'Seahawks are best "off-the-radar" team going into season'

Will Seahawks surprise people in 2024? Seaside Joe 1948

“Buying low” has changed the world many times before, including the universe of the entertainment industry. Are the Seattle Seahawks the best ‘buy-low’ team going into the 2024 season?

But first, the true marvel of Disney

By the 1980s, Walt Disney Productions was still feeling the impact of a multiple-decades slump at the box office, including both animated and live action pictures with the latest bomb being attempted-Star Wars ripoff The Black Hole. But live action was especially a problem-and a territory that Disney had never dominated before-so around 1980 they started to slowly dip their toes into PG-rated movies for the first time with The Watcher in the Woods, and then Tron a couple of years later…a movie we all remember, but was not a huge success in 1982.

Then in 1984, Disney felt they were ready to make films geared more towards adults than families and children but only under a different production company name, hence the creation of Touchstone Pictures…a logo/brand that I think makes many of us nostalgic for a time when Hollywood was making a lot more great movies than they’re currently putting out today.

But the idea wasn’t just for Disney to put out PG-13 and R-rated movies under the Touchstone brand, it was also to “buy low” on good scripts and up-and-coming filmmakers and actors who wouldn’t cost as much as many of the big budget films of the era. Touchstone’s goal was profit margins more so than profit; awards, accolades, and acclaim more so than creating* the billion dollar franchises that Disney is obsessed with today.

*more accurately in Disney’s case: buying already established franchises and characters that were already created by someone else who didn’t work at Disney and had more success than the mouse did during those years (Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars)

Touchstone’s first movie was 1984’s Splash, a Tom Hanks movie before there ever really was a “Tom Hanks” in Hollywood. Splash writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel insisted that Hanks, a TV actor only known for “Bosom Buddies” at the time, would be a better choice than Warren Beatty, the person who had been set to star in the movie before Hanks was given an unlikely audition to replace him.

"Tom came in and blew the doors off the joint. He was tremendously funny," Mandel says.

Touchstone and Disney “bought low” on Tom Hanks in 1984 and thanks to two unknown screenwriters (no offense fellas, you’re just unknown to ME!) the Hollywood film industry was changed forever because of their insistence to cast an unknown. It was also the first time that Hanks worked with Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer, a relationship that gave us movies like Apollo 13, Philadelphia, and Forrest Gump.

Splash grossed $70 million domestically on an $11 million budget and Disney was off and running with their new look.

To make a long story short, not only did Touchstone produce some of the highest-grossing movies of the era and gain critical acclaim with films like The Help, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Good Morning, Vietnam prior to going defunct a decade ago, it also saved Disney and gave the mouse the juice needed to go buy all of those properties they felt they needed to be a streaming superstar.

For better or for worse, a “BUY LOW” mentality with their adult film division could be the reason that Disney went from “that company that made snow white and has that park” to the global dominance that they have enjoyed in recent decades…whether that continues for another 100 years or not, Disney is always going to be “Disney”. Tom Hanks is always going to be “Tom Hanks”.

Will the Seahawks always be “that off-the-radar team that could surprise people?”

Seahawks best buy-low bet of the year?

On Monday’s episode of The GM Shuffle with former NFL general manager Michael Lombardi, podcast guest Tone Digs is asked which team stood out to him when the schedule was released as far as the most intriguing “win total” to bet the over. (For the record, I don’t gamble, I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout gamblin’, I’m not tellin’s you to gambl’, and this is not a gam’lin’ post…but it’s about the Seahawks so we can live with it!)

“The team that jumped out, that was just kind of off the radar to me, was the Seattle Seahawks.”

The Seahawks win total was set at 7.5 after the NFL schedule release, which means that bettors/Vegas are not convinced yet that Seattle will win at least eight games next season. If some news breaks, like the Seahawks trade for a great player or something, then people will presumably better a little more on Seattle and that could raise their projected win total to 8 or even 8.5. But the 7.5 win total projection is saying, “We don’t believe in the Seahawks as an eight-win team, but maybe you do.”

Everyone on The GM Shuffle agreed that 7.5 wins looked very unfair to Seattle.

"I’m on board with you,” said Lombardi. “I’m not in love with Geno Smith, but I think whenever the coach’s specialization solves a specific problem…the last two years with Clint Hurtt have been atrocious, that’s putting it mildly. They couldn’t stop the run at all and that’s why they gave up 400 yards to your Pittsburgh Steelers at the end of the season with Mason Rudolph. That was the best the Steelers offense looked all year…they won nine games with that team last year, so how can they not win nine this year? Like why is this number seven? I didn’t get that either. All you got to get to is eight.”

When she covered the win totals in May after the schedule release, NFL.com’s Cynthia Frelund echoed the same sentiment:

I think the Seahawks are being a bit undervalued, both generally speaking and within my model. As far as the schedule goes, they open the season with a pair of winnable games: vs. Denver, at New England. And in looking at every team's hardest four-game stretch, according to my calculations, the 'Hawks actually rank 26th -- i.e., they have the seventh-easiest quartet. If this team is to exceed expectations, though, it will need vast improvement in run defense. Seattle ranked dead last in first downs allowed on the ground (144) and rushing yards over expected allowed (422). Can new head coach Mike Macdonald flip the script? Well, the first-round selection of DT Byron Murphy II certainly helped the cause.

If the Seahawks can win their first two games against teams that have struggled at the box office lately (and that’s a big IF because we all know how dangerous is to count “Ws” against opponents you deem bad), then they will be a quarter of the way towards topping their 7.5 win total with 15 games left to play.

The 2021 season was the only campaign in the past 12 years in which Seattle failed to win more than seven games, and even then the Seahawks went 7-10 with a banged up Russell Wilson missing three games and being completely off-his-game for at least three more games.

I credit that to organizational stability nearly as much as I would credit it to Pete Carroll because the Seahawks have been one of the most consistently “at least average” teams in the NFL for most of their 49 years of existence to date: They’ve never had the number one pick in the draft and they’ve won at least six games in 42 of 49 seasons. Five of their seven seasons with under six wins were 1992 and earlier.

Compare that to the 49ers, a franchise that lost at least 11 games in 2015, 2016, and 2018, then went 6-10 in 2020.

Or the Rams, a franchise that went 5-12 in 2022 and finished under 8 wins in 11 of 13 seasons between 2004-2016 (and never had more than eight wins in the stretch). The Rams have had more 11+ loss seasons since 2007 than the Seahawks have EVER had!

T.Hanks for Playing!

If you’re looking to buy low on the Seahawks, there might not be a better time than NOW because of these 4 briefer-than-usual reasons: