2012 Seahawks Season Preview

Russell Wilson. Russellmania. Every day I’m Russellin’. Short stack. Napoleon: The Little Field General. Dangeruss. These are all things I’ve heard the man called in the past two weeks.

He’s wowed nearly everyone in the nation into his fandom this preseason, and for good reason. He’s only had one large mistake in three halves of football and it was weeks ago, far off in the distance for the American mind. It seems hard to imagine him having any real lack of success as that’s all we’ve seen from him, he’s very athletic and makes good decisions with the football in his hands. But what are we getting ourselves into really? I mean he is a rookie quarterback after all, and traditionally coaches avoid putting them in the captains chair so early as they’re often prone to mistakes in judgement and don’t always have leadership skills that are prerequisites to leading a football team.

We know Russell’s leadership skills are beyond his years, that’s all we’ve heard from anyone and everyone since day one, but do we really know what kind of mistakes he might make? Of course not, football is an intensely difficult game to predict even hours before a game is supposed to be played. I want to see if we can get a good idea of what we can expect out of Russell anyways though; there is a lot of recent history in the NFL in terms of rookie quarterbacks starting for their teams and in many cases those teams did well.

Rookie QB's Initial NFL Seasons

Year	Name	Pass Att	Comp %	Pass Yds	TD	INT	DVOA (Rnk)	Rush Att	Rush Yds	Rush TD
2004	Ben Roesthlisberger	295	66.4	2,621	17	11	31.7 (3)	56	144	1
2006	Vince Young	357	51.5	2,199	12	13	-6.3% (25)	83	552	7
2008	Joe Flacco	428	60.0	2,971	14	12	-3.0% (22)	52	180	2
2008	Matt Ryan	434	61.1	3,440	16	11	24.3% (4)	55	104	1
2010	Sam Bradford	590	60.0	3,512	18	15	-15.6% (34)	27	63	1
2011	Andy Dalton	516	58.1	3,398	20	13	5.6% (13)	37	152	1
2011	Cam Newton	517	60.0	4,051	21	17	0.8% (16)	126	706	14
DVOA is an attempt to turn all the BS that happens during a football game into a rough estimate of how a team/player did. DVOA is a percentage, so a team with a DVOA of 10.0% is 10 percent better than the average team, and a quarterback with a DVOA of -20.0% is 20 percent worse than the average quarterback. Because DVOA measures scoring, defenses are better when they are negative. For more info on DVOA go here

Russell Wilson fits this offense as well as any quarterback can; he is the glove to Darrell Bevell’s hand. Take away his height and he’s an athletic guy with a work ethic that can’t be beat who can put on play action and makes pretty good decisions. The Seahawks need a young leader who can run play action and is mobile enough to run bootlegs off of it. We’re basically waiting to see what happens when the bullets fly, if it looks at all like it did in the preseason he should be at worst an average qb this year.

Looking at the table you can see there’s some pretty average looking numbers in there. Matt Ryan blew everyone away in 2008 with a top 5 DVOA ranking that surpassed even the keenest of predictions. His touchdown numbers aren’t dazzling anyone but he made good decisions and limited his interceptions, he was a top draft pick though so you’d be more apt to assume he’d excel. Zooming in a bit you’ll see that a few of these guys had sneaky effective seasons too.

In ’04 Big Ben completed two thirds of his passes and limited his interception totals. The Steelers had him pass sparingly which worked out well because their run game was one of the best in the league that year. That was really a trend with a lot of these quarterbacks. Coming in to a favorable situation is always a great benefit to anyone trying to play quarterback, but it’s a necessity for a rookie.

If you find yourself chasing opposing offenses game after game you’re bound to make mistakes. Take a look at Same Bradford’s rookie campaign just two years ago. While that team was better than the year before they struggled in most their games to keep up; Sam passed the ball nearly 600 times! He did well with what he was given in my opinion but you just can’t put a rookie qb in that spot and expect him to come out on top. My point here is that you’ve got to have a solid team if you’re going to put a rookie smack dab in the middle of it.

Which brings me to…

Success of Supporting Casts

Team	Previous Year W-L	Defense DVOA (Rk)	Running Game DVOA (Rank)	W-L	Playoffs w/ Rookie?
'04 Steelers	6-10	-18.9% (3rd)	11.2% (5th)	15-1	Yes
'06 Titans	4-12	3.9% (20th)	1.6% (16th)	8-8	No
'08 Ravens	5-11	-27.8% (2nd)	4.3% (9th)	11-5	Yes
'08 Falcons	4-12	7.5% (25th)	0.8% (18th)	11-5	Yes
'10 Rams	1-15	2.1% (19th)	-16.7 (31st)	7-9	No
'11 Bengals	4-12	0.8% (17th)	-9.8% (26th)	9-7	Yes
'11 Panthers	2-14	15.8% (32nd)	32.1% (1st)	6-10	No
DVOA is an attempt to turn all the BS that happens during a football game into a rough estimate of how a team/player did. DVOA is a percentage, so a team with a DVOA of 10.0% is 10 percent better than the average team, and a quarterback with a DVOA of -20.0% is 20 percent worse than the average quarterback. Because DVOA measures scoring, defenses are better when they are negative. For more info on DVOA go here

Those are the teams that received rookie gifts from the gods this decade. Every single one had a losing season the year before, and only 2 of the 7 teams followed up with a losing campaign. It’s not because these guys came in and lead the charge with crazy passing stats though, it’s because they came in and made good decisions. Their surrounding talent and coach’s scheming helped put them in a position to succeed.

Every team on that table had a good running game and solid defense to cushion the qb’s learning curve. The Seahawks drafted Robert Turbin and Kregg Lumpkin to pair with incumbents Marshawn Lynch, Mike Robinson and Leon Washington to get the depth needed to avoid debacles like the Cleveland game last year in which we watched a Beast Mode free offense fail to put enough points on the board to beat the Browns despite the defense allowing only 6 points.

With Russell at the helm it’s hard to imagine this offense coming away with any real stink shows this year, and that bodes well for our beloved Hawk’s chances. Because our defense is gangbusters.

The Defense

There’s very little I feel I’ve got to say here. The defense was a top ten unit by any measure last year and lost only one starter, David Hawthorn, who was replaced by rookie Bobby Wagner out of Utah State. Bobby is younger and more athletic and comes into a defense that knows what it’s doing and does it well. Throughout camp we heard a bit of doubt here and there about whether or not he’d be able to lead a defense with so much swagger as a first year guy, there was even talk of KJ Wright calling the defense from the outside.

Bobby stepped up though and has continued to wear the communications link for the defense, calling plays on the field, and the defense hasn’t lost a step. Our defensive backfield has looked as good as it did last year and the addition of physical safety Winston Guy in the bandit packages only strengthens defensive coordinator Gus Bradly’s ability to get wacky.

Adding a strong interior pass rusher in Jason Jones and drafting edge rusher Bruce Irvin out of West Virginia should prove valuable in improving a pass rush that was pretty worthless when you got past Chris Clemons in 2011. If the Hawks are able to put together anything other than a half assed pass rush this year to pair with a backfield that could potentially send three or four guys to the pro bowl, this will be a top three defense.

The Rest of the West

The Cardinals look so offensively challenged that it’s hard to imagine them winning more than six games (and those will be solely because of their defense) while the Rams may be better but they’ll likely struggle too. The 49ers will have plenty of close games, as they did last year. I don’t expect them to pull them out like they did though, as that turnover ratio (+28) just won’t be repeated. If you look at statistics you’ll see that it’s very rare to repeat a ratio that high, and without every single one of those take aways they simple won’t have the offense to win any more than 10 games.

The Likely Outcome

This seems so easy right? Russell is awesome, the run game is awesome and the defense is so damn badass they’re going to name the next Power Ranger series after it. We’ll probably go 16-0 and sweep our way through an average division to a Superbowl berth. DUH.

Not so fast jack. We’ll have our dog days, Russell will make mistakes and there will be times where the pass rush just doesn’t get there. The Seahawks face a very tough early schedule and I can’t imagine them getting through the first eight games without at least two losses, possibly three. The second half of the schedule is much easier though, at least on paper, and I expect the Seahawks to do work through the home stretch if they can stay healthy.

I’d be content with a 4-4 start to the season, and that’s what I’m thinking right now. I’ve got them losing only one game the rest of the way, at Chicago to the bears, and finishing 11-5

The Seahawks will have to stay committed to the running game they built over the course of this last season to keep Russell Wilson from becoming his own worst enemy. Our defense will be plenty good enough to keep us in every game we play, if the offense can put points up this team will be one to remember.

In case you missed it, make sure to check out the 2012 preview podcast with Joey Rebbe from SBNation Seattle.

2012 Seahawks Season Preview, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating