I think I'll root for the Seahawks to beat the Raiders, thanks anyway Brian
Will the Broncos be able to lose their way to a top-3 pick? Seaside Joe 1358
The 2023 NFL Draft order currently has the Seattle Seahawks receiving the number five pick from the Broncos, after Denver lost to the Raiders 22-16 in overtime on Sunday to fall to 3-7. Ahead of them are the 1-8-1 Houston Texans, the 3-8 Carolina Panthers, the 3-8 Chicago Bears, and even though they’ve been swept by Las Vegas this season, the 3-7 Raiders.
The strength of schedule tiebreaker, giving the advantage to the team that has had the easier schedule, tips slightly towards the Raiders, a .462 to .480 winning percentage.
First, who is the actual better team? The Broncos or the Raiders? I’m not so sure we should be convinced that either team is better or worse than the other and their identical records with similar opponents is a clear indication of that. I don’t think pre-season expectations or Denver’s defense should tip the scales in either direction.
Other than the Raiders, the Broncos have lost to the Seahawks, Colts, Chargers, Jets, and Titans. The largest margin of defeat in any of those games is seven points (vs the Jets in Week 7 and at Tennessee in Week 10) and Denver lost in overtime to the Colts and Chargers, while falling a single point and a single play shy of Seattle in Week 1.
On one hand, you could flip the Broncos record to 7-3 if you simply turned their overtime losses into wins and if Nathaniel Hackett calls the exact right play at the end of the Seahawks game.
On the other, Denver’s wins have come over the Texans, Jaguars, and a one-point victory over the San Francisco 49ers when Jimmy Garoppolo made his first start of the season. The Broncos could be 7-3, but they would be a hollow 7-3. They could also be 0-10. None of their wins were convincing, not even against Houston.
The Raiders do not have a defense that can even hang in the same Vegas strip club as Denver’s, which still ranks third in points per game and first in points per drive even after allowing 22 points and 407 yards to Las Vegas. Ranked 31st in points per drive and 32nd in takeaways, having only forced six turnovers all season, the Raiders were consistently giving up at least 24 points every week until they ran into a “second bye week” by facing Hackett’s Broncos in Week 11.
Denver is 32nd in points scored and 32nd in points per drive. Las Vegas is 16th and ninth in those categories, respectively. I still do not believe that Derek Carr can even hang in the same Vegas strip club as Russell Wilson (Carr has 15 TD, more than double Wilson’s seven), but he’s playing with Josh Jacobs (930 rushing yards) and Davante Adams (925 receiving yards) and other than draft name recognition, Mack Hollins has proven to be as good as Jerry Jeudy.
The Raiders have proven that they can at least sometimes score touchdowns, even pushing Kansas City to the brink in Week 5, 30-29, when Las Vegas failed to convert a potential game-winning two-point conversion.
Unlike Denver, the Raiders do have one blowout loss this season (24-0 to the Saints), but only that one. Las Vegas has lost seven games, including one in OT to the Cardinals (blew a late 16-point lead in the fourth quarter) and four games by five points or less. There was also a 27-20 loss to the Jaguars, in which the Raiders blew a 17-0 lead.
But with their only three wins coming over Denver twice and Houston once, Las Vegas has proven that they can’t hang in the same Las Vegas strip clubs with anyone other than the dregs of the league.
Raiders or Broncos? With identical records, similar game results, and two close contests between them, the answer is simply that they both suck.
The Texans, who accidentally beat the Jaguars and tied the Colts, will stop short of nothing to guarantee themselves a quarterback at the top of the 2023 NFL Draft. Here is their remaining schedule:
Houston—who is not facing the 3-7 Jacoby Brissett Browns but the 0-0 Deshaun Watson Browns when they meet in two weeks—should be able to be 1-13-1 when they go into their last two games, guaranteeing themselves the top pick before the end of the regular season.
Next is the 3-8 Panthers and this is their remaining schedule:
Carolina is 2-3 with an OT loss in their last five games, and they’ve already beaten the Bucs and Saints, their final two contests of the season. The Panthers defense just held Lamar Jackson’s Ravens to 13 points in Baltimore, so I don’t think any of these teams, including the Seahawks, can feel 100% safe against Carolina.
This is the remaining schedule for the 3-8 Chicago Bears:
The final seven games for the Raiders:
And the final seven games for the Broncos:
Now, if the Seahawks beat all the teams left on their schedule who they should beat, including the Raiders and Panthers, that will slightly increase the odds of those two teams ending up with higher first and second round draft picks than the ones going from Denver to Seattle. And at this point, what Seahawks fan in their right mind would still give a shit about that?
The Seahawks are in first place!
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The Seahawks face the Raiders in Week 12 and if they lose at home to Josh McDaniels and Derek Carr, Las Vegas will improve to 4-7 and see their 2023 first round pick fall back slightly. So what?
Because if the Seahawks lose at home to McDaniels and Carr… THEY WILL HAVE LOST AT HOME TO THE RAIDERS. If that happens, I guarantee you that Geno Smith and Pete Carroll will no longer be able to hang out in the same Las Vegas strip clubs as Kyle Shanahan and Jimmy Garoppolo.
When I woke up this morning, I could not have fathomed a world in which any Seahawks fan would think there’s a debate to be had between winning on Sunday so that Seattle could improve to 7-4 and stay in first place in the NFC West — OR — losing (yes, rooting for the first place team to lose) so that maybe, so long as Denver also loses to Carolina, the Broncos might have pick four instead of pick five. With six games to go.
Thankfully I’m a man who appreciates a good surprise and luckily Brian Nemhauser of the presumably defunct website Hawkblogger.com came in hot on Monday morning with an early frontrunner for Most Confusing Poll of 2022:
Nemhauser, who also goes by the alias “Hawkblogger”, posted this poll at 7:38 AM on Monday—”Are you more hoping the Seahawks win this week and improve their playoff chances or lose and help Seahawks pick (from DEN) improves chances of being top 4?”
As of 9:43 AM the same day, only two hours after the poll was re-created*, over 2,400 people had voted, with 90.7% voting “Win!” and the remaining 9.3% of respondents trolling the results by choosing lose.
*Nemblogger initially posted the poll with the exact same and expected lopsided results and rather than delete and walk away from Twitter for the day, this moment never to be remembered, decided to re-post with “more clarification” because obviously the problem here is that YOU did not understand the question, not because it was a strange decision to ask Seahawks fans if the Seahawks should suffer an embarassing loss at home for no guaranteed reason. Here is the initial poll phrasing that you didn’t understand and was later deleted:
It’s quite reminiscent of the time that Hawkbrian suffered a ratio-zation, not only because he gave the Kenneth Walker III pick a “D” grade, but because he couldn’t stand the fact that some of his fans disagreed with him:
See, he makes evidence-based arguments. If you liked the Walker pick, then you must be basing your arguments on Grimm’s fairy tales or Aesop’s Fables. You know, made up stuff.
If you expressed confusion of a poll that asked Seahawks fans if the first place Seahawks should lose at home to the 3-7 Raiders, then it must be the fans who made a mistake, not the person who created the poll and asked the question. You thought you could hang out at the same Las Vegas strip clubs as Hawkblogger.
You thought wrong.
This morning is a great example of how Twitter traps people into siding with themselves instead of listening to their own followers. Those are your FANS! That’s YOUR audience! And I guarantee we’re all going to be wrong sometimes.
You would think that getting ratio’d or reading responses from people who like you that say things like “What?” should lead to reflecting on the question and maybe coming back with, “Yeah, I guess that might have been more obvious than I thought. Haha.” To which 100-percent of your fans would say, “No problem, happens to us all!”
“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real” - Thomas Merton. A quote that I have lived by ever since I read it on brainyquote dot com six seconds ago. But it’s true! It’s easy to give responses to criticism that merely seeks to defend what you’ve previously said, whether it makes sense or not. Most people on Twitter seem to act this way, as they have more fear for how it would look if they admit error, and show no urgency for being truthful.
It’s more difficult to open yourself up to being wrong, but I’ve had to admit some huge errors more than once already this year and I’ve yet to receive any feedback from Seaside Joe readers that “Wait, you were wrong before? UNSUBSCRIBE!”
The Seahawks should obviously hope to win this weekend, because a win would mean a win. The Seahawks should not be okay with losing, because a loss would be a loss.
I don’t think fans need more explanation than that. But yes, the Seahawks could also win and get a top-three draft pick in return from the Broncos next year. The two scenarios are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often hang out at the same Las Vegas strip clubs.
It’s a legit debate if you don’t have a life. Me, I’m going to root for the Seahawks to win and let the rest take care of itself.
Before I got into seaside joe this season my favorite Hawk commentators were Brian Hawkblogger and Rob SeahawksDraftBlog. They’re both really smart and often are right about things that professional Seahawks journalists miss. But they both tend to double down on bad takes far longer than they should. I suspect that social media fuels some of this, leading to creating “brands” rather than, you know, expressing an opinion. (Both remain leagues ahead of Ben Baldwin.)
The only time I ever rooted against the Seahawks was when they played the Jim Zorn-coached Redskins (now the WFT Whatevers). Zorn was my childhood hero and I literally was sick each week he coached because so many media folks mocked him. In that case I sided with the man who was Mr. Seahawk, for me. (I had to come to grips with the fact that he wasn’t a good head coach, no matter how much I wished it to be so.)
Thank you for your own honesty and transparency Kenneth.