In the span of about 72 hours, the Seahawks prospects for both the playoffs and the draft turned really crappy.

It all started on Thursday afternoon, when Matt Barkley announced that he would remain with USC for one more year. Living in the Los Angeles area, the sports broadcasters were practically dancing in the streets at the news, since it represented a genuine shot at a BCS championship next year, but it bummed me out as a Seahawks fan. Not necessarily because we expected Matt to fall to us in the draft - I think we all figured he was a top-5 pick already - but because that's one less QB for all the other teams to pick from. The top tier of eligible quarterbacks now consists of only two names: Andrew Luck, and Robert Griffin III. Others may have their favorites - and I'm sure we'll be bringing them up in the thread here - but clearly there's a big dropoff between those two players and whoever else is mentioned.

That night, the Colts won their second game of the season against the locked-in Texans. (Locked-in meaning they're in the playoffs but can't improve their seeding any.) That, combined with the Rams losing against the Steelers on Sunday, and the Vikings defeating the Redskins, means that the two teams are now tied with two wins apiece.

Although the Colts still lead by a country mile in terms of strength of schedule (the Rams actually ended up with the toughest schedule in the league), that can very easily change next week: the Colts have what now looks to be a very winnable game at Jacksonville on Sunday while the Rams host the 49ers - who are still gunning for a first-round bye. If both teams have the same result next week, the Colts will have officially choked away the #1 pick in the draft to the Rams in almost Red Sox-esque fashion. Not to say the Rams would forsake Sam Bradford and draft Luck if they had the top pick - they may end up taking someone like Matt Kalil or someone else to plug one of their many holes - but the possibility would be there, and it's not pleasant.

And then, of course, our playoff fate was sealed in Detroit when the Lions trounced San Diego, clinching their first playoff berth since 1999 while simultaneously all but shutting the Seahawks out of the picture. The loss against San Francisco made it official, and the draft has now become the consolation prize.

Let's take a quick look at the draft standings now before we get into the nuts-and-bolts talk regarding Week 17:

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This is going to be a quick update; I'm up way too late for someone who has to work in the morning. Instead, we'll be doing everything in bullet-point format:

• The Seahawks dropped, yet again, to 15th in the draft order after crushing the Bears on Saturday. Once again, it was damn worth it to see 330 lbs. of Red Bryant high-step into the endzone like that.
• Because of the number of teams that already have nine losses, the Seahawks will pretty much find themselves out of the top 10 no matter how the rest of the season plays out. Unless a lot of bad teams win their remaining two games, that is.
• Speaking of bad teams, the Colts, Dolphins, Redskins, and Browns - all teams that need a QB as badly as we do - have records of 5-9 or worse. Meaning it'll be well nigh impossible to draft in front of any of these teams unless we trade up.
• The Colts' win over the Titans makes the top of the order a lot more interesting, although the Colts still hold a big advantage. Only the Rams and Vikings are left in the running for the first overall pick, and since the AFC South has been so sickly this year, one of those teams would essentially have to lose out while the Colts win out in order to snatch the #1 pick away. Especially since all four AFC-S teams play divisional games the rest of the season, so there's no chance for their overall record to gain any more than 4 wins.

Here's how the draft order looks this week:

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My method of tracking everyone's draft order this season has been pretty simple. Every Sunday, I fire up the Notepad file I use which ranks each team, and tracks their Strength of Schedule, divisional record, total W-L record of the team's three divisional rivals, the two divisions that team faces, and the two same-conference-non-division opponents on the schedule, and tally up the wins and losses as each game goes final (or, if the lead is big enough, the point I say "that one's over").

Once all the Sunday games are wrapped up, I calculate all the schedule strengths of any team that is not implicated by the Monday night game. Once that's done, I draw up two charts - one for each of the potential outcomes of that last game. (And heaven help me if any MNF game ends in a tie.) That's why these things go out so fast after the Monday game is over - I just run with the chart that actually ended up happening, and delete the other one.

This week, the charts were simply labeled "IF WE WIN" and "IF WE LOSE". The latter chart saw the Seahawks moving up to #11 in the draft, between the underachieving Eagles and the freefalling Bills.

I can't tell you how awesome it was to delete the "IF WE LOSE" chart.

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At the start of the season, the Seahawks looked bad. Really bad. Bad enough that people were really wondering if they were going to end up being one of the worst teams in the league. Not only did they lose their first two games of the year, they lost them badly: an anemic offensive performance followed by special teams collapse against San Francisco, and then the utterly brutal showing in Pittsburgh.

Going 0-16 may not have been a realistic possibility, but there were certainly predictions of 4 wins or fewer. Of course, there was that bright spot associated with having such a dismal season: a high draft pick, and with it the opportunity to draft the potential franchise quarterback that would propel us to our rightful place atop the NFL's elite.

Fast forward to the 3/4-mark of the season. The Seahawks are no longer among the bottom-feeders; in fact, it's quite possible that they'll match the 7-9 record that they achieved last year. (Though unfortunately that won't be enough to win the division title, no thanks to Jim Harbaugh.) As the wins accumulated, however, we saw our cushy spot in the front of the line disappear, and suddenly the discussion shifted from "which QB will we draft in the first round?" to "is there going to be a QB worth drafting in the first round when our turn comes around?" Or, if you prefer, "which team are we going to have to sell the house to in order to draft a QB in the first round?"

Indeed, for some people, we're in the absolute worst spot possible: not good enough to reach the playoffs (barring several miracles working in concert), not bad enough to get the guy we want without greasing the palms of a few GMs.

Fortunately, the Seahawks were able to win last Thursday without doing any damage to their draft positioning, as they held on to the #13 pick. Monday's game between the Chargers and Jaguars, however, was one where neither outcome was really desirable; a Chargers win helped keep the Jags - who probably aren't going to keep Blaine Gabbert given the new owner, the new coach, and the fact that Gabbert has been terrible - in the top 5. Meanwhile, a Jags win would've caused the Seahawks to be leapfrogged by both the Chargers and the Bills due to schedule strength. The one major positive was the Vikings losing at the final whistle to the Broncos; they remain our most reliable suitor with the #3 pick.

As for the rest of the order:

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This was a very bad week for Seahawk fans.

For one thing, the Seahawks lost. That sucked.

Not only did they lose, they lost in a way that completely exposed the team's immediate needs: namely, a quarterback that doesn't get the deer-in-the-headlights look every time it's third and long and the defense is showing a blitz.

On top of that, the teams that we desperately needed to win in order to gain some ground in next year's quarterback derby all lost. (Except for Washington, of course.)

And just to make matters worse, the most of the teams we might have looked to as potential trade partners ended up winning.

In other words, everything that could've possibly made our future prospects worse happened. (Well, except for the Seahawks losing. But that's not exactly what we're rooting for here.)

I guess it's kind of fitting that all of the events from the past five days have resulted in the Seahawks dropping to 13th in the current draft order. I half expect our next game to be against the Panthers. (See, 'cause their logo is a black cat. Get it?)

Here's how the rest of the lineup looks:

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DK edit: For some reason, this photo of Matt Moore is hilarious to me. "You might not believe me if I told you, but I can run like the wind blows."  "... if I was going somewhere, ... I was RUNNN-ANG!" ... 

I'm seeing quite a few posts popping up on this site about the playoff potential for the Seahawks. How much the team has improved, how easy the remainder of our schedule is, which teams we have to leapfrog in order to avoid getting eliminated by tiebreaks, all of that.

Had I started writing a posts after our Week 2 game entitled "PlayoffWatch", listing the playoff seedings of both conferences week by week so that we could track the postseason positioning of us and the other teams in the league, I'd be right along with them in the pep rally. Alas, I'm the Eeyore of the bunch here, reminding everyone that the Seahawks still have a sub-.500 record and are still in the bottom half of the league standings.

It sucks to be the wet blanket. But then again, when your handle on the site is "Hmph", I guess it's easy to be typecast.

Last week, we highlighted the four other teams that are probably going to look at drafting a quarterback in the first round: The Colts, Dolphins, Redskins and Browns. Indy was on their bye this week, so they remain winless with a two-game "lead" over the rest of the competition. The Dolphins and Browns both won while the Redskins fell to Dallas in overtime. That puts all three teams at 3-7, one game in front of Seattle for draft consideration. And even if the Seahawks had lost, they'd still be behind all of the QB-needy teams thanks to our schedule strength being so strong. So the fact that we've dropped yet another spot in line is less important than the fact that the teams that might snatch away all the QB talent remain ahead of us in the draft.

Here's how the order looks now:

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"Hooray! The Seahawks win!" ..... Wait, we dropped four spots in the draft now? Crap."

That is the dichotomy that faces Seahawk fans at this point of the season, and indeed many of the lower-tier teams in the NFL. Every win comes with the sobering realization afterward that one single victory puts an additional mortgage on the future. Not long after the Seahawks won their nail-biter against the Ravens on Sunday afternoon, the fretting began about draft position.

For those people, I'll start with the bad news: the Seahawks dropped four spots in the draft order because of their win, and they are now out of the top ten.

But here's the good news: it's still not that bad.

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I think we all knew it was an eventuality.

Like LeBron taking his talents to South Beach, Frank McCourt relinquishing control of the Dodgers, and Kim Kardashian divorcing that guy, everyone following this season came in knowing that the Indianapolis Colts were far and away the worst team in the league without Peyton Manning under center, and that it would just be a matter of time for reality to match perception. Nine weeks into the season, the Colts are the last winless team in the NFL - and except for three "winnable" games, two against Jacksonville and one against Carolina, it's going to be difficult for another team to sink below their record.

So while the Suck For Luck sweepstakes appears to be all but locked up, there's still plenty of drama going on in the first 10 picks of the draft. Seattle has moved up a peg to the #7 spot, and could very easily move up if Cam Newton, Christian Ponder and Blaine Gabbert start winning games for their respective teams.

In any event, here's how the teams are ranked halfway into the season:

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UPI/John Angelillo - The Miami Dolphins heroically walk out of MetLife Stadium knowing that they successfully prevented the Indianapolis Colts from having the only winless record in the NFL and a stranglehold on the #1 pick in next year's draft.

It looked bleak there for a while, didn't it?

With just minutes left in the game, the Miami Dolphins looked poised to upset the New York Giants last Sunday. With the win by the Rams against the Saints earlier, a Dolphin victory would mean that the Colts would have been the only team left in the league to win a game, and hence were almost assured of the #1 pick in the draft unless they suddenly go on a rampage and win a bunch of games.

But thanks to Eli Manning and crew, the Dolphins are now at 0-7, and while the Colts still have the top pick thanks to schedule strength, the Dolphins continue to keep pace with them record-wise.

But let's think about this for a second. Yes, we all know that watching Roger Goodell smiling with Andrew Luck as they pose for a photo holding a Colts jersey between them conjures up pangs of jealousy and resentment, does it really matter from a Seahawks standpoint which of these two teams ends up with Andrew Luck? They're both AFC teams, so we'd never have to face Luck more than once every four years, unless there's a Super Bowl matchup in between the scheduled clashes (which absolutely none of us would have a problem with). Yes, we wouldn't get him, but then neither would the Rams, Cardinals, or 49ers (and I don't believe for a second that Luck would pull an Eli and demand to play for his college coach. He's a big boy, and big boys don't hide behind their coaches like that).

Besides, we'd much rather see the Colts pick first than one of the teams that follow close behind in the draft order right now:

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Good God, this may have been the ugliest week of professional football since the forward pass was implemented. Among the games we were treated to watching the past 48 hours were: a 5-2 team pasting a winless opponent by 55 points, two quarterbacks for the same team each throwing three interceptions, the Broncos playing 57 minutes of terrible football before realizing they had Tim Tebow on their team, and of course the free-wheeling shootout that took place in Cleveland.

Rather than prolong the agony, let's just get this thing posted and over with, and forget this week ever happened. 

Here's how the draft order stacks up after seven weeks of so-called "football":

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Curtis Painter: We're really "TRYING" out here to "WIN." 

Well, there's bad news and then there's good news. And the there's more bad news.

The bad news: The Colts remain the frontrunner for the #1 pick in next year's NFL draft.

The good news: The NFC West, ridiculed for years as the weakest division in the NFL, is no longer such.

The other bad news: The worst division this year is (wait for it!)... the AFC South.

With a combined record of 7-16, the AFC South is the most futile division in the NFL thus far, thanks in large part to the Manning-less Colts having yet to win a game. The Jacksonville Jaguars are looking similarly horrible, just with one more win, and the division-leading Titans are barely above sea level themselves at 3-2. (Meanwhile, our division currently sits with a robust 8-13 record.)

The upshot to this is, regardless of how the records shake out by season's end, the Colts will likely have the inside track against whatever teams finish with the same record, because their divisional opponents are likely to finish with a sub-.500 record, and possibly even a sub-.450 record if the Jags continue to stink and the other two teams continue to not want to pull away.

There is still plenty of time for Indianapolis to screw things up for themselves, though. They still have two games against Jacksonville - even a split of those two games could potentially jeopardize their chances at the #1 pick.

But alas, they remain glued into the top spot for the third straight week. Here's how the rest of the league rates:

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Time to face facts: The Seattle Seahawks are essentially out of the Andrew Luck sweepstakes. The team has gone from one of the worst teams in the NFL to "hey, if we string a few more wins together, we might have a chance at the division again!"

So be it. Time will tell if we end up watching Seahawk football in January, but for now, let's see how all the other teams stack up in the draft order.

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Admittedly, a game like the one we just saw on Sunday makes something like tracking the status of the Seahawks' draft position less important. But for consistency's sake, we press on. Besides - what better way to point and laugh at the Rams than to note that they'd be picking first if the draft were held tomorrow?

Here's how the standings look now:

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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you don't root for your team to go 0-16. Did all of us really want to come into every week of the season hoping that our team would find a way to lose just so we could have a better shot of drafting some guy? Honestly now.

So the bad news for all those "Suck for Luck" devotees is that our win over the Cardinals takes us out of the top spot for the #1 pick in next year's draft. (Had we lost, we would've held on to #1.) The Colts have now taken over the first slot, while the Chiefs, another team that may look to make a change at QB next season, holds third.

Here's how the order looks now:

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DK edit: In a probably futile attempt to limit or minimize the "Suck for Luck" discussions at Field Gulls, I've front paged this article. Why? Well, first of all, it's well-researched and thorough, and it's hard for me not to praise something like that. Second, here's your chance to get it out of your system.

If you MUST talk about the "Suck for Luck" idea, do it here, in this segment, because rest assured, it's not going to be welcome in most other articles' commentary. Take that as fair warning. This may become a weekly post, and the further the season progresses and the playoff picture emerges, the more relevant this becomes. 

This column will act sort of like Whiskey Chainsaw's awesome fantasy football column -- FF and the Seahawks' 2012 Draft position don't have a happy home in most of our discussions here at Field Gulls, but that doesn't mean people don't want to talk about it. Anyway, this is not an endorsement of the idea that we should root for our team to lose so just abandon that argument right now. But what Hmph has put together is actual research and not just "Dude, the Seahawks will suck this year," and it will give you an idea of where the Seahawks are, in reality, in terms of draft position. 

Is this premature? Of course it is. The Seahawks are only 0-2 at the moment, after all. Still, if this place is going to go all bonkers over "Suck for Luck" or "Go Splat For Matt (Barkley)", it may be a good idea to keep an eye on all the other teams in the league who may be trying to do the same thing.

(Note: I'm not on the "Tank it for a high draft pick" bandwagon. While I think this team needs to use this year to gauge their needs for the next step of the rebuilding process and not worry about making the playoffs, I think it antagonizes the fans - especially the ones who pay to attend the games in person - to go through the motions for an entire season. That said, we're a horrible team this year, so there's no harm in tracking just how bad we are.)

Obviously, there are a handful of other teams that look to be just as putrid this year. The Chiefs seem to have taken a major step backwards this year, and injuries to Jamaal Charles, Eric Berry and Tony Moeaki have not done them any favors. The Colts are going to be sans Peyton Manning for at least half the season, and without any serious hopes at the playoffs themselves it's hard to imagine they'll be in a big hurry to get him back on the field. The Bengals and Jaguars won their first game, but neither Andy Dalton nor Blaine Gabbert instills a lot of confidence in their short-term prospects.

On that note, I'll be tracking the hypothetical draft order of all 32 teams as the season progresses.

How exactly is the draft order determined, you ask? Well, it's a total of four criteria:

1. Win-loss record
2. Strength of schedule (total win-loss record of all opponents)
3. Divisional win-loss record
4. Random draw (coin toss)

In other words, if two teams tie for the same record, the team with the weakest schedule is ranked higher. If that's tied, it's the divisional record, and finally a coin toss if there's still a deadlock.

So, here is how the draft would look if it were to take place tomorrow based on Week 2 records - and all you "Suck for Luck" devotees, there's some good news for you.

Continue reading this post »

DK edit: Thought this was a fun read so I'm posting it to the front page. Apologies if you've already read it, as it's a few days old, but sometimes fanposts can get lost in the shuffle. Enjoy...

I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.

Well, that's not entirely true. I remember reading John Morgan's write-ups in 2009 and 2010 about the various directions that the teams of those years could go, and found it interesting that the same exact roster and coaching staff could have wildly different results depending on one's interpretation of that roster and staff. Since I generally have little else to say about the Seahawks analysis-wise (what the hell is a "Sam", anyway?), I figured I'd give this thing a whirl.

(Please note that this is, in essence, glorified fanfiction. The intent is merely to elaborate on the many ways that the season can play out. That we are currently 1-2 in the preseason with a shaky offensive line and poor quarterback play is, for the purposes of this write-up, immaterial. Hey, we were looking pretty good in the preseason back in '09 - how'd that end up for us?)

So here are the four potential outcomes of the upcoming season for our beloved Seahawks:

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If you were the kid in school who never fit in with the cool crowd, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you like watching those sports movies where a ragtag team of misfits somehow overcomes all odds to beat the team of self-entitled bullies in black uniforms and win whatever championship they were playing for, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you are tired of the same seven NFL teams hogging almost all of the media coverage, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you're a fan of any other NFC West team and are sick and tired of everyone bashing us for being a weak division, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you're a fan of any team that was ever known as the "Worst Team Ever" to do something, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you enjoy watching the talking heads on TV go into conniptions because reality is defying their expectations, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you can't stand bandwagon fans, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you give a crap about parity in professional sports, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you believe in the "Any Given Sunday" theory, you will root for the Seahawks today.

If you believe in miracles, you will root for the Seahawks today.

And those of us who have always rooted for the Seahawks will welcome you with open arms.

SEA!

(My first FanPost. Be gentle.)

Winning on Sunday gives Seattle its first playoff game in three years. So why wouldn't we want that to happen?

Of course, considering this team and how it's performed this year, it has come up for discussion whether winning the upcoming Sunday night game against the Rams would actually do more harm than good in terms of draft positioning - to say nothing of the almost certain thumping either team would receive at the hands of the Wild Card opponent (likely the Saints).

Well, here are the reasons I can think of why a Seahawks win would be beneficial for this team:

1) No such thing as bad publicity. The Seattle Seahawks rank among the Los Angeles Clippers, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Charlotte Bobcats as one of the most nondescript teams in American professional sports. As much as we revile the Cowboys and the Steelers for their oversaturation of media coverage, the fact of the matter is if the Seahawks were getting that kind of coverage we wouldn't mind at all. In the past five years, the only two things the Seahawks have done that received more than a passing mention on ESPN were reaching the Super Bowl and hiring Pete Carroll. Winning on Sunday would grant the Seahawks its third nationally televised game of the season - however ugly it might end up being - and the infamy of being the first team since realignment to qualify for the playoffs despite a sub-.500 record. I dunno about you guys, but I like the thought of this team having done something no other team has done.

2) This team has more holes than one pick can fill. There's a lot of worry about dropping from a top 10 pick to 21st for the sake of perhaps drafting Andrew Luck or Jake Locker before the Bengals and Cardinals steal them away. But as important as the QB position has become in this league, this team has so many problems elsewhere that we can't reasonably expect to plug any young QB into this offense and expect it to suddenly turn into a 11-5 powerhouse. Our secondary, apart from Thomas, is practically nonexistent. As is our running game. As is our linebacker corps. If we miss out on the stars of the QB class in this upcoming draft, we can still work on all the other needs that this team has. There will be QBs in the 2012 draft, too.

(And we're not even taking into account the growing possibliity of a lockout shortening or even cancelling the entire season.)

3) You never know.  The Seahawks lost to the Saints 34-19 on Week 11, representing our only margin of loss this year of two possessions. Granted, that game saw us getting run ragged by Chris Ivory rather than a now healthy and close to 100% Pierre Thomas and Reggie Bush. But you never know. Maybe Hasselbeck can muster one last ounce of veteran grit and jump out in front of the Saints long enough to make this a contest. Maybe they can do that a couple times. If they win, they'll have that chance, infinitesimal though it may be. You never know.

If Seattle loses on Sunday, having a top-10 pick to continue the rebuild we began last year will certainly make a nice silver lining. But it's not something to root for. We can win next week and improve our team in the future; one does not rule out the other.