ESPN is back. This time, Mike Clay has honored us with his own hype for his own ranking, using unknown criteria and a weirdly worded setup:
It’s been a tough year, so I’m not going to bury the ledge – they put the Seattle Seahawks 30th out of 32 teams.
However, the very first thing to focus on is in the tweet itself. How, in a professional sports war with 16 verifiable and steadfast contests to judge the effectiveness of each team, can Mike Clay claim that they have ranked teams from “most improved” to “less improved”?
Are you telling me that the 32 teams have improved, just that some have improved less? Impressive. Give it a few more years and we can distribute 16-0 to the whole league. (And you thought John Gilbert’s titles were bad.)
Either way, assuming what the football intellectual think tank meant was that some teams have greatly improved while others have regressed, the Seahawks would no doubt find themselves in this. last by scoring the third worst offseason.
Here is the text of the play:
What is missing
ESPN left out crucial Seattle offseason elements that call into question the amount of (likely extremely low) research devoted to this piece.
- They listed Cedric Ogbuehi, who is at best the third strongest lineman added to the squad this year. BJ Finney and Brandon Shell both have a better chance of starting, impacting and improving positions left behind.
- Not signing Antonio Brown should be worth at least five points on that scale, and it’s a shame they left that important factor out.
- This photo of John Ursua is notably absent:
That’s a lot of off-season addition if I’ve seen it before.
What’s wrong?
The arrest of Quinton Dunbar is not a good idea to demote the Seahawks in the offseason, outright. It remains a very clear exchange of value at the time, and Dunbar is still able to proceed as he allowed him at training camp. Seattle has not yet gotten worse with the acquisition of Dunbar.
- The main losses are intriguing. Mychal Kendricks is not on the list, Jadeveon Clowney is not on the list and I dare say Josh Gordon is not on the list. Instead, OT3 / TE17 George Fant and famed Frank Clark-puncher Germain Ifedi are the massive departures this year? Losing a starting right tackle is absolutely worth considering, except they’ve already replaced it with a pretty paper-like guy with far fewer penalties.
What is true
- They love Jarran Reed, so that’s cool I guess.
Greg Olsen, Bruce Irvin and Quinton Dunbar are probably the three biggest additions to the squad this offseason. Which – and no one should hear it for the first time here – is not great. Many fans would give most of the team’s 15 offensive linemen for this list to be Jadeveon Clowney, Jamal Adams, and that’s it.
- It’s a pretty bland offseason, so I’m not guessing anyone expected analysts to give the Seahawks the top 10 ratings or anything like that. In particular, the team continues to not go into the positions that need it most according to the match-by-match visual test. We’ve already covered how Russell Wilson could cover even more holes than people think. Not getting help both ways is frustrating. That is, not doing it in a way that evokes confidence is frustrating; technically signing half of the league’s offensive backup linemen is one way to approach the line.
Which is nice
The Los Angeles Rams were glorious team number 32. Least improved. Which is still insanely silly and I won’t forgive ESPN for phrasing it that way. But the Rams, who have now gone from three points in the Super Bowl to a 9-7 record that excluded them from the playoffs, have now made the slightest improvement of any team in the NFL.
Maybe they shouldn’t have spent so much energy drawing this yellow crescent and trying to explain why no one will be at their games:
Sometimes it’s the little victories that make the most fun.
Greetings to you, the least improved Seahawks. Way not to be rams.
