Dear Seattle Seahawks Fan,

Well, I think we can say it now, if you are one of the few remaining that’s been holding out any last seeds of doubt. These 2021 Seattle Seahawks are a bad football team.

Part of it is injuries. Part of it is talent and coaching. A lot of it is in the details and the lack thereof. I think a lot of it is also that their very best players aren’t playing their best ball, to be honest.

Russ isn’t playing anywhere near at his best, and it’s probably mostly due to his injured finger, but I also think it’s fair to question whether Shane Waldron’s scheme is a good match for him. If I had to put my finger on the Russ situation (pun intended), I honesty suspect he misses (and needs) Brian Schottenheimer, of all people.

Laugh about that if you will, but I think Schotty was a strong presence for Russ who managed to clean up a lot of his mechanical flaws and had him playing reasonably pretty well in his scheme, even if it was a limited one. I suspect Russ needs this sort of presence on the sidelines to be better honed in.

I think it’s very fair to say that neither Duane Brown or Bobby Wagner have played well enough either, if we are to be equally critical. For most of the year, it’s looked like Father Time has been catching up to Brown, and everyone loves to talk about how many tackles Wagner makes, but I see very few of them happening near or at or behind the line of scrimmage. The Seahawks pay both of these men a lot of dollars to be high impact players and they haven’t been nearly enough.

Nor has Jason Meyers but I hate blaming kickers for losses because that is usually one step away from blaming refs. If your offense is good enough, a kicker is a total after thought. Seattle’s offense isn’t good enough and it’s that simple.

Probably worst of all for me is how bad Jamal Adams had played up to his season ending injury. Pro Football Focus has him graded as one of the absolute worst safeties in all of football, and I personally wonder if Seattle needs to shift him to weak side linebacker to get the most out of him next year, if he is still a member of their roster.

But lets get back to this loss against Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles, and the feisty Bears. Holy bear crap, Batman.

Bad team? Yeah, I think so, but I don’t know if they are any worse than Seattle right now, and maybe they are better.

Losing the way Seattle did by blowing a lead in the fourth quarter is exactly what a bad team does. This game was similar in many ways to the early season home loss against the Tennessee Titans, but many forgave the Seahawks then because the Titans were thought to be a good team (they are). Losing to a bad Chicago Bears team the same way puts the nail in the coffin for what the Seahawks have become.

They’re truly bad, and in this game against the bad offense of the Bears, their defense, who were supposed to now be the strength of this team, played terribly when it mattered most in the final minutes of play, and honestly, they kinda stunk throughout, especially on third downs.

That’s really, really, really truly bad.

It’s so bad that I’m well beyond the point of being upset as a diehard Twelve any longer. In a weird way, I’m almost glad that they dropped this game to the Nick Foles led Chicago Bears.

The reason that I’m near glad they lost this is that I think it’s okay to own the fact of how miserable the Seahawks have become now. That’s not to say that they don’t have good players, they do, but so do most bad franchises. In 1992, the Seahawks had the best defense in the league, and they had the best defensive player in the league with Cortez Kennedy, but they stunk their way to a miserable 2-14 record beacuse they had no quarterback.

Thus far, with Russell Wilson, these 2021 have only won three more games than that historically bad 1992 club. That’s really truly bad.

Changes clearly need to happen for this club to get better, and the first start of ushering change in is acknowledging that they are a stinking bad club. So, I’m all about embracing that.

They stink. If you pooped yourself like they just did, you would stink, too.

Who knows the extent to how much change will happen, or how much is needed. Despite all that has happened this year, I still believe Pete Carroll is a good coach, and Russell Wilson is a good quarterback.

I think it’s also entirely possible that there needs to be a break between the two, and however which way it goes is not important to me, personally. Frankly, I don’t even care if neither are back next year, if the right moves are made.

What is important to me is that team owner Jody Allen to step up and make the right call, whatever it is. If the coach needs to go, make sure it is for a better one. If the quarterback needs to go, make sure that there is a great plan on how to move forward to build this team back up again in all the areas of need for the next passer, and see that plan through.

What I think will be very difficult for many Seattle Seahawk fans next year is for the status quo to remain intact, and we have to endure another year of an unhappy quarterback using his agent to leak his unhappiness to Colin Cowherd and Mike Florio on a weekly basis while the Seahawks front office continues to bargain shop in free agency to try to fix holes on the offensive and defensive lines again, and Pete Carroll rolls back with Ken Norton Junior as his defensive mastermind again, and then bumbles his way around press conferences after losses, struggling to offer any sound answers as to why the same problems occur over and over again.

If this all happens, Jody Allen is likely to loose fans in large numbers with a market that now has the NHL to be excited about, and a baseball team that could finally see the post season in 2022. It’s not unimaginable to say that a return of the status quo could send the Seahawks firmly in third place in terms of popularity in Seattle next year, and maybe even fourth place with the WNBA Storm.

So, Jody has work to do, and I think many of us are feeling it more and more. I know I am.

I guess what I’m saying to you as a Seahawks fan is to hang in there. Ultimately, I think Jody Allen will deliver. She is most likely looking at this like many of us are, and I think, in the spirit of her brother Paul, she will act decisively in some way soon enough. I think she knows that is exactly how Paul would want her to govern, and she will be more than ready for it.

So, hang tight. We will see how it all shakes out soon enough.

It’s a bummer to watch the Seahawks lose like this, but as long as ownership isn’t complacent, it’ll be okay. The NFL is a cyclical thing and our team is on the down turn, but it doesn’t have to last long.

They just need a good plan and I think that’s a reasonable thing to ask for in the New Year. Let’s make it so.

Go Hawks.