Seahawks 2021 Season Imploding: Is this the End of an Era?

Every year I try to limit myself to 1 Seahawks post because I just don't have time to cover the team full time outside my career and life. You can see my last post here where I broke down the end of last season and the moves I thought the Seahawks would/should make.

However, this Seahawks season is the worst I've seen in my adult life and it's especially perplexing given the individual successes of the talent and staff on the team. I thought I'd chime in on a few things I'm seeing that have been trending in a bad direction. 

1) Ownership: Jody Allen isn't as good as her brother plain and simple. 

You can see this with both the Portland Trailblazers in the NBA as well as the Seahawks in the NFL. Jody has little to no experience with owning or running a professional sports franchise and is too proud to admit it. Paul was a passionate fan and caring owner who wanted the best for his teams and fan bases. Jody is in it for the fame and fortune, and not so much the love of the sports.

Both franchises have been slipping under her ownership and it's only a matter of time before major shakeups happen in the form of team sales or her bringing in help to rebuild both franchises. Keep in mind she inherited billions so selling the teams or allowing them to slip into mediocrity will not bother her one bit unless she is truly a fan and truly cares. All signs this year in both leagues point towards her not caring about team success as long as they keep bringing in the cash. 

Another thing I've noticed about the Seahawks under her tenure is their reaction to some really impactful political and world issues. I felt like the Seahawks were much more involved, vocal, and quick to act during the political craziness of 2020 and it angered a good portion of the fans, and screwed over some season ticket holders as well. I do not feel like the Seahawks would have been on the forefront of the politics under Paul Allen, especially given his hot takes on his former business partner Bill Gates. I feel Jody and her choices of people running the team, have divided her team, coaches, and fan base on these issues. All in all the team's leadership could've been much more tactful during those fragile times.

2)  Management: John Schneider may not be the genius we all thought he was during the LoB era. 

I know this is an interesting take on the situation because most people want to blame the coaches and players but let's take a look at the things John has done since escaping the former Redskins and their devilishly run organization. His drafts haven't been that good and he's made some terrible trades, but most importantly he's done a bad job of addressing areas of need and managing the cap space by overpaying a handful of players.

• Drafts: Aside from a few lucky picks in the LoB and Russell Wilson, John has missed hard in his drafts, especially in the first round. I'm a huge fan of his strategy of trading down and stockpiling midround picks because it all assures that he'd hit on 1 or 2 of his picks. However, in the last few seasons he's been trading away draft capital for players the Seahawks didn't really need. Looking at the last decade of drafts you'll notice there's maybe 1 or 2 recognizable names in his draft classes and that's it. Not a lot of impactful or long lasting players coming off the board, especially in recent years.

• Trades: During the start of John's tenure he made some brilliant trades. Getting rid of bad players for picks in the draft, as well as bringing in Beast Mode. Unfortunately, since the Seahawks lost the Superbowl on the 1 yard line, he has made some desperate boneheaded trades in a failed attempt to try and be champions again by trying to bring in a big name player instead of focusing on continually building through the draft.

2013:  Traded 1st, 3rd, 7th round picks for Percy Harvin. Those Vikings picks included Xavier Rhodes and Jerick McKinnon. 2 pro bowlers for a guy who created locker room controversy and only 1 good play in Seahawks history. 

2015: Traded Max Unger and 1st round pick for Jimmy Graham. The Seahawks lost a good draft pick and a perennial pro bowl offensive lineman. 2014 was the last time I felt like the Seahawks had a decent offensive line as they traded away their best lineman for someone who couldn't block.

2017:  Traded Kearse, 2nd & 7th round picks for Sheldon Richardson. Traded 2nd & 3rd round picks for Duane Brown. Sheldon wasn't bad and Duane has been a decent LT for multiple seasons but the Seahawks lost in the divisional round to the Falcons and lost 4 draft picks in the process that season. 

2018: Traded 6th and 7th round picks for Brett Hundley & Shalom Luani. The trade for Hundley made a tiny bit of sense because the Seahawks wanted a backup QB with experience but he didn't last long in Seattle. Trading for Luani didn't make sense because he never saw the field and was cut from the team.  

2019: Traded Jacob Martin, Barkevious Mingo, 3rd round pick for Jadeveon Clowney. The Seahawks lost 2 players who saw a lot of play and a high draft pick for a known injury prone player who didn't stick around and didn't see the field much at all. 

2020: Traded two 1st round picks, a 3rd round pick, and Bradley McDougald for Jamal Adams. This may be the worst move in John's tenure and probably the one that will cost him his job. Jamal was known to be weak in coverage, have a bad attitude in the locker room, and demanding to be the highest paid player at his position. He hasn't disappointed in any of those categories. Seahawks not only lost a starting safety and 3 high draft picks in the process, but they broke the bank and assured they couldn't afford better players at positions of need. Adams can be attributed to ruining the Seahawks 2021 season and it's on John for giving up too much and breaking the bank for a mediocre safety. Don't get me wrong he's great in the box when stopping the run or rushing the passer, but he makes very bad decisions in coverage and isn't worth top safety money. Diggs is the best safety on the team and deserved more than Jamal. Sadly the Seahawks would've been better off never trading for him and using their picks on positions of need. 

3) Coaching: Pete Carroll, Shane Waldron, Ken Norton. Yeah this is an easy one as we've all seen some questionable play calling, scheming, and bad in-game adjustments in recent years. Nothing as bad as this season though.  

Pete is getting old, and in his old age I believe there's a certain stubbornness to him to not adjust to the modern game. On top of that though, I think he tries to be a player's coach a bit too much and sometimes needs to favor competition and discipline on the team. These are things he used to push on but you can tell he's gotten soft in his old age. To top it off I don't believe Pete has done a great job of surrounding himself with great assistants. If you look at the team they have ranked fairly poorly on all sides of the ball. You can blame the players for not executing, but you also have to think after seeing similar issues year after year that the coaches are also to blame. Bad blocking, bad run game, bad pass defense, blowing leads, turnover margin, penalties, missed tackles, etc... 

Looking at the defense you can tell Ken Norton just takes a long time to adjust to the roster he has but once he has figured it out (usually halfway through the season) he seems to get dialed in. Unfortunately he cannot sustain a full season of running a decent defense. 

Looking at the offense you can tell Shane Waldron was not the answer and this is on Pete for caving into Russ for picking the coach the QB wanted, instead of the coach who best fits what Pete wants to do. Shane looks lost as a play caller and is so scared of angering Russ (who helped him get the job) that he's caving into the calls Russ wants to do (which is mostly bomb it into 2 deep coverage and run it when it's 3rd and long). 

4) QB play from Russell Wilson: When you break the bank on a franchise QB you're expecting a certain level of sustained greatness. Unfortunately there's only 1 Tom Brady in the league and even he makes less than Russ. This is proof that you can't overpay any player, but also that nobody ages well. Russ's advantage was his ability to escape and elude pressure to make miracles happen, while also avoiding injuries. This is not the case any longer. Age and non-football activities have shown up and Russ hasn't adapted well at all. He looks slow, scared, and unable to execute how he used to. All the close games that were won at the end because of his play are now turning into losses because he can no longer execute game winning drives like the old days, can no longer escape pressure and scramble, and suddenly can no longer be accurate in the intermediate passing game. If Russ demands a trade I say the Hawks get as much as they can out of him and thank him for his service. If he demands even more money I say they let him walk. There's no way the Seahawks can afford to pay him what he believes he's worth if he can no longer go out there and win games for the team. 

Credit: NFL.com

All in all it feels like a good time for a Seahawks rebuild. If the team continues to be in the basement of the NFC through the end of the year they should do what they can to replace the GM and coaches, trade their highly paid players to get draft capital back, and turn the franchise around in 2-3 years. It's very painful to admit but this just may be the end of the John/Pete/Russ era. The only saving grace I see from them is admitting their faults and starting a rebuild now, similar to what the Mariners finally did.

Elyon Review: C- Grade

I've been debating writing more reviews and guides for video games instead of solely focusing on Seattle sports teams so here we go!

Elyon was a game I've been loosely following for a while since it was named Ascent: Infinite Realm. Korean MMO's usually have promise, but always fall short and Elyon really fits within this exact scenario so far, which is why I cannot recommend it in its current state. Here's what's good and bad...

Look and Sound: A-

The game looks and sounds really good. It's not quite upper echelon of graphics for a new game, but let's keep in mind this is a Western release of a game that's already been released in Asia. The character models, armor, weapons, NPC's, buildings, effects, and environment all look fairly decent. I'd put them around the same as BDO, Blade n Soul, and other Korean MMO looks. The sounds are what you'd expect from an MMO and the music is actually somewhat calming.

Character Creation: A

Like most Korean MMO's (BDO, Blade n Soul, etc) the character creation is very good. Lots of customization options and you can change the shape and size of basically any body part. Above is an example of baby legs John Wick where I made everything as large as possible on his upper body and small as possible on his lower body just for fun. It was hilarious seeing him run around smashing things with a giant hammer. This is by far the best part of the game as you can get really creative with how your character looks. The only place I'd say it falls short is the voice selections which are limited.

Character Progression: B+

The progression during alpha/beta felt very quick, but at full launch it felt slower to me, yet still faster than most MMOs. Overall the progression isn't anything too exciting. You quickly level during the introduction and the initial quest hubs help you unlock most skills within the first couple hours of gameplay. It's hard to give this a high grade because the progression doesn't feel anything noteworthy. The skills, gear, and passives didn't make a noticeable difference while leveling as I felt myself not becoming anymore powerful than at level 1. 

I'd also say the skill system, while cool and somewhat unique, locks you into a set of skills to use per class very similar to Diablo 3 where you get to equip up to 6 skills and then start spending points augmenting those skills to do something slightly different. Example: you start with a basic lightning fingers attack akin to Palpatine and if you spend 10 points augmenting that skill it'll shoot more lightning that hits a couple extra enemies. I'm not far enough along in the game to have enough points to choose the tier 3-4 augments but the tier 1-2 ones are so miniscule that they don't even seem worthwhile.

Gameplay: C 

Not many bugs but the overall gameplay loop is your standard pickup X side quests and 1 main quest and progress through the story and zones. While there is a vast open world that's very cool, there's little exploration that goes into it if you stay on the questing trail. You follow a very linear path through the game and hit any side quests you can along the way. The only positive here is the main quests all start/end at quest hubs so you can work on side quests fairly easily as you make your way between main quest hubs. Most side quests are kill and collect style which is a bummer. 

Mounting in this game is also very clunky as the transition to/from mounting is manual and there's no natural transition that I'd prefer like in WoW where you can jump on and off your mount and be instantly into combat. I usually use the autopath/autorun system more than mounting just because it's easier to set a path on the map, autorun, and do something on the side monitor while your character runs. 

Combat was very fun at first. I liked the different combos you could pull off, especially if you setup your skills and rotation to compliment each other. However, after a while it just got dull to me. I felt like I was just spamming the same skills/rotation every single engagement which just got boring. I know this is a problem in many MMO and RPG style games, but it'd be cool if they did something to create a more diverse usage of skills, such as enemy resistances, engagements that had to be close vs far away, engagements that require crowd control/blocking/dodging, etc...

User Interface: B-

The UI is ok but very cluttered and it's hard to find things you don't use often. It follows a very similar UI that I've seen in other Korean MMOs and overall I just hate how cluttered and hard to find things are. I'd prefer it if they didn't have so many complicated things within the main menu and maybe "hid" things more within sub-menus. 

I'm also not the biggest fan of having to hit a button to get my mouse cursor while I'm in my inventory. If you're in your menus then obviously character movement and combat aren't a concern and shouldn't be the priority yet the mouse controls are still largely in character control mode until you hit Alt or whatever button you set to enable mouse in menus.

Endgame: F

The dungeons are nothing too exciting but a couple are cool. Overall there's very few of them and half of them are solo instances (really? solo dungeons in a "massive multiplayer online game?"). They definitely need solo dungeons to allow co-op and should definitely add more. I haven't seen anything related to raids in this game which also falls short of MMO expectations. 

The end game "grind" appears to be mostly open world pvp similar to BDO and New World and as you know that'll only ensure the already limited player population will dwindle quickly without any real reason to play beyond max level.

Monetization: D

When Bluehole came out and said they wanted monetization to not affect gameplay I applauded them for being honest. Then I played the game and watched many reviews of the monetization and came to the conclusion this game is very pay to win in a couple aspects. To me the best monetization practice is a purely cosmetics based cash shop. I hate when boosts, buffs, gear, convenience, and quality of life upgrades are all in the cash shop as it forces you to spend money in the shop to have a more enjoyable gameplay experience. 

Buying a founders pack gave you early access and boosts which helped you level, gear, and craft/upgrade faster. This essentially is pay to win to me as it gives players who buy this pack an obvious advantage over regular launch day free to play players. The xp boosts and crafting/upgrade materials purchases you can make puts you at an advantage early on in the game when everyone else is leveling and gearing. Since the end game is open world pvp this gives the pay to win customers the advantage. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcaF6YsdtBw&t=637s 

Overall Grade: C-

I really wanted this game to be successful because it's hard to find a decent MMO these days. WoW is dying. FFXIV has a huge barrier and cost to entry for new players. ESO, GW2, and others have aged poorly. New World was a 2 week hit and then died. Elyon unfortunately falls into the same MMO trash heap where it looks promising and dies quickly. Perhaps if the devs and publisher stick it out they can make some big QoL improvements and add end game content in the future. I'll keep an eye on it in 6 months to see if anything has changed for the better, but until then there's some other promising games coming out including Destiny 2 Witch Queen and Lost Ark.

Update: the game died quickly and was taken offline