What is your team anyway? Chargers, 49ers, Raiders? Or do you just bandwagon with whatever California team is likely to do well? (You may not be one of em, but a lot of Californians are like that).
Thing is we got one team, and I've beeen a fan of it since it has existed, and I keep up on it. They are a damn good team this year and I have little doubt they will win at least 10 games, in what is arguably the toughest division in the game right now. The division has been weak a long time, but that's the past and all four teams imporoved in the off season. We will likely make the playoffs and I am banking on us winning at least one playoff game.
The Chargers last year proved that a great team can have a bad game at the wrong time. Who knows the Seahawks could go 16-0, and then drop in the first playoff game. That's why they have that saying "Any given Sunday". The thing that bugs me is because Seattle is a small market team, we get no respect. We were underdogs in a Superbowl, that we should have been favorites in. Nevermind that the Stealers won the game, we were 13-3 and they were 9-7, and of course the zebras helped them quite a lot. It doesn't matter, we get no respect.
There was a recent article about NFC quarterbacks and how there are so few good ones. They mentioned McNabb and Brees, and then they talked about every other QB in the NFC, and didn't even acknowlege Matt Haselbeck's existance. Matt is a two time pro bowler, and statistically very close to McNabb and Brees both. Matt also was better than at least one NFC pro bowl quarterback in both 2002 and 2004, but being as the pro bowl is more a popularity contest, he wasn't selected. What Rush Limbaugh said about McNabb getting hyped as better than he is, is true. Personally I think it has a lot more to do with being in a large market, but I believe there are some racial aspects to ist as well. McNabb made the Pro Bowl twice with a passer rating under 80, and passer rating is a good handy number to get a summarized look at a quarterbacks performance. Statistically if you line up the three Matt is right there with them in just about every category. The one signifigant difference is that Matt has always had better running game behind him than is the average, and he doesn't have to throw 40 times a game, but his efficiency, yards per attempt average, TD/INT ratio, and overall rating is right in line with those guys.
Just an aside that shows that it's not just Seattle with this problem, another guy that get's dissed even worse than Matt is Marc Bulger. That guy is statistically closer to Peyton Manning, than any other guy playing the game today, but he got dissed by this article too, because he has a lousy defense and is in a small market, his talent goes largely un-noticed.
Then you also have Dave Krieg. He took us to several playoff apperances and even won a few of them. He didn't make it to the big game, but he ended his career in the top ten in four passing categories. They were attempts, completions, yardage and touchdowns. Manning, has knocked him to 11th in yards and completions by now, but he's still one of the top 20 quarterbacks all time. I don't know for sure, but I don't think Krieg has ever been considered for the HOF. Both Warren Moon, and Dan Fouts, never got to a Super Bowl, but they happend to have the luck of playing somewhere other than Seattle. Actually Moon was our QB at the end of his career, but if he's spent his whole career here, I'd wager that he would not be in the hall now.
If we win the superbowl, and I have heard of two television analysts brave enough to pick us to do so, I can almost guarnatee, we will start next season below third on preseason power rankings. We'd have to win a slew of superbowls, to get the respect Chicago does with their one, nearly 20 years ago. We simply get no respect. No matter how good we are, no respect. It just gets old.