'No one's going to talk about the Seahawks, but I like them'

Former NFL GM Michael Lombardi praises 'overlooked' Seahawks offseason: Seaside Joe 1892

Last week, Charles Barkley made a little bit of news by criticizing most others in the media because they just want to be friends with the players instead of doing their jobs, which is to report the truth to fans. Part of his quote was:

"For all you punks, idiots and jackasses on other networks, who want to be media and who want all the players to like y'all, do your damn job. The Lakers suck and the Suns suck because of the players."

For quotes like that one, I like Charles Barkley, even though I haven’t followed the NBA since the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City. When Barkley does make my news feed however, it’s usually because he’s telling the truth and that’s rare in today’s world of online…it’s not “journalism”…I guess it’s content.

To me, the NFL’s version of Charles Barkley, at least in terms of his consistency with being honest if not in terms of popularity, is Michael Lombardi. His podcast The GM Shuffle gets maybe “hundreds” of views, if not a couple thousand on a good week, one of which is always from me. Lombardi, like most former GMs, is written off because he didn’t have success in the NFL…so when he says something that’s unpopular then it must just be “clickbait” by a “guy who couldn’t win with the Browns”.

Imagine that, somebody hired by the Cleveland Browns was doomed to fail.

I just want to say three things before sharing this clip of Michael Lombardi citing the Seattle Seahawks as an under-the-radar team that could surprise people by winning the NFC West:

a) I have no affiliation to Lombardi or reason to have a bias for him, so this is simply my opinion that he’s good. Up until a couple of years ago, I would have thought the same things everyone else thinks before listening to his show and said, “Lombardi? Sounds familiar, but he probably sucks.”

b) I don’t know of anyone else in the media that has the memory recall of Michael Lombardi. He’s been working in the NFL since he started with the 49ers in 1984 and he can instantly callback every player drafted by San Francisco during that time, what pick they used on him, why they drafted him, and why they didn’t draft somebody else. He’s just as quick to pull quotes from Al Davis or The Sopranos, I wish I had a memory like that, and his experiences include working for Bill Walsh, Davis, and Bill Belichick, among others.

c) If you work your entire life to become a GM and then a team actually offers you the job, you’re not going to say no. Not even if that job is with the Browns at a time when they’ve long been the worst team in the NFL and aren’t likely to improve in a short period of time. If you are offered a GM job, you never know if that opportunity will ever come around, so I think that’s just the bad luck of the draw. I think the difference between a “good” GM and a “bad’ one can at times be heavily influenced by luck. But when I hear Lombardi talk about football, I don’t see any reason why he’s not as capable or more capable than half of the people who currently have jobs. The reason he’s un-hirable, like most ex-GMs, is that teams never want a retread general manager. They always think they can do better with someone new.

Having watched his show for a while now and trusting that he’s always giving his honest assessment, it’s all the more reassuring to know that Michael Lombardi thinks the Seahawks are being underestimated.

In a clip from a different show with the gambling channel VSIN, “The Lombardi Line”, Michael Lombardi is asked about teams that had the best draft moves and offseasons. He starts with the Rams, but then goes off on why the NFC West could be difficult for both L.A. and San Francisco due to the potential emergence of the Seattle Seahawks in 2024. I’ll transcribe what he said below, but here’s the full clip queued up if you just want to watch it:

Here is what Michael Lombardi said about the Seahawks:

“The other team I thought did well is Seattle. Nobody’s going to give Seattle an A for their draft. But I think Seattle’s in really good shape moving forward.

I’m a Pete Carroll fan, I think he belongs in the Hall of Fame, but I think his inability to fix their defense last year was a huge concern. Part of the problem was they never really could transition from his style of defense, which is an 8-man front, into what they needed to do. And I think adding Mike Macdonald is a really good add. So from a scheme standpoint, I think they’re going to be much improved defensively.”

For more on Mike Macdonald’s scheme, you can read this or this from past Seaside Joe episodes.

“Then they add Ryan Grubb, the college offensive coordinator there at Washington, and I think that’s going to be a lot of help for them too. Because I do think when you breakdown this team they have excellent skill players. Jaxon Smith-Njigba as a slot receiver, and Tyler Lockett, they re-did his contract. Now you add the fact that Charles Cross is going to enter his third season as the starting left tackle, Abraham Lucas is going to be the starting right tackle, both of those players missed a lot of games last year. Then they drafted offensive linemen—the Christian Haynes kid from UConn is a very good player, I expect him to start—and so this offensive line will be better than last year.

Then last year, Kenneth Walker, and Zach Charbonnet, those two guys are really good running backs and they weren’t healthy all year. They have good players offensively. Now let’s go defensively…”

Certainly another big piece that Lombardi missed here is DK Metcalf and to what degree his game will change or improve with Grubb as the offensive coordinator. Lombardi will mention Geno Smith later, but not to say much and I think that emphasizes just how far away from being a “QB team” the Seahawks are compared to other teams.

In ways that could benefit Seattle, but mostly I think it just implies that the Seahawks could either find out eventually what they have in Sam Howell or that they will be back in QB limbo again in the 2025 offseason. Personally, I would like to avoid any kind of situation that resembles Derek Carr’s decade with the Raiders or even Kirk Cousins’ stint with the Vikings. There should be a limit to how many seasons a team can spend with a certain level of starting quarterback before it’s time to risk a change.

“They get Byron Murphy II, one of the best defensive players in the draft. Last year, Macdonald was able to get 9.5 sacks from Jadeveon Clowney off the street, and 9 sacks from Kyle Van Noy, also off the street in August and September. They were able to pressure the passer.

This secondary is very good. Devon Witherspoon is going to be a very good player and Riq Woolen is already good. Michael Jackson has talent, you know they can cover and I think they’ll play the right scheme.

So this is a team that no one’s going to talk about, but I like their team. I like what John Schneider has done. I like the coaching hires, I like the new innovative scheme, and I like they players they’ve added. They’ve lost a lot of players, but I think they can overcome all these losses with what they’ve done. So to me, I think Seattle’s had a good offseason and a good draft.”

The Seahawks re-did Mike Jackson’s contract on Monday also, bringing down his cap number by almost two million dollars.

Then Lombardi is asked about Seattle’s chances to win the NFC West, because as noted, this is a gambling channel.

He says he would put “pizza money” on the Seahawks to win the division at +700, which I take as a sign that it’s not probable but it’s within the realm of possibilities and closer to reality than others think.

“I would put a little pizza money on Seattle to win the division.

Last year, the Seahawks won nine games and defensively they could never stop the run. They were 29th in terms of teams running the football against them (rushing attempts against), they were 30th in touchdowns allowed, they were 31st in yards allowed, and they also play in a stadium where it should actually be really hard for opponents to run on them. With that crowd noise in Seattle, for them not to stop the run is more about scheme, coaching as it is talent. Even a bad team, when they play in a dome, can stop the run. I know the Seahawks don’t play in a dome, but it’s LOUD.

And when you look at their defense, they weren’t good at all. 25th in yards allowed, 30th in points, and they won nine games with a ton of injuries. So I have a lot more hope for them. Whether Geno Smith is the starter or not, you know I like Sam Howell. They won’t turn the ball over and they can run the ball this year because they have two really good backs. When Walker is healthy, I think he’s one of the best backs in the NFL, I really do.

So this is a lot to like about the team because nobody counts them.

I like Pete, but I think there’s some things where they got injured and they just couldn’t stop anybody on defense. They went that month, I think is November 18 to the 49er game on December 10, and they couldn’t stop anybody. They went up and down the field against the Cowboys and that was 41-35, it wasn’t decided until late.”

I like Lombardi’s optimism for the Seahawks and I share some of his reasons why Seattle could surprise people.

Certainly the defense has nowhere to go but up, something we talked about on Sunday’s article about how good the Seahawks are right now. I like the hire of Ryan Grubb more and more by the day, just from how football experts talk about Washington’s offense last year, and I already liked him from the beginning. And I think Seattle made the best moves possible for their cap room and their draft situation. But sometimes the best moves possible for your team may not be as valuable as the best moves possible for another team.

The Cardinals had so much more draft capital than the Seahawks, that anything less than “Arizona getting a lot more value” out of the 2024 class compared to Seattle would be a HUGE disappointment in the desert. I also think that a healthy Kyler Murray, a quarterback who just upgraded his WR1 to Marvin Harrison, Jr., is a bigger threat than Geno Smith. The Cardinals went 4-13 last season, but were almost neck-and-neck with the Seahawks in the second half of the year.

This is a time of the NFL calendar where we have to grade “fan optimism” on a MASSIVE CURVE because the point is that Cardinals fans are just as hopeful for making the playoffs as Seahawks fans are, and I think both franchises have valid arguments to make. I’ll always be more skeptical of Arizona because…how can you not?…but the Cardinals have won 10 games more recently than the Seahawks have won 10 games, so I’m just more in the “we’ll see” camp than the “we saw” camp.

In fact, we will see camp…in about three months. Then slowly but surely the 2024 Seattle Seahawks will reveal who they are. Until then, I’m not mad at assessments that say the rest of the league and media are underrating the job that Schneider has done so far.