Following up to last year’s incredible Cinderella season, the Seattle Seahawks have high hopes for the upcoming 2013-2014 football season. They started the previous years with little expectations in a tough division with teams like the St. Louis Rams and San Francisco 49ers, with a very mild receiving core and without a solid starting quarterback. They played the season exceeding all expectations making into the playoffs and finding some star talent on the team such as rookie quarterback Russell Wilson, a young Wide Receiver in Golden Tate and Defensive End Bruce Irvin as of one of the best defenses in the National Football League. The team has high expectations for the upcoming season.
Now with the 2013-2014 season upon us, the Seahawks have some big goals. The main goal is to make it to the Super Bowl, which looks realistic when reading the team roster after the moves that were made during the off-season. The biggest move was a trade with the Minnesota Vikings which sent a few draft picks to Minnesota in exchange for superstar wide receiver Percy Harvin. Harvin brings a lot of depth into the Seahawks offense as a speedy receiver who can not only catch the ball for massive yards, but also has experience at halfback in case our current halfback Marshawn “Beastmode” Lynch goes down. He will be used mostly as a receiver though considering how strong our halfback core is with Lynch, Robert Turbin and, our first pick in the last amateur draft, Christine Michael.
Other needs we addressed included the pass rusher position and the back-up quarterback slot. For the pass rusher positions, we signed rusher Cliff Avril from the Detroit Lions. The defensive end has a season high total of 11 sacks and 36 tackles back in 2011 and is expecting to make similar numbers this season with the Seahawks. They also signed another DE Michael Bennett who will also be in the hunt for the DE core.
One big situation the Seahawks had to face was whether or not to keep their current backup QB Matt Flynn and not re-sign strong safety Kam Chancellor, or to trade Flynn while looking for a cheaper back up on the free agency market to keep Chancellor. The Hawks ended up trading Flynn to the Oakland Raiders for a late round draft pick, then signing veteran QB Brady Quinn as their back-up. I think that this move works because Flynn was barely used in the 2012-2013 season and Chancellor was a huge reason why the Seahawks defense was one of the best in the National Football League.
The Hawks have a hard season ahead with a large number of morning and road games over the season. However, if they are as strong as they seem, the condition of the games should not matter if they want to make it to the post-season. I predict that with their schedule, the Seahawks should get at least 12 wins out of 16, but can get more than that if they exceed even more expectations.
