Clipped Wings: How the Seahawks Dynasty Came Crashing Down

When you look back at the great dynasties and empires in history we remember a few main things.  The great things they accomplished, who their enemies were, and what marked their downfall.  It is mirrored in the world of sport, and the most recent one to come crashing down is from the Seattle Seahawks.

            March 8, 2022, a day that will live in infamy in Seattle.  The day the dynasty came crumbling down seemingly all at once.  They lost not only their most important player on the offense in Russell Wilson, but the heart and soul of the team in Bobby Wagner. Though it may seem as if that was the turning point, there were signs of something like that happening for years.

            Of course we all know the deal with Russell Wilson, he was publicly unhappy being a Seahawk since the 2020 offseason.  An offseason where we nearly saw him getting traded to the Bears.  Instead he played the year in Seattle, the worst of his career clearly due to a finger injury he suffered early on.

            Here is where we come to a place many, including myself, found shocking.  They cut Bobby Wagner.  Bobby Wagner was the last remaining piece of the vaunted defense known as the legion of boom.  He was the leader in the locker room, and the soul of the team.  Sticking with them through both success and heartbreak.  Though he wasn’t the best at his position he had been through most of his career last season, he was still the leader in tackles on that defense, and what won’t show up on the stat sheet is how valuable in the locker room he was.  But Seattle cut him, seemingly without even trying to trade a guy that they could probably get at least a third round pick out of. 

            The face of the offense and defense were gone that day, but cracks were showing ever since Wilson signed his big contract.  Signs of disfunction that can slowly lead to the end, things like Wilson being angry at the state of the Offensive line, the conflict between “let Russ cook” and the offense that had been so successful for all those years prior.

            The offensive line was the first crack to form in the wall, the problem being they couldn’t afford to pay everyone on the defense, and fix the o-line.  Still they tried and in doing so lost valuable pieces in that defense; another chip off the wall.  Even when they tried the o-line didn’t improve leaving Wilson to run for his life quite a bit. 

            Years go by, the defense continues to decline until it is a shell of its former self.  Then the let Russ cook movement, where Wilson wanted to be the center of the offense, not the run game like it had always been.  That seemed to work for the first five or so games of every season, until it ran out of gas and fell flat.  Another crack formed, this one deep, the ideology of a respected and successful coach vs the highly paid QB. 

            That brings us to 2020 when Wilson made it known that he wanted out, not very forcefully but that he didn’t like Pete Carrol and he wanted out.  Final massive crack in the wall.

            Now we get back to the day in question, the day the wall finally collapsed and left Seahawks fans questioning for their future.  Only time will tell if the wall can be rebuilt but as of now, the seahawks seem to have clipped their own wings.