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The future of the offensive line

chf

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Yeah, all makes sense and no disagreement. Really a minor gripe for me. I am totally fine with continually drafting toward the very end of rnd 1. My #1 hope right now is we get some continuity going with the OL and get some guys to re-up here instead of always seeing them fly after their 1st contract is up.

I agree, and I'm thinking if we could ask P+J off the record, they'd agree too. We're in the process of transitioning to being Russ's team. The obvious place for the OL dollars to come from is going to be the D side of the ball.
 

jakedog56

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For the record:

*Bringing in a starting LT and RT, and keeping Fant to develop as a 3rd rotation guy would be optimal but I don't see it happening. I would think that they have to address at least one of those positions though as there is no way that Gilliam should be more than a 4th tackle at this point.

*Is Cable horrible, decent, or good? I am not sure. I do know that we had pretty good run blocking in recent years until last year, so at least that aspect of the line was solid. I also know that if we had Okung, Carpenter, and Unger on the roster last year then the OL would have been much better but the team let them walk. More on that below.

*Despite all of this stuff about so many draft picks being used, the OL has been woefully neglected on this team. Yeah, you can draft a bunch of guys and some will always hit and others miss but if you let the only guys that do pan out walk, then you are going to be screwed. This was a concious decision on the team's part to keep virtually every unit on the team relatively intact EXCEPT for the OL. They kind of got spoiled with Wilson and Lynch, but when Lynch decided to spend his days goofing around in retirement, and Wilson and Rawls both got injured we were suddenly totally screwed.

The OL has to be addressed this offseason or we are screwed. I am not convinced that this is Cable's fault. Again, if you had kept Okung, things would have been much better. If you had kept Carpenter and Unger, things would have been much better. Instead we have shelled out the money on other positions. Personally, I think that they should have spent the money on Okung last year and let Kearse walk. It is an obvious hindsight move now, but I actually did think that last offseason as well.

Continuity might really help this OL this year though. There was no continuity and they spent about 12 games just figuring it out and getting up to speed. They need to be at that point from day 1, and not 75% of they way into the season.
 

MrS

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I agree, and I'm thinking if we could ask P+J off the record, they'd agree too. We're in the process of transitioning to being Russ's team. The obvious place for the OL dollars to come from is going to be the D side of the ball.

Ive been saying this for 2 years.
 

chf

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Ive been saying this for 2 years.

Okay, and? It's not fantasy football. Every other team is looking for Tackle help too. Half the teams in the NFL consider it a priority. We have a good football team, so we draft late. It's going to take a while to fix it.

Question is, do they have a plan or not?

My answer is yes, they do. They'll continue to let Cable coach guys up until they can rebuild that unit into something that can allow Russ to get us back to the top of the mountain.
 

Cave_Johnson

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Look guys there is no evidence to suggest Cable is anything better than mediocre. In fact the evidence, statistics, etc. point to him being bad. Not horrible, but bad.

Now that the season is over we see that Seattle ends up with the lowest ranked O-line according to PFF and again finishes in the top 5 in false start penalties. Blame doesn't fall squarely on Cable but it's impossible to deny that the trend of bad pass protection and penalty prone linemen follows him wherever he goes. Even when Seattle was #1 in money towards the O-line they struggled with penalties and in pass protection.

He's not so much making chicken salad out of chicken shit as he is picking bits of undigested corn out of the shit and serving that up as a full meal.

Problem is the line is full of his type of guys right now and bringing in anyone else would likely require a rebuild of the line which would take time and result in more bad play while adjustments were made.

I don't see Cable leaving unless Seattle goes full rebuild mode or he gets another job. Neither of those are likely to happen. For now I'm just hoping they can get a decent tackle this off season one way or another. The interior line is set and can be decent IMO. Mediocre tackle play along with healthy RBs next season is probably best case scenario and hopefully that will be good enough to open things up for Russ, Doug, Jimmy and the rest.

Here's hoping.
 

chf

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Again, doesn't hold logically unless P+J are then incompetent.

Meh.

And no, 'they're loyal!' isn't a defense.
 

MrS

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Again, doesn't hold logically unless P+J are then incompetent.

Meh.

And no, 'they're loyal!' isn't a defense.

at what point do you throw up your arms and say they are incompetent then?

will it take one more year of 32nd best OL? two more years? at some point you have to face reality, no?

in reality, they are simply loyal to a fault and thats obvious. twist yourself in a logic pretzel if you want, but it doesnt hold up under scrutiny.
 

chf

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at what point do you throw up your arms and say they are incompetent then?

will it take one more year of 32nd best OL? two more years? at some point you have to face reality, no?

in reality, they are simply loyal to a fault and thats obvious. twist yourself in a logic pretzel if you want, but it doesnt hold up under scrutiny.

Well that's why I was REALLLLLY careful to ask you if you thought they had a plan.

Baby/bathwater, no real distinction in your mind, I get it.

I tend to look at the characteristics of other long term successful NFL teams...
 

Podunkparte

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Parsing words. If Cable IS THAT BAD, then J+P are incompetent. If a coach is THAT BAD, and they stay loyal to him, then THEY'RE that bad.

Or, maybe, just maybe, he's not that bad. Maybe, just maybe, he's made chicken salad out of chicken shit, and helped get this franchise its first Lombardi trophy. Maybe, just maybe, in the hands of most other O-line coaches, we'd be MUCH WORSE.

If what we watched all season was chicken salad, I can't imagine what a chicken shit O-line would have been. The team that won the SB had a much better group of offensive linemen than this year's, so it would make sense that that was salad and not shit. You simply can't be "much worse" than what we watched time and time again this year though. I just don't understand the argument of "Well I can imagine 5 blind girlscouts out there, and that wasn't what I saw, so Cable must be doing better than that." It could be worse should not be an excuse for a guy leading one of the worst O-lines in the league.
 

chf

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If what we watched all season was chicken salad, I can't imagine what a chicken shit O-line would have been. The team that won the SB had a much better group of offensive linemen than this year's, so it would make sense that that was salad and not shit. You simply can't be "much worse" than what we watched time and time again this year though. I just don't understand the argument of "Well I can imagine 5 blind girlscouts out there, and that wasn't what I saw, so Cable must be doing better than that." It could be worse should not be an excuse for a guy leading one of the worst O-lines in the league.

Eh, you're not really trying then. The interior OL DID develop through the year. It was jailbreak city right across the line early on (admittedly against some pretty decent D-lines).

Glowinski, Britt and Ifedi had some stinkers through the year, but they DID get better.

This will be one of the first times since the new regime came into place, that MOST of the O-line will be the same personnel.

And c'mon now, the TEAM has faith in Cable, not me. I'm just reasoning it through. Using logic.

If Cable is THAT bad, then P + J are incompetent.

But sure, football is a violent sport, and anything is possible. If Russ gets hurt and goes on the shelf next year, then our D gets another year older and injury prone, and the 're-tool,' gets harder to do.

Do YOU think P + J have a plan? Are they at least TRYING to transition the team into being Wilson's? Are you another person who subscribes to this weird 'loyalty' circular reasoning?

That they're putting their legacies, their future's on the shaky foundation of an awful O-line coach? They're out there from training camp ----> playoffs. They SEE what they have in each position group. They SEE the numbers in salary cap meetings.

They're wasting the beginning of Russ' prime years on a suspect position coach who is primarily concerned with keeping him healthy and upright?

Sorry, not buying it. I'll use my 'industry' as an example instead. I'm an editor. I'm back in the warm bosom of a TV station again, but I did over a decade of freelance. My main client then, was a small independent producer. He operated on shoe-string budgets (lean n' mean baby), and one of the main ways he saved money was by scrimping on paying shooters.

Why'd he do that? Because he had ME. I'm very good at what I do, and I was routinely able to make 'chicken salad out of chicken shit.'

Now if you show some of those videos to average people they're not going to get just how well they're edited. Would I have RATHER had video from top flight shooters who actually use a tripod, and have an eye to compose shots, and the experience to shoot proper sequences? OF COURSE!

Hell some of that stuff wouldn't go within 100 yards of my resume reel.

But it was STILL some of my best work as an editor. Give me filet mignon to work with, and I can (and have) won awards. Give me filet mignon and I can be part of a team that wins an Emmy, or an AP or a Murrow award.

Teaching amateur photographers how to focus properly, how to use a tripod, color correcting video shot with the wrong settings, applying filters to shaky video, wading through hours and hours of dross footage to find the few bits of gold to put in my final product? That's some of my finest work.

But only an industry insider who'd seen my raw materials would get that.

As fans, let me suggest that many of us are falling into the trap of looking at the final product, and not understanding how it got there.

And to be clear, I'm NOT a football insider. I'm a hmmm, well educated fan, one of those independent shows I worked on was for four years a football show. But I'm still just a fan.

P + J trust Cable (so far anyway).

I TRUST that they have a plan.

--

And let me repeat AGAIN, (ad nauseum) that I've got no issue with the team replacing Cable (or Bevell), I just want them to do it with AGAIN, a plan.

Change is sometimes good. Hell P + J were a change. I was unconvinced about Carroll at first, but I can't argue with the results, so they won me over. I think Schneider is arguably the best GM in the sport.

So in P + J I trust.

We'll see how a year with actual continuity on the O-line helps.

From the response to my chicken salad post, there's just a few of us who are... a wee bit skeptical.

:)
 

JMR

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I think it's pretty tough to argue what we are doing isn't working when we are 1 of only 2 teams to make it to the divisional round for 5 years running. It doesn't mean our team is without weakness, but I trust they have a plan. Too much success for this regime to believe otherwise.
 

Warden

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Keep developing our youth, stay the course, see if you can pick up a FA without overpaying, draft some help with 1 of our 5 picks in the first 3 rounds. It is just the way this team does things. Should get lots of improvement from Fanta, Britt and Idfedi. An up grade at right tackle would be really nice
 

Screamin12th

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if the Oline stays how it is and they perform WORSE this coming season than they did last season then yeah you not only got to point your finger at Cable ( which you should all ready be doing ) but then back at Pete and John. Who knows what they see in Cable but i believe they both are blinded by Friendship.

They also ( Pete and John ) like continuity in the coaching staff and have stated as much, But you got to pull out the rotten fruit before it spoils all of it.

things we do know. When the Oline plays well this Hawks Offense is damn near unstoppable and easily a top 5 group. Oline Oline Oline.
 

HaroldSeattle

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if the Oline stays how it is and they perform WORSE this coming season than they did last season then yeah you not only got to point your finger at Cable ( which you should all ready be doing ) but then back at Pete and John. Who knows what they see in Cable but i believe they both are blinded by Friendship.

They also ( Pete and John ) like continuity in the coaching staff and have stated as much, But you got to pull out the rotten fruit before it spoils all of it.

things we do know. When the Oline plays well this Hawks Offense is damn near unstoppable and easily a top 5 group. Oline Oline Oline.

And if the OL performs well, will folks quit carpping about Cable?
 
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Screamin12th

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And if the OL performs well, will folks quit crapping about Cable?

If Cable can get this oline to play well then he deserves credit but lets not forget that their is "talent" here. Britt i think should have never been moved from RT. He had a rough Rookie season but his rookie season was better than any RT play we saw this past season or the season before to be honest. I believe had he been allowed to grow at RT we would have zero issues on that side right now. Gilliam was over hyped and when they said they always had designs on him playing left tackle it made ZERO sense as he was always getting beat. That was a true head scratcher for me.

Britts play at LG was not bad but yes he had some MAJOR assignment issues and that should have been expected as he was a RT and moving not only inside but to the left side is pretty damn brutal. Running behind him netted success though when he was at LG. Ifedi and him are a good combo at RG/C and Glowinski is a OK stop gap but should be replaced unless he improves a lot. There isn't a tackle on this team that should even be in the NFL in my opinion. Fant has the build of Walter Jones when he was a rookie, would be awesome if he could be 1/10th as good.
 

Screamin12th

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HaroldSeattle i use to bash Bevell also till i watched film and started really breaking down plays. I saw that most of the success was from solid play design and execution. When they were not throwing their hands up and saying wtf can we do they were unstoppable. I stopped bashing him and rightfully so. he is a solid OC that gets way to much blame because of sub par play at the most important position on the offense, the WHOLE oline. If the QB is the Engine the Oline is the Transmission, Wheels and driveline.

If Cable shows me something, shows me that he can IMPROVE players under him which he has struggled to do, then i have no problems giving him a TON of credit. So far he is something like 2 for 10 and then you got Good Olineman that play WORSE under him ... gets old. You can't even look at the oline right now and say hey they improved.

Wish we had the 2002-2005 Oline lol, this team would or could go 14-2 16-0 and those olines were not world beaters.
 

JMR

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if the Oline stays how it is and they perform WORSE this coming season than they did last season...

With an added year of experience plus continuity, it's beyond reason to me that this is even possible. The line did regress from '15 to '16, but it wasn't close to the same line -- 4 of 5 positions had different starters.

I really doubt we return all 5 starters for '17 though. The chances are pretty remote that we do not bring in a vet or draft someone who will compete and eventually win a job over either Gilliam or Fant, IMO. I still say the line is set from G to G though. Gilliam is the one I see as most likely to be replaced.
 

dude82

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With an added year of experience plus continuity, it's beyond reason to me that this is even possible. The line did regress from '15 to '16, but it wasn't close to the same line -- 4 of 5 positions had different starters.

I really doubt we return all 5 starters for '17 though. The chances are pretty remote that we do not bring in a vet or draft someone who will compete and eventually win a job over either Gilliam or Fant, IMO. I still say the line is set from G to G though. Gilliam is the one I see as most likely to be replaced.

I think we'll definitely see one new starter at a tackle spot, but working one new starter into the lineup will be a hell of a lot easier than working four new starters into the lineup at the start of the season and a couple more new starters as the season progressed. It'll be even easier if the guy they get is a veteran who knows how to play tackle and doesn't have to learn it from scratch. Even getting a rookie who played tackle for at least one year in college would work better than our recent trend of taking guys who have never played on the offensive line or haven't played there since high school has. My hope, then, would be for the group to mesh ASAP and then get a chance to play together for multiple years.
 

Screamin12th

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With an added year of experience plus continuity, it's beyond reason to me that this is even possible. The line did regress from '15 to '16, but it wasn't close to the same line -- 4 of 5 positions had different starters.

I really doubt we return all 5 starters for '17 though. The chances are pretty remote that we do not bring in a vet or draft someone who will compete and eventually win a job over either Gilliam or Fant, IMO. I still say the line is set from G to G though. Gilliam is the one I see as most likely to be replaced.

did you knock on wood when you typed this? Never say never. Will Gilliam and Fant improve? not likely, maybe Fant a little, Glowinski i bet regresses a little Britt we might have seen his best season ever as a Seahawk. I hope he improves but saying he will just because is also foolish. Ifedi?? Yeah i think he improves but now does the WHOLE group improve as a whole? only time will tell. This line has got worse every season since 2012 and many say because of the rotatrion of the people going in and out. You think we wont see that this coming season? We don't have a tackle on this team worth starting so there is two Fifths of the line right there.
 
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