Seasider comments: Shane Waldron's (short) origin story

Plus more FROM YOU on DK Metcalf, NFL Twitter, spending $1 million, and Clark's breed: Seaside Joe 1588

A lot of Seaside Joe readers ask me, “Joe, you’re the best. The absolute best.” And then I say to them, “That’s not a question.” Then they say back to me, “You’re the absolute best, but couldn’t you have even more subscribers? How could I help???” Some of them only have two question marks when they ask, but most do have three. The people really want to know.

I expect to get a major boost when training camp starts…

Seahawks report to training camp in: 18 days

Right now, Seaside Joe is ranked 80th among sports substacks for total subscribers (free+paid), 42nd in paid subscribers, and 1st in conversion rate (paid subscribers per total subscribers), so the best time to check back on those numbers would be after training camp has ended. In the meantime, you can help us out in one of three ways: Share Seaside Joe with other Seahawks fans. You can always forward your favorite articles to them.

Brand awareness is just as good: Mention “Seaside Joe” wherever you talk about the Seahawks.

If you haven’t signed up as a free subscriber yet and have been lurking for a long time, consider doing that now. You could even use your “fake” e-mail address that you only use to sign up for coupons, I don’t care!

And consider getting a premium subscription, Seaside Joe will reward you by creating the most Seahawks content of anyone on or off the Internet. I often get requests to write about topics a, b, or c, and there are many reasons why I usually can’t comply, but am considering adding a “suggestion box” as a feature for Super Joes subscribers.

Speaking of suggestions, are you using Threads? Let me know your thoughts in the comments of this article.

As for the comments in past articles, I’m going to highlight some of the more relevant, interesting, and notable comments to come from my articles in the past week.

How to spend $1 million as a Seahawks fan: Part I

I have some ideas for this series that I’m working on that I think will be fun and have a good payoff for readers, but let’s look at some of your suggestions from this post on how to spend a lot of money by simply going to all 17 games.

Seasider Defjames:

Bring your entourage! If someone was like, “hey, I have to spend $1M and go to every seahawks game” I’d be happy to do my friend a solid. Box suite at every game + field passes, private jet, and penthouse at every hotel.

I recently rewatched the first season of Entourage and in spite of relatively poor acting performances, I think it holds up pretty well against modern sitcoms. At worst, it’s fun to laugh at Vinny Chase and the boys. But I saw some people getting concerned over some of the jokes in HBO’s The Idol and yet that show was tamer than the network’s past series, including Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and probably even Dream On.

(Add: “Became first Seahawks writer in history to reference the show Dream On” to my list of accomplishments.)

But I’m definitely not the first Seahawks content creator to mention the show Entourage, as that would have been Russell Wilson.

Yes Defjames is right, as several of you point out that I could go private jet instead of commercial (Scott Marquis posted an excellent private jet cost breakdown in the comments) and probably spend a lot more on box suites than shopping on StubHub. I’m very inexperienced with buying tickets—both plane and NFL—so this was a good exercise for me to use to learn. So we’ll chalk this up to me spending $110,000 on this particular experience but knowing in the back of our minds that yes, I could have spent over $1 million just on the first article with private jets, better hotel suites, and club seats.

Is Dareke Young the next Seahawks fullback?

Seasider Paul G:

My FB template is 6’0/245, a decent receiver out of the backfield, a outstanding blocker, and you could count on him to pick up tough yards? Plus, he had the greatest name for a fullback ever: Mack Strong

The only three Seahawks to win the Steve Largent Award from the team in consecutive seasons are Russell Wilson, Tyler Lockett, and Mack Strong. Here’s a video from 2020 with Strong re-living his best career moments.

I had forgotten just how long Strong spent with Seattle: 14 seasons. That’s Mack long. For example, Lockett has had a great Seahawks career already and he needs to go six more years to match that number.

Seasider 10to80:

I think there are certain plays Dareke works as the fullback. I think in goal line or 3/4th and very short, give me Dissly or Fant.

Good to note!

Why there won’t be a Shane Waldron origin story any time soon

In Thursday’s backstory for Jason Myers, I noted that it is not as easy to find history for a career kicker, let alone one who graduated high school in the aughts, let alone one who wasn’t very good until he got to the Jets in 2018! But if I were Indiana Jones, finding information on Myers would be like seeing a Rembrandt at The Getty vs. finding information on Shane Waldron would be like looking for the holy grail.

So take this response simply as an answer and not as a criticism for the request. Please, feel free to request! I just may not have the answer you want yet.

Seasider IdahoFred:

An origin story on a place kicker. I am hopeful for one on an offensive coordinator.

Here’s a brief origin story: Shane Waldron was born in Portland, Oregon in 1979. He played high school football and nobody wrote any stories about it and if they did, they’re probably not going to be on the Internet because it was the mid-90s. He played college football at Tufts. Waldron got an internship with the Patriots after college and I would imagine that was interesting for him because New England won two Super Bowls while he was there; but they didn’t write about Intern Shane Waldron’s contributions at the time.

Waldron then became a grad assistant at Notre Dame because former Patriots OC Charlie Weis went there. Then he went back to the Patriots in 2008 and it seemed like that didn’t go as planned because after he was promoted to tight ends coach in 2009, Bill Belichick overhauled the position and started over in 2010, sending Waldron out the door and into the United Football League. He then spent a year at something called “Buckingham Browne & Nichols School” which sounds fictional (leave it up to a former Notre Dame coach to fake a resume) and then four years at UMass, where again, nobody was really covering an assistant coach at a small school.

He finally got back into the NFL in 2016 with Washington as a quality control coach (that title that they give out to assistants sometimes that I’ve never quite known what it means), which is where he met Sean McVay, who brought Waldron with him to the L.A. Rams in 2017 as tight ends coach.

But despite the fact that Waldron spent 2018-2020 as a passing game coordinator for a team that went to the Super Bowl, there still wasn’t that much written about him because everybody knows that McVay is the one pulling the strings. Really, the vast majority of content that has been created about Shane Waldron started when he joined the Seahawks in 2021.

Football players are much easier, especially young ones, because we live in an age of information overload. Even Clint Hurtt’s origin story was largely helped by the fact that he was a notable recruit out of high school, played at Miami, and then even won awards (and was embroiled in controversy) as a college coach and recruiter.

If I’m wrong and there’s a lot more to be said about Waldron, let me know and I’ll own that and go back and review. But I think we’re either at either the beginning of a storied career…or coming close to the end. The 2023 season will have a lot to say about that. Despite connections to Belichick, McVay, and Carroll, I don’t believe Waldron has ever been interviewed for a head coaching position. Will that change next year?

But thank you for the requests, I genuinely hope this satisfies your Waldron curiosities for the year.

Twitter won’t keep on view limits

This was one of those articles where I was slightly afraid to read the comments because I knew the content wasn’t going to be for everybody and I did get at least one about that. But my advice to writers: Never be afraid to read the comments! That’s how you learn how to be a better writer and to be as informed as possible. Case in point:

Seasider KHammarling:

Twitters contract with Google Cloud services expired June 30th. Elon did not want to pay a reported bill in the region of $1bil and was trying to migrate all of Twitters servers and engineering off of Google. This meant embeded tweets, videos, links and so on all broke, because Twitter fired most of it's engineering team and couldn't get this done ahead of the June 30 deadline. This rash of linking errors forced far above normal server requests, flooding Twitters servers.

Rather than paying Google (or AWS for example) for short term coverage, Twitter implements usage restrictions vs their entire backend crashing under the strain.

I just feel it’s good to keep updated that not everything I wrote was accurate and this is great information to know as well. But then I also get an opportunity to highlight comments like these ones:

Seasider SR84:

Reading Seaside Joe also counts as my version of twitter. In fact, Seaside Joe has all but ruined my use of Bleacher Report. Between the SJ content and the comments...this is the place to be if you dig the Hawks. Kenneth picking Witherspoon...well...that just sealed the deal.

Seasider Ray:

My only reason for posting this is a deep emotional need for Seaside Joe to validate my existence and formally acknowledging that I'm a really cool person.

The coolest.

Can DK Metcalf lead NFL in receiving?

There were MANY great points about DK and the Seahawks offense in the comments that I left out, so I suggest scrolling through them all.

“I would need to check the numbers but I think Kupp and Jefferson both have higher % of snaps from the slot or a tight alignment behind the LoS, where it's easier to evade press-man, as well as more screens. They add up to more quick, efficient receptions which I think DK would need to see to get over that 100 yds/game average.”

“He’ll also need to not let defenders get into his head. Too many times I see him jawing with opponents, only to have him effectively disappear.”

“Can DK get to 1500-1800? When you look at DK's long yardage plays (without doing the film study to prove it) it seems that many come off of slants or sluggo-type routes where DK gets the ball in space. With JSN on the field, and less double coverage towards DK, he should have more opportunities to catch and GO.”

“He always leaves yards on the field. I am not a stats guy but watching him play says a lot to me. He seems too easy to tackle. His hands appear awkward even when he makes the catch. And he does not seem to know how to use his height to his advantage. Just my opinion.”

There’s a lot of (reasonable) skepticism about DK, but one thing I reminded myself of after the post: DK Metcalf is 25. Dee Eskridge…is 26. Hopefully still a lot of mental growth and grasping of the game (and the football) left to do.

Pictures of Clark

Seasider Charlie Gage:

What breed, or combination of breeds, is Clark? He is a cute dog and, I'm sure, a great buddy for you.

We call him a lhasa apso because that’s what Apple always suggests when I use their photo feature that supposedly can tell you what breed of dog you have, but we’re not sure the exact mix. I adopted Clark when he was 3 or 4 years old and have no idea what his life was like before then because he was brought into a shelter as a stray. He’s a “great buddy” breed for sure.