The Seahawks are Contending and Rebuilding at the Same Time
By Ben Renner
The Seahawks are in a unique position heading into Week One: contending for a Super Bowl while sporting 15 rookies on their current 53-man roster.
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It’s not often a team reloads with young talent while still contending for a championship in any sport. But the Seahawks haven’t been trend followers since the Pete Carroll era began back in 2011 and it’s worked out so far.
In addition to the whopping 15 rookies on their 53-man roster, the Seahawks will also sport a league-high 24 undrafted players on the team headed into their matchup at home against the Miami Dolphins this Sunday. All of these players with appropriately-sized chips on their shoulders are products of Carroll’s constant competition system, which allowed players with little to no pedigree, such as it is, like offensive lineman George Fant, to take roster spots away from Terry Poole, a 2015 fourth-round pick.
The Seahawks are loaded with talent from top to bottom. Even though they have spent the fewest millions of dollars on their offensive line in the league, they have star players pretty much everywhere else, from Michael Bennett on the defensive line to Doug Baldwin (another UDFA) in the receiving corps. The makeup of this year’s team, with its 15 rookies is not by design or due to some mandated rebuilding commitment to get younger, it’s due to Carroll’s system.
The reason the Seahawks have been Super Bowl contenders for much of Carroll’s reign is because Carroll knows how to find players who can play. He doesn’t care where they come from or what they did in college. He only cares about what they can do in a Seahawks uniform. Russell Wilson is exhibit A. Wilson was drafted in the third round of the 2012 season and was initially thought of as a backup to recently-signed Matt Flynn (Remember when he was above DangerRuss on the depth chart? Crazy.) Then Wilson turned heads in camp and Carroll turned more heads when he anointed him the starter. The rest, as they say, is history.
Next: What to Expect from the 2016 Seahawks
The Seahawks did need an infusion of youthful talent this year. You could say the same for every team in the NFL, no matter how good their starters are. Carroll’s simple yet complex and highly effective player development system, which relies on putting the onus on the players to impress rather than solely on the coaches to develop the players, allows the 2016 Seahawks to both rebuild and keep the roster top heavy and a force to be reckoned with in the NFC.