When I was in high school and into my early college years, as I spent more time partying, shaking responsibilities, avoiding the hard work necessary to learn, I could never tell what was worse to receive in terms of a grade; an F or an Incomplete. On the surface, the F felt worse, I put forth some effort, and I failed. As I look back on all my derelictions of duty to learn, however, I think the Incomplete gradings were much worse. I would earn those because I simply wasn’t trying.

I’m a slow learner. I also have pretty significant ADD, some dyslexia, maybe some OCD issues, as well, and life can get away from me pretty easily if I allow distractions to take hold over my intents. In my late teens and early twenties, I was all about being distracted.

When I was in high school, I was just trying to survive not being beaten up by several of the brawny tobacco chewing upperclassmen who genuinely appeared to hate my guts, and I made friends with brawny pot smoking lug heads who loved my odd ball jokes whenever I was stoned, and that was often. I yearned to not be in Ferndale High School in the mid to late eighties, but rather to be in a Van Halen video in sunny Southern California. Those were my aims.

In college, I squandered my time going through the motions on deciding what I wanted to study. I thought about law enforcement, but after taking an entry level course in it, I came to a quick conclusion about how Un Miami Vice my lifestyle would have been dealing with 2AM drunks puking in allies. I also thought about psychology, but the clinical terminology felt too incomprehensible for my party boy brain to grasp, and I came to another conclusion that dealing with the mentally ill also didn’t seem like a whole bunch of fun, either.

When I got reports of Incompletes, my self esteem would sink. I knew that I was fucking up because I wasn’t trying, that I was wasting time being in attendance of classes that I could give two fucks about, that I was more concentrated on chasing highs, and avoiding responsibilities. In my early days of college, I could not shake the pattern that I created for myself as a teenager. Being the life of the party felt too comforting and familiar than being someone earnestly trying to get ahead at in college.

Eventually, my much older, wiser, no-nonsense father would figure out what was going on with me. He sat me down, and talked square with a tone that was neither shouting, nor was it soft. It was direct, to the point, and it shook me out of my haze.

“What the hell are you even doing, kid?”

Indeed.

He talked to me about how I might as well back it up, move back home, and grab whatever blue collar job that I could find either at one of the refineries, or doing construction like my older brother. The disappointment that fueled his words hit me to my core. I knew then, and there, that my level of idiocracy hurt his soul. I hated that feeling.

That was enough for me. I woke up to the fact that I was being an aimless doofus. He successfully challenged me, and a few years later, I eventually graduated the University of Washington having made the Dean’s list a couple times with a degree in drama (my term paper on modern English theatre was awesome). In the end, I did okay shaking off enough of my impulses to party to actually learn, grow, and achieve.

So, why am I sharing all of this about myself with you fine folks on the internet?

I think the Seattle Seahawks have been pretty aimless for far too long about the state of their offensive line, and it is costing Mike Macdonald a chance to be a successful head coach in his first year on the job. We cannot tell how good this offense can or cannot be because of the offensive line. I think it is tied into the defense, as well, if we factor in how much better they need to play to make up for all the screw ups on offensive because five guys cannot block four guys in a game with any regularity.

When I look the work that General Manager John Schneider has done constructing this roster for first year head coach Mike Macdonald, a guy who has never been a head coach before at any level, I have to give this them a big fat all in caps INCOMPLETE with the way Schneider shook necessary spending to build upon this offensive line. I just do.

He cavalierly avoided responsibility spending on much needed veteran guards who were on the market, as he elected to overspend on tight end Noah Fant. Instead, he cheaped out by bringing in Laken Tomlinson weeks later after he was still sitting out there because no other front office was interested in him, and then he didn’t draft an offensive linemen until midway through the third round to compete for the other guard spot.

On top of this, he hired former UW offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb to spear head this offense with a poorly constructed offensive line with seemingly lofty hopes that Grubb, who has never coached in the league before, could magically make chicken salad out of a chicken crap line enough to task Geno Smith to throw more drop back passes than any other quarterback in the league. The results of all of this lazy thinking has become a clown show on Sundays. Grubb is play-calling as if he has the best line in the country like he had at Washington last year, and it is perhaps the worst in professional football.

If you are a non Seahawks fan and want a good chuckle, watch Connor Williams snap out of the shotgun to Geno Smith on Sundays, and then watch the right side of Seattle’s offensive line that rarely seems to play with any confidence or determination. I would encourage Benny Hill theme music to be playing in the background.

This is pretty much how we got here to this 4-5 record after a promising 3-0 start to the season. Anyone watching this team through nine games can see it as plain as day.

We have lost five of the past six games, and we have lost four games in a row at home. The root cause of this points directly to John Schneider not doing enough to fix this offensive line that has been a sore spot for this team for years.

I think it is also very fair to criticize the logic of doing this in the face of hiring an offensive coordinator to run this offense who has a pension to want to throw more than run, and lean on plays almost entirely out of the shotgun. Shotgun offenses need strong offensive lines to succeed. When the quarterback isn’t under center, linebackers can read play action better, and they can get to their drops quicker. Shotgun requires offensive linemen to run block without the aid of a fullback clearing lanes for the runner. Shotgun requires a center to snap perfectly at all times.

Some might give this team an F right now, or maybe a D, if they are being more kind, or a C if they are being delusional. I’m going to grade them as an Incomplete because Schneider didn’t do his work. As to why he did not, I think that is anyone’s guess, but I would suggest that perhaps he way overestimated what Seattle could achieve with the big names of DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, and Jaxon Smith Njigba at receiver, and Ken Walker at running back, and now expensive Noah Fant at tight end.

At any rate, he did not put in the necessary effort to improve up front, and I say that knowing that draft pundits really liked Christian Haynes, the guard they took in round three, and acknowledging that Schneider did bring back George Fant at right tackle to hedge for Abe Lucas most likely not being ready to come back from a serious knee injury. There is something about this whole methodology that truly bothers me, though, and I believe we have finally reached a point where things need to change, and we no longer have gum chewing Pete Carroll to blame for the delusional handlings of the offensive line for this team.

Schneider cavalierly stated that he believed offensive guard to be the most over spent on position in the league, and over drafted position, as well. At first, I thought this was maybe a smokescreen heading towards the draft, but then when they took defensive tackle Byron Murphy II with their first pick, I concluded that Schneider was probably being pretty frank, and honest.

He doesn’t see guards as being valuable enough. He just doesn’t want to spend the dollars needed to add decent guards. He doesn’t want to take them in the first round. His desire to see resources go elsewhere is almost akin to me rather going to a U District hippy party in 1990 tripping on acid than studying for a crucial midterm exam that will make or break me getting off academic probation.

What is he even doing here?

Fuck, if I know.

To say that I think John Schneider is potentially now on the hot seat would be a titanic understatement, in my mind. With how team owner Jody Allen was shockingly ready to move onto Russell Wilson in 2022, then Pete Carroll at the end of the season last year, it is starting to feel more inevitable that John Schneider might be the final piece to a trifecta of the figureheads of this franchise for over the past decade to get the axe, if he does not reverse his logic and trends now moving forward.

Simply put. If these rookie coaches do not get it together enough as a staff to either properly adjust to fit the talent deficit on the offensive line, or to magically get this unit playing better enough to warrant Geno continually constantly dropping back to air it out to JSN, DK, and Tyler, John Schneider is going to have some really tough questions to answer when he might with Ms Allen and her henchmen after this season concludes.

Why are we set to pay $60 million towards two receivers?

Why is Dre’Mont Jones getting $25 million?

Why is Uchenna Nwuso getting $22 million, and Noah Fant $13 million?

What is the long term plan at quarterback with Geno throwing all these interceptions and set to be paid $38 million for it next year?

And how on Earth is it that backup right tackle George Fant is making more than starting guards Anthony Bradford and Laken Tomlinson combined?

These are just some of the very tough questions that Jody Allen and her top aids will be, and clearly should be asking. There is most likely more, as well.

Why didn’t John Schneider do more to surround first time head coach more seasoned NFL assistants on his staff?

Why didn’t they think to add a few from the Baltimore staff who would have known how he would like things to be?

Why didn’t they add a few of his Baltimore players who were available in free agency to help smooth out the transitional process of schemes?

Did they magically think that this young staff who didn’t know each other, didn’t know Macdonald, some who didn’t even know the league, would suddenly just sync up with each other?

Last week, I wrote a piece defending Mike Macdonald in response to the growing number of fans who believe that this team needs to move off of him. I still firmly believe that he should be given a longer chance here, but I will be watching this team like a hawk over these last eight games to see how they can better gel, play smarter, cleaner, and whether these coaches can truly adjust away from what is not working in favor of what they can do well enough to gut out some wins.

Right now, I am very reluctant to suggest that they can cling to an explosive passing attack when Geno Smith is turning the ball over at the rate he has been through nine games. I know he has staunch defenders out there who want to continue casting all blame on this piss pour offensive line, and I get all of that, but as I watch Top Billin breaking down how pressure affected his second INT against the Rams, I was right there in the stands seeing how he stared down his receiver and missed an opportunity to hit a very wide open Ken Walker in the same area. It was plain as daylight.

I would also say that, in terms of the third INT, when the right tackle got pushed back and that disrupted the pattern AJ Barner was trying to get to, and that caused the INT as Top Billing asserts, maybe Geno Smith should have sensed that and tossed the ball away to live for another down. So, please just excuse me if I am tired to bemoaning the state of the offensive line in defense of Geno Smith these days. Ten interceptions to eleven touchdowns through nine games is not good enough quarterback play, period, in my view right now, and he has got to clean that up, especially if Macdonald is now able to get better defensive play out of these guys moving forward, as he might be.

So, what does Mike Macdonald and Ryan Grubb do to turn this thing around over the next half of the season, and try to gather more wins than losses to finish the season strong?

That is a million dollar question in my view. I think they are absolutely hamstrung by the state of this offensive line. Maybe Grubb has to shake his impulses on riding with Geno and these explosive receivers in order to get more creative with the run game. God only knows that those two run plays to gain a yard for a crucial first in overtime were anything but creative.

Maybe they internally shake up the offensive line with players they have.

This is a wild idea that I don’t presently see floated out there that maybe now needs to be on the table. Connor Williams has both center and guard experience in this league, and Olu Oluwatimi was a pretty good center in college for Michigan. Perhaps both need to be on the field together, with Williams shifting to guard.

Maybe Williams to guard, where he doesn’t have to worry about his shaky shotgun snaps, and he can just fire out of his blocks looking to level a linebacker, and Olu given a chance to claim the center gig that he was drafted to potentially take over is the best path forward to improved line play through the rest of this year. In doing this, I would take Anthony Bradford out of the line up, and give Olu the chance to play between two veterans in Tomlinson and Williams. Maybe the veteran presence of Williams at guard also helps settle down Mike Jerrell at right tackle if Abe Lucas continues to not be ready (right now, I have zero faith in Abe ever playing football long term again).

This is sorta the very best idea that I can come up with, and it almost feels so logical that I will be supremely crushed coming out of the bye week if these coaches don’t go for it, and then they get flattened in Santa Clara by the 49ers again. I am bracing for this sort of disappointment, to be honest.

This leads me back to John Schneider.

I think the entire messy state of this team is ultimately on him right now, and I have been a huge supporter of his. He chose these coaches, he gave them these players, and he was the one who said after they fired Pete Carroll in favor of Macdonald that they have the team assembled to compete for the playoffs now. He has to own all of this now.

He is also the one who heard Mike Macdonald’s stated goal at his introductory press conference about being a physical team that plays strong defense and runs the ball to win games, and then he hired a pass happy college offensive coordinator, and then cheaped out on building the offensive line. Schneider cannot run from these hard truths. He has to answer to them, and while I am not saying he needs to be fired, I am saying that he must change his approach to building an offensive line. He must.

And look, Seattle is not the only team in this league with a bad offensive line right now. It’s very league wide. Steve Wyche was on Seattle Sports radio the other day guesstimating that there are 18 team in the league suffering from bad offensive line play right now due to injuries and various other matters. Dallas, who has had a great offensive line for years, is suffering this year.

But it is this approach in Seattle that is driving me nuts.

Schneider rarely ever retains the talent he’s assembled even though he has stated that the best offensive lines aren’t always the most talented ones, but they have stayed together so long that they have built a great cohesion and chemistry with each other. Seattle has only ever resigned one of their own drafted offensive linemen under Schneider and Carroll, and that was Justin Britt, weirdly. They let Russell Okung go, James Carpenter go, and Breno Giacomini go; all pretty good, but not great players who maybe, if kept together, could have continued to make of a decent offensive line.

We all laughed when Damien Lewis left Seattle in the offseason to sign a massive contract in Carolina, but was that wise to let him go? He was a decent player here, but not great. Would you take him on this line right now? I know I would.

Even if that price of his contract was too rich for Schneider’s blood, there were other guards on the market worth considering if he would have just spent of them, and he didn’t. Robert Hunt was out there, and he’s proved pretty good. Jonah Jackson, Jon Runyan, John Simpson, and Mike Onwenu are all pretty decent guards in the league that could have also been brought in as an alternative to Lewis, if John would have been willing to spend, but he was not.

So, yeah. I really need Jody Allen to be asking really hard questions, and I need Schneider to be agreeable to shifting gears on his thoughts about how to build and maintain a proper NFL offensive line.

In terms of the rest of this team, I have a hunch Macdonald will get his defense squared around and playing better. They were much better against a good Rams offense. Not great, but a lot better.

I have to say that I am a bit nervous on how Macdonald can handle other tasks required of an NFL head coach, and time will tell if he’s capable. I don’t love the continual lack of discipline on both sides of the ball, and coming from Baltimore, I would have thought the being discipline and sound on all the fundamentals would have been on the forefront of his coaching style. So far, I haven’t seen enough evidence of that.

I need to see signs that he is a true figurehead of a team, and not a coordinator turned head coach feeling overwhelmed at times during the chaos of games. I don’t know what that is I’m looking for, whether it’s chewing out players, working the refs, being a stern and stoic leader, or what exactly. I just need something else.

I just know that Chuck Knox had a real badass NFL head coach feel to him ages ago, and so did Mike Holmgren. There was no doubt on the Seahawk sidelines who the alpha of the organization was with them. Even jolly old gum chewing Pete Carroll had a way that screamed alpha leader.

When I look at Mike Macdonald, I don’t get a real sense about him on the sidelines, yet. I think players respect him, and probably are very aware of how bright he is, but does he inspire? Is he willing to get nasty on a guy who just badly fucked up on a play? How is he going to kick things in the ass that need to get kicked?

You can tell looking at Sean McVay when a Rams player fucks up, how he’s got a temperament, and he won’t tolerant lack of discipline. His counterpart with the 49ers in Kyle Shanahan has that way, as well. Sometimes, I think players need that.

So, I don’t know, I guess I’m saying that, even though I really like Macdonald’s potential here, I sorta feel like he’s very much part of this incomplete grade. It sucks that Schneider gifted him a crap offensive line in his rookie season as a head coach, but this team’s lack of discipline at all phases of the game now has me a bit nervous. These last eight games are critical for him, as a young figurehead leader of men, to kick things in the ass, and truly lead, even in the face of a piss poor offensive line.

This is why I need to see during the second half of the season, win or lose, better execution, better fundamentals, better discipline. These things are not on John Schneider. They are squarely on Mike Macdonald.

I just need John Schneider to wake out of his whiskey fog about the offensive line construction, and I need Macdonald to lead. If they show they can do that, then I will properly grade this team with something else other than a disappointing and deflating Incompete.

These are my thoughts.

Go Hawks!