Seahawks' Pharaoh Brown never stops believing in himself as a premier TE

Will the Seahawks tight end have the breakout season at 30 that he's always wanted? Seaside Joe 1953

I’ve always been a believer, that’s a life philosophy that was instilled in me at a very early age by my mom. I’d say things like “I’m going to become the richest person on the planet” and she’d say, “You can!”

“I’m going to be the president”

“You can!”

(Now that doesn’t seem such an ambitious of a goal.)

“I’m going to work in Hollywood”

“You can!”

I’ve just always kind of believed, naively or not, that things will work out. Now I do live and work right off of Hollywood Blvd. I can even say that I got to work in the entertainment industry when I was the luckiest person on the set of Curb Your Enthusiasm for a day, improvising with Larry David and J.B. Smoove, and when stuff like that happens it is hard to feel that believe=naive.

And I may not be the richest person on the planet, but I have a strong suspicious that I’m the richest person in my 12-unit apartment building and that’s probably better than having the most wealth on Earth.

Things work out. I’ve just always believed that and even when they don’t work out, well then I was wrong about what I thought it was that I wanted…and so therefore that works out; Becoming the president or the richest person on the planet were the wrong goals, moving to L.A. and starting a daily Seahawks newsletter were the right goals.

How do I know? Because it turns out I actually wanted those things. I believed, I wanted, I acted on it, and I will keep stepping forward on faith that everything works out as it should.

It’s like this newsletter.

Outsiders could observe how I run it and probably think that there are ways to grow the audience faster, get bigger, make more money, and do what everyone else is doing…which has never and will never be how I do things. If someone else is having success doing something, good for them, but to me once something has been done it’s already over. It’s used and therefore it’s not as desirable as something new. That’s like all the studios that tried to copy Star Wars after Star Wars and found out that you can’t make another Star Wars. People already like Star Wars now, they don’t want anything that reminds them of Star Wars unless it’s Star Wars, which is evidenced by the fact that they kept making a lot of very lucrative Star Wars movies and shows but nobody saw The Black Hole, The Humanoid, or The Shape of Things to Come.

I’ve just always had this voice next to me that has an idea and says, “This is it. This is what you’ll do. It may not make any sense to you now, but if you put in the work then it will work out.”

It’s like, why write a newsletter about the Seattle Seahawks every single day? I don’t know. To see how long it can go? But really I’ve just had this feeling since day one that is exactly like Field of Dreams…

Like any questions about life, consciousness, or existence, hard concrete answers will never come while you’re alive. You just have to believe in something and I believe that I’m supposed to write about the Seahawks everyday and that good things will happen and they already have. If this newsletter ended today, I’d definitely say it was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me and that was honestly just as true on day 175 or 915 or 1,636 as it is today, which is day 1,953.

This newsletter is so cool to me and I really do feel like we are experiencing this together. As in if you like Seaside Joe, so do I! I love this newsletter. It’s changed my life being on this end and I just happen to be the person who writes it, and I’m not trying to be humble. It’s more as in, do I even have control at this point? Going a day without writing it seems unthinkable, and the ideas for what to write come from “I have no clue”, and free will, if I ever had it to begin with, left a long time ago. Sometimes I’ll read this newsletter after its posted and feel no connection to being the writer, I’ll see information in it as if I’m learning it right along with you.

This is just a thing that will continue to happen for as long as I’m physically and mentally able to continue. If it gets to the point where I can only manage to type “Sea…” one day, hell I’ll still post the newsletter. You should probably unsubscribe at that point, but I’ll still send you the email if you want.

“If you build it” has been such an incredible force in my life. It gave me the opportunity to start writing at Field Gulls, which led to Rolling Stone, which allowed me to quit a job that I was really bad at, and since then it’s just been a snowball effect of experiences I’m very grateful to have had. For what?

I don’t really know. I don’t think in terms of believing in anything beyond this life, I just try to do what I think I’m supposed to do while I’m alive, which is to always follow my instincts on what I should do.

I should not be a podcaster again. I should not be a reporter, I’ve seen those jobs up close and those skills are not what I’m good at. I should not be on social media, promoting a brand.

What I should do is write this newsletter every day and believe that this is what I’m supposed to be doing, which works out great for me because holy shit I love writing about the Seahawks. It’s an addiction.

I love “if you build it” because that’s what I was going to do anyway. I quite literally can’t stop writing about the Seahawks right now. And I am not waiting for the second half of that quote…”He will come”, “She will come”, “They will come”…Whoever was supposed to show up because of this newsletter, you’re already here. We already made it. I’ve always been 100% good with what we are, what we do, and how many people are subscribed, whether that’s 10 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, or 10,000 people. I’m not looking to use Seaside Joe as a catapult, this daily newsletter is the destination.

This is the end game and it’s also the start.

Okay fine, let’s talk about Pharaoh Brown.

The Seahawks

The Seahawks signed Pharoah Brown to a one-year contract that paid a $1.25 million signing bonus and a fully-guaranteed $1.44 million base salary with up to $510,000 in per game roster bonuses. His cap number is $3.2 million, which for this season makes him the second-highest paid tight end on the Seahawks (Noah Fant: $7.5 million) and 32nd overall in the league. That does put him in the right wheelhouse to be a number two tight end, which is what he’s going to be in Seattle unless fourth round pick A.J. Barner steals his snaps.

The two could be built to play a similar role in Ryan Grubb’s offense, serving as blocking tight ends to complement Fant as a receiver. How many plays will only involve Brown? How many will involve Brown and Barner, but not Fant? Will undrafted free agent Jack Westover make the team, and make the team as a tight end (as opposed to an H-back) based on his past experience with Grubb at Washington?

These aren’t questions to answer today. All we know is that Brown’s contract makes him at worst, a really unfortunate waste of $3 million if he’s unable to make the final 53-man roster. Not making the team is unlikely, however he has been cut by teams in each of the last two years so the only thing guaranteed is…well, the money. But it’s not a whole lot of money. It’s too much to spend on a player that doesn’t make the team though.

The history

Pharaoh Brown was born on May the 4th be with you, 1994, in Cleveland, which is also where he played in the NFL for the Browns in 2018, 2019, and 2022. His high school career at Brush High, which is also how you groom a giraffe, was so long ago that there isn’t a lot left on the Internet about it except this photo: