggest draft-day turnaround in team history.

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By John in Miscellaneous on January 20, 2009 4:00 PM

Comments [rss]

John

The road to the playoffs goes through Arizona, we have no answers for that offense anymore. 2008 is what matters, and if I remember our small lines got decimated last time we were in the playoffs so size mattered then. We are small everywhere and it isn't working. Read the Times Hawks blog today, they say the same things, Ruskell theories are becoming a joke.

Unless you think Kelly Jennings and Josh Wilson have some growth spurts headed in the off season none of that changes.

Whose the deranged one here? I'm not defending Ruskell's discredited failures last year you are. The truth ain't cliche but if you want to continue happily with the fruits of Ruskells' B.S. productivity go right ahead.

Remember he came in the year we won the Super Bowl, he didn't build shit, he lost Hutchinson which has been killing our offense ever since and his draft picks (excluding Carlson) aren't really panning out.

BigGreenFrank

Oh, so you want a big corner? cuz those just grow on trees... It takes a Top 10 pick to find a 6-foot DB, and we really haven't had many of those. All those Antonio Cromarties, Chris McAlister and Charles Woodsons haven't been available to us.

Besides, you still haven't made the point about small being the primary detriment to the team defense. Take Tennessee and Tampa as counter examples, they play small and they seem to doing ok in the defensive passing game. You seem to take as given the belief that the defense is flawed, prove that they didn't simply "have a bad year"

--------------------

Question: Do you really think the team was as bad as our record showed last year? That is, do you think the talent level reflects a 4-win team that needs an overhaul to compete?

I don't.

I think in the NFL these days, there is a 3 win variance for all teams. That is, an "8-win team" may finish with anywhere from 5 to 11 wins, due to a variety of factors. Just as the Browns weren't a 10 win team last year (and appropriately fell back to earth), I don't think we were a 4 win team, and I think we will improve.

first hill bill

Did you look at who was the second best defensive secondary in 2007 according to ESPN's rating metric. As I recall Mora was affiliated with that unit as well. And didn't we have the same players that year as we did this year?

What bothers me is that you are too effing eager to fit the Seahawks problems with the current derangement narrative. If I wanted to read this horrible, arm chair, cliche bullshit analysis, I would go to Seth Koellen's site.

John

SO our midget secondary is holding it's own?

Check the ESPN link and get back to me.

BigGreenFrank

I find it amusing that you can so quickly correlate size and injury rate on the basis of this single annecdote, while mocking Bush for his stubborn nature following "gut reactions"

For every Deion Branch, there is a Steve Smith or Wes Welker who NEVER gets hurt. I'm going to hazard a guess that the team has studied this a little more than you have...

Also, proclaiming that we need to get bigger completely ignores all real constraints (kinda like Bush always did...) Yes, Arizona has big receivers. You know where they came from? High draft picks. Fitz was 3 overall. Boldin was a Top 50 2nd rounder. (they also missed on a high first rounder with Bryant Johnson)

It was only 3 short years ago in the Denny Green era, that Arizona was chastised for focusing so much on the high selection of these receivers.

I mean, you can say that we need to sign Houshmandzadeh in free agency or we need to take Crabtree, but it's idiotic to ignore the fact that getting a guy like that would have taken either a huge amount of cap space or a boat load of draft picks, and that we would be neglecting needs in other areas for that purpose (kind of like ignoring Afghanistan to fight in Iraq...)

first hill bill

Your analysis of the problems with the Seahawks this year is almost as bad as your Ruskell-Bush analogy.

Keep thinking you know what you are talking about.