Your picks for Seahawks Mt. Rushmore

Walter Jones, Steve Largent, Cortez Kennedy, and who is the fourth? Seaside Joe 1938

Seahawks fans at the Seaside Joe newsletter named their picks for the franchise’s “Mt. Rushmore” in the comments section of an article posted at the beginning of the week. There were 21 official ballots cast by my count (and some less official musings without clear choices that I’ll post below) and of those, Walter Jones led the way with 17 “rushies”, the most of any Seahawks great.

Here’s Mel Kiper’s take for ESPN when Seattle drafted Jones in 1996 (click this link to listen):

Steve Largent came in second with 16 rushies, followed by Cortez Kennedy with 13 rushies. Those three are probably the three names you could have guessed would be on a consensus Rushmore, but number four was a mystery to most and could go in any number of directions depending on your age, your era, and your voting criteria, which in itself will always vary wildly between one fan and the next.

However, Marshawn Lynch pulled away from the pack and easily captured the fourth spot on Seattle’s Mt. Rushmore with 10 rushies, twice as many votes as fifth-place Pete Carroll. That essentially makes Pete the “Susan B. Anthony” of Seahawks Mt. Rushmore.

(A case was made for S.B.A. to be the fifth face of Mt. Rushmore.)

He was followed by Richard Sherman with four rushies, then Kenny Easley, Bobby Wagner, and Kam Chancellor were tied with three. Russell Wilson showed up twice, while Jim Zorn, Tyler Lockett, Matt Hasselbeck, and Mack Strong got one vote apiece. Technically, Hasselbeck got two since he was also on my Mt. Rushmore.

There could probably be an entire other article written about the fact that the Seahawks drafted a quarterback who started in BACK-TO-BACK Super Bowls, won one, and nearly captured MVP (though he didn’t get votes, Wilson was certainly good enough at times to win without it being unfair) yet is barely mentioned as a Mt. Rushmore candidate. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, just unexpected given the context and how fans feel about quarterbacks.

I mean, Mack Strong almost had two votes and that would have tied Wilson.

Here were some other comments from this week’s Mt. Rushmore article, which I want to share because these are great memories you’ve shared and I want every reader to re-live them with you:

Bryant: I agree with all of the great choices listed for Mt. Rushmore and have a hard time picking just four. So I’m going to make an oddball set of players with memorable, unusual plays: Efren Herrera for receiving a TD on a fake field goal, Jon Ryan for throwing a TD on a fake punt during a playoff game, Michael Dickson for a scoop and punt and also running for a first down around the 20 on a botched punt, Jack Patera for being the first coach of the expansion Seahawks who was a grumpy disciplinarian but was also famous for whacky special plays.

Here’s the Michael Dickson double-punt highlight!

John C: I finally decided that I would offer a list of every Seahawk whom I have met: Dave Krieg, Walter Jones, Shaun Alexander, Marcus Trufant, Ray Roberts, Mike Tice, Brian Bosworth, George Fant and not Max Pircher, but I did have breakfast with his father in Munich.

His dad’s name must be Maximum Pircher.

Scott Simpson: Any Seahawks Rushmore must include Pete.

Maybe Pete will be the mountain that we carve the faces into, as he’s the foundation of the greatest Seahawks era that ever was.

JR Richardson: I'll give you my Rushmore of Undrafted Seahawks. Dave Krieg, Doug Baldwin, Michael Bennett, Joe Nash

Wakey, Wakey…Eggs and Jakey:

Chuck Turtleman: I’m an old guy and Largent and Easley are up there to make my personal Mt Rushmore; but honestly Hass and Russ were probably my very favorite players in their primes. And not just because they were QBs. They were badasses in their own right and brought me the most joy. The best player at any position was surely Walter Jones. The best ever for a short time was Cortez or maybe ET. Marshawn was a gem to play for your favorite team too, as was Kam. But no doubt, I’d be that dork who breaks the rules and puts Pete on there.

This gives me an idea to list all of the best Seahawks who didn’t get a single “rushie” in the comments last week, including Earl Thomas.

“MORE”comments….

Starting yesterday and from now on, I will add at least one “MORE” comment in the comments section of Seaside Joe, which will include addition thoughts and information that I didn’t have space for in the actual newsletter. I did this yesterday in the Kenneth Walker contract article and today I’ll post the best Seahawks who didn’t get a single Rushie in the comments.

If you use the Substack app or read this from the Seaside Joe website, then you already should be able to see the comments when you read the article.

If you click on the leave a comment button, I believe that should also take you to the comments. As well as if you click the banner at the top of the e-mail.

I want to highlight how awesome the Seaside Joe community is, as I learn new things and improve as a writer all the time thanks to the comments. As someone whose writing career started as a commenter at Lookout Landing circa 2008, I could write a whole book on communities and comments in the past 15 years. So I highly suggest and request that you see what’s happening in the SJ or SSJ comments.

Do you remember when the movie Cast Away came out in 2000 and then after it had been out for a few weeks, they released a new trailer that stated “Getting off the island was only the beginning…” I don’t think this is the Mandela Effect, but I can’t find that trailer or movie poster (if that’s what it was) anymore. I think they just felt that people might have assumed that the movie wasn’t worth seeing if they already knew he gets off the island, maybe because the entire movie is in the original trailer:

Anyways, that’s kind of like reading the comments. Sometimes the Seaside Joe article itself is only the beginning….

Super Joes questions part 3

There are a couple of questions left on the Super Joes Q&A that I didn’t get to yet.

JohnnyLondon: Who are RASiest players on the current roster? How do the QBs in the NFCW rank according to SSJ metrics?

I tried to use the Ras.football website to find answers to this, but it is too glitchy and difficult to comprehend how to do that. If anyone else has success, let us know! We know which Seahawks are very athletic though and I can tell you that Riq Woolen’s RAS (Relative Athletic Score, which uses combine tests to compare all players since 1987 and how athletic they are compared to the past and their peers) was 9.70 out of 10.

That ranked 60th out of 1,984 CB prospects between 1987-2022.

DK Metcalf had a 9.68 RAS. He got dinged for “bad” scores in the shuttle and 3-cone drills. Kenneth Walker had a 9.21, marked down for weight and a 34” vertical. He ranked 121 out of 1,586 running backs.

The highest-ranked on the team might be Boye Mafe though. Mafe got a perfect 10 when he was listed as a linebacker, but then that dropped to a 9.91 when he was measured against defensive ends. That still made him the 14th-most athletic DE since 1987 and he was only marked down for his weight at 261 lbs. He also didn’t test shuttle or three-cone.

I won’t rank Geno Smith in the NFC West because I just need one weekend where I don’t get the smoke for what I say about Seattle’s quarterback. Ranking the other three in the NFC West is difficult because it depends what we are ranking them for….Matthew Stafford is the most talented and dangerous right now, Brock Purdy is the best investment for the future, Kyler Murray will show us who he really is this season…

Rusty: What will it take for Lumen Field to become a feared place to play again?

This is not a very satisfying answer, but the Seahawks will always be tougher to beat at home when they’re…tougher to beat anywhere. Without taking anything away from the crowd and the crowd noise, the Seahawks just haven’t been as talented as the best teams in the NFL for quite some time. But even last year, the Seahawks went 5-3 at home with wins over two playoff teams (Browns, Eagles). Their three losses? All to playoff teams (Steelers, Rams, 49ers).

I think we want to look for reasons that maybe aren’t there, like ‘there’s no more magic at Seattle’s home stadium’ because as Daniel Kahneman writes in the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, humans look for causal explanations instead of statistical ones. A more logical answer as to why Seattle’s losing more home games would be that the Seahawks haven’t been as good of a team as they were around the years 2005 and 2013.

I hope I have answered all of your Super Joes questions. If not, let’s get back to it next week when the next Q and A email goes out. To get a question in next time, upgrade to Super Joes today!

THANK YOU!

Speaking of paid subscribers, I have to continue to try and catch up to thanking all of the recent signups. Because I am behind, some of these are not so recent, and I will hopefully get to yours soon! If you are a paid member, again don’t hesitate to try the comments, you’re paying for that access anyway!

THANK YOU: SEASIDER GRANT A! ROSS J. FOOTBALL! BEAST-MODE-808! SEASIDER EGGER! JEFF I! AS IN, JEFF I REALLY APPRECIATE YOU! JERRY F, PATRICK S, ROBERT BURN., and HONFATBOY! THANKS TO DAVID CROCKETT, ONE OF OUR LONGEST RUNNING SEASIDERS. TY TAYLOR! LUKE TATUM, PROBABLY MORE HANDSOME THAN YOUR BROTHER CHANNING. THANK YOU MATT JONES, AC FIN, AND CHRIS CAN., because you CAN really make my day! MONEY TEAM, FBOBY, ENRIQUE, AND DOUG HYL! THANK YOU OLY AND SEASIDER JOE RYAN! THANK YOU A. STAMPER!

(Click for this^^^sketch from I Think You Should Leave)

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DON’T FORGET TO CHECK “MORE” COMMENTS FOR OTHER SEAHAWKS WHO DIDN’T GET ANY VOTES FOR MT. RUSH-MORE!