It’s that time of the year again. The NFL is back.
That means the popular tradition of Blue Friday is also returning for Seahawks fans in Portland, Seattle and nationwide. If you’re unfamiliar with this tradition, it’s the reason that you can’t turn a corner in Franz on a Friday afternoon without running into someone sporting their favorite piece of Seahawks gear.
For the fans of the team this is a welcome sight, but for others, the sea of green and blue tends to be an eyesore.
Whether you love them or hate them, you must admit a couple of things about the Seahawks. First, they have a huge impact on the Pacific Northwest as a whole, as is made apparent by the tradition of Blue Friday, so there’s no escaping the fandom. And more importantly, this team is no joke.
After winning Super Bowl XLVIII, Seattle, as many people see it, squandered their chance at repeating as champs by passing on the one-yard line against the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX. Last year, the Seahawks were lucky to escape the first round of the playoffs when Vikings kicker Blair Walsh missed a chip shot field goal that would have been the game winner. The next week they were trounced by the Carolina Panthers. It would be easy to write Seattle off as a team on the decline, but for a few reasons, this could be the year that the Seahawks reassert themselves as the class of the NFL.
One of those reasons is very simple: Russell Wilson.
Wilson enters his fifth year in the league already having Super Bowl experience. He’s also coming off of the best season of his life. Last year, Wilson completed 68 percent of his passes, had 34 touchdowns and passed for 4,024 yards. All of those were career highs.
Wilson isn’t the only Seahawk coming off of his best season. Doug Baldwin, Wilson’s favorite target, had his best year in 2015 and his new four-year contract gives him 46 million reasons to keep up the solid play.
Two more key players are returning, not from their best seasons, but from injuries that cut their 2015 campaigns short. Jimmy Graham, one of the top tight ends in the league, is fully participating in practice and is scheduled to return early in the season after a knee injury that took him out in week 11 of 2015.
Thomas Rawls, who rushed for a league best 5.6 yards per carry after stepping in for the now retired Marshawn Lynch, broke his ankle in week 13 of the 2015 season. Rawls had two carries during the last preseason game on Thursday and will look to return for the start of the season. Should he stay healthy, it looks as if the Seahawks won’t miss a beat in transitioning to life without “Beast Mode.”
A year ago, Kam Chancellor was holding out for a new contract and missed the first two games of 2015, but this year Chancellor will be ready to go for the start of the season along with the rest of the secondary, which has been a strong suit for the Seahawks in their recent run of success.
Seattle also has a less than rigorous schedule. They will start the season with the Dolphins, Rams and 49ers and won't face a 2015 playoff team until week seven against the Arizona Cardinals.
The NFC will be tough division for the Seahawks to navigate. They will face division rival Arizona twice during the regular season. Come playoff time, they will have to worry about the Packers, who return their leading receiver Jordy Nelson after a knee injury that ended his 2015 season before it started and Cam Newton’s Panthers who look like a force to be reckoned with after their Super Bowl run.
Using the term, “if they remain healthy,” is as cliché as it gets in sports, but the Seahawks made it to the divisional round of the playoffs in a year where they were down to their third string running back and had only one true receiving threat for Russell Wilson. It’s a classic case of what could have been had Seattle not caught the injury bug, but they can erase those thoughts this season.
Of course no games have been played and a lot can happen in an NFL season, but the Seahawks look as dangerous as ever. That’s good news for the “12’s” here on campus, but if you’re disgusted by the blue and green, I’d suggest you brace yourselves for a long season of 12th man bragging and many Blue Fridays to come.
