How to have an 18-game regular season

This blog is in the players' corner on almost every issue at stake in the collective bargaining process.

We watch the NFL for the players. Not for the coaches, not for the cheerleaders, and certainly not for the fatcat owners in their luxury boxes. We watch to see great athletes compete in a brutal and beautiful sport.

Pro football players really are like gladiators. They absorb and dish out a great deal of punishment for our entertainment. Playing pro football shortens their lives and reduces the quality of their lives in many ways. They deserve to be well-compensated for their sacrifices.

Owners make no comparable contribution to or sacrifice for the game. They can cope with a reduced slice of the pie.

The NFL proposes to "make the pie higher" (to invoke a Bushism) by increasing the regular season from 16 to 18 games. This would generate more revenue. Understandably, players object, citing the increased toll on their bodies, and wondering how the league squares an extended season with its professed desire to enhance player safety.

However, there is a way to go to an 18-game season without endangering players: increase the regular season to 18 games, but make each player eligible to play in only 16 of those games.

Each week, the coaches would have to decide who plays and who sits.

Under my plan, the NFL could even ditch the bye week, because each player would enjoy the equivalent of two bye weeks sometime during the regular season.

Go, Pack.

Notice the lack of an exclamation point on that title.

It's hard to get too excited about a Super Bowl that doesn't include the Seahawks, or even any former Seattle players.

However, my belief in a just world requires that Green Bay wins.

I realize that the Steelers are a good team, and they might in fact win. I could put up with a Pittsburgh victory, but only if Big Ben Rapistberger exits the game with a career-ending injury.

I've imposed an almost complete media blackout upon myself regarding the Super Bowl because the steady stream of Roethlisberger "redemption" stories sickens me.

If Pittsburgh had any integrity as an organization, they would have cut the rapist before the season began, rather than reinstate him as their starting quarterback after he served his suspension. The Steelers proved they could win without him when Roethlisberger was sidelined. So why bring him back?

Also, Green Bay has solid underdog credentials, as the league's smallest market and the only publicly-owned team. Every time the Packers win, it's a thumb in the eye to the NFL's sordid tradition of individual ownership. Public ownership is obviously good for fans--Green Bay wouldn't have a team anymore without it--but the league won't allow any other team to adopt the practice, because they'd rather maintain the freedom of plutocrats to steal a town's team if the taxpayers don't give them everything they want. Congress should end the ban on public ownership the next time the NFL's anti-trust exemption comes up for renewal.

So: Go, Pack.

Hire Jim Zorn!

Baltimore just fired Jim Zorn. Since Joe Flacco just finished his best season yet as a pro quarterback, it was surprising that the Ravens decided to terminate his position coach. Flacco publicly expressed his displeasure with the decision.

Jedd Fisch, Seattle's quarterbacks coach, is leaving to become the offensive coordinator of the Miami Hurricanes.

Zorn worked well with Seahawks quarterbacks from 2001-2009. Under his tutelage, Matt Hasselbeck went to three Pro Bowls, and Seneca Wallace developed into an effective backup quarterback.

Bring back Jim Zorn. What are the Seahawks waiting for?

Seahawks to watch in today's Pro Bowl

Umm... there aren't any.

No current or former Seahawk made the Pro Bowl roster.

We are the only team in the NFC that had no one voted to play in the all-star game.

This should serve as a reminder to Coach Carroll and GM John Schneider that Seattle desperately needs personnel upgrades, especially on the offensive and defensive lines, and in the secondary.

Leon Washington was the only Seattle player who arguably deserved to go to Honolulu, but it's hard to dislodge the stellar Devin Hester as the NFC's top return specialist. Even when Washington has as good a season as Hester in the return game.

Aside from Washington, no Seahawk deserved to make the Pro Bowl.

Our former Pro Bowlers did not consistently impress in 2010. Matt Hasselbeck struggled for most of the season before coming alive in the playoffs. Injuries hobbled linebacker Lofa Tatupu all year; simply getting on the field was a weekly victory for him, and only his brilliant (albeit off-concussed) defensive brain made him worth the start. Opposing teams actually targeted cornerback Marcus Trufant, who was also slowed by nagging injuries.

Some members of the current roster showed potential.

Wide receiver Mike Williams had a few monster games. If he can do that consistently, he would make the Pro Bowl.

Rookie Earl Thomas showed enough talent that Peter King of Sports Illustrated named him to his mid-season All-Pro team, but the free safety faded after that, as opposing offenses began to game-plan against him to exploit his inexperience.

Injuries kept left tackle Russell Okung off the field for several games, and compromised his performance when he was on the field, but when healthy, Okung is already among the league's best.

Aaron Curry continues to disappoint. If he wants to justify his salary and the high draft pick we spent on him, he needs to start taking over games and making annual trips to Honolulu.

The diehard position on today's playoff games

Seahawks diehards may find it hard to get excited about today's playoff games. The pain of our own elimination from the postseason remains fresh, and we are haunted by the emptiness of knowing that more than seven months separate us from the next Seahawks Sunday.

But of course we'll be watching the conference championship games. We can't help it. We love football.

However, I offer the following to sweeten the viewing experience of Seahawks diehards.

First, some solace: The teams we watch today are the only four teams in the league that made it deeper into the playoffs than Seattle did. Twenty-four of the NFL's 32 teams got eliminated before the Seahawks. So, we can feel good about our season and look forward to next year.

Now, whom should we support in today's Pleistocene NFC Championship bout between the Bears and the Packers?

An understandable diehard knee-jerk reaction would be to favor Green Bay because Chicago beat us last week.

However, if the Bears win, our elimination becomes less shameful, because we lost to the eventual conference champions.

I find it hard to be angry at Chicago. They won last week, fair and square. Brian Urlacher gloated a little on the sideline, but everyone knows he's a horse's ass.

There's a sentimental case to be made for the Packers. They're the visiting underdogs, trying to get to the Super Bowl the hard way, via a wild card berth and three road games. They hail from the league's smallest market. They're the only franchise that has managed to buck the plantation paradigm of plutocrat ownership. Because Green Bay shares are owned by hundreds of individual investors, the team will never move.

But then again, there are those uniforms. Why can't they ditch that ghastly color scheme?

I've always liked the Bears; after the Seahawks, they're my team. I loved Walter Payton. Weirdly, last week's loss increased my esteem for Chicago fans. My fiancee and I were spending the weekend in Tucson. I watched last week's game at the sports bar next to our hotel so she could take the car shopping. The establishment--called The Loop--turned out to be a Bears bar. So, I'm sitting there in my #71 Seahawks jersey, watching the game surrounded by Chicago fans and Monsters of the Midway memorabilia. I braced myself for some trash talk, but everyone was really nice to me.

Chicago's roster contains no former Seahawks. Their only obvious local connection is ex-Husky center Olin Kreutz, a dominant player, though slightly unbalanced. He got kicked out of UW for punching a teammate in practice and breaking his jaw. A few years ago, he punched a Bears teammate in practice and broke his jaw. (That time, he kept his job, and the victim got cut. The NFL and the NCAA play by different rules.)

The Packers have no former Seahawks and no ex-Huskies.

So, Kreutz awards a slight diehard advantage to da Bears.

Really, it doesn't matter. If you can't get excited about an NFC championship game featuring a rematch of the league's oldest rivalry, you don't love pro football. May the best team win.

Of course, when it comes to the AFC championship, there is a clear Seahawks diehard position: Down with Pittsburgh.

I admire Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu, but I have no use for the rest of them.

The Stealers have never acknowledged the massive assist they received from the officials in Super Bowl XL.

They have no ex-Seahawks or former Huskies on their roster.

Their quarterback is a scumbag rapist and a disgrace to the league and to the sport.

New York quarterback Mark Sanchez has a rape arrest in his past, too.

So, above all, I'm rooting for the pass rush. I want blitzing defenders to wreak merciless karmic retribution upon Big Ben and Dirty Sanchez. I want both starting quarterbacks knocked out of the game with injuries so catastrophic that they miss the Super Bowl, too. Since the NFL lacks the integrity to ban him from the league for life, a career-ending injury for Roethlisberger is our only hope for justice.

As for the Jets, there are some reasons to root for them, even if they weren't playing the Stealers:

1. Lance Laury, a longtime reserve linebacker and special teams stalwart for Seattle. Now he's a Jet.

2. LaDainian Tomlinson & Marty Schottenheimer. Denied a Super Bowl in San Diego, and then jettisoned by an ungrateful franchise. Now in the twilight of his career, Tomlinson, the decade's greatest running back, deserves a chance to win it all. Marty will never coach again, but he can win vicariously through his son Brian, who is New York's offensive coordinator.

3. Tony Richardson, one of the greatest fullbacks in league history, an unsung hero who for 16 years has blasted open holes, making greatness possible for Marcus Allen, Priest Holmes, Larry Johnson, and Adrian Peterson. The man deserves a Super Bowl ring.

4. Mark Brunell. One of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the University of Washington, Brunell now backs up Sanchez. In my fantasy scenario, Dirty blows out a knee and Brunell leads the Jets to victory in the AFC championship and the Super Bowl.

Can a Vikings castoff reinvigorate our offense?

After terminating offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates, the Seahawks evidently first pursued Josh McDaniels, Denver's freshly fired head coach, who made his name as the director New England's offense from 2006-2008, a span that included Tom Brady's record-setting 50-touchdown season in 2007.

However, McDaniels spurned our advances and signed with St. Louis instead. Ouch.

Seattle had been interviewing Darrell Bevell for our vacant quarterbacks coach position, but after McDaniels joined the Rams, we hired him as our offensive coordinator.

Bevell had served as Minnesota's offensive coordinator for the last five years, but the Vikings stripped him of the position, hired a replacement, and offered him a choice: demotion to quarterbacks coach, or permission to seek a job elsewhere.

Minnesota fielded consistently good rushing offenses under Bevell, but that's not hard to do when you have a dominant O-Line and a world-class running back like Adrian Peterson. They had one great passing year with Brett Favre in 2009.

Bevell represents a return to Holmgren's West Coast philosophy. He began his coaching career with the Packers in 2000, during the tenure of Big Show protege Mike Sherman. In that first season, he coached Matt Hasselbeck, then Green Bay's backup quarterback.

So, while Bevell is our fourth offensive coordinator in four years, he at least offers a return to something familiar for some of our veterans.

Perhaps, in welcome contrast to his two most recent predecessors, Bevell will conserve the functional elements of our present offense and gradually introduce new wrinkles, rather than confound our returning players needlessly by starting from scratch again.

Good-bye, Mr. Bates

For most of the season, I excoriated the playcalling of offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates.

His default mode was predictable, calling a handoff to Marshawn Lynch on seemingly every first down. Exactly what the defense expected. Typical result: Stuffed for no gain.

His changeup was even worse, though: throwing a fade on third and one. Typical result: incompletion.

Seattle had one of the league's worst offenses. Again.

But let us acknowledge the handicaps Bates faced.

Offensive line coach Alex Gibbs retired before the regular season began, but after his philosophy had dictated some questionable personnel decisions (e.g., cutting Mansfield Wrotto). Art Valero came in at the last minute to try to make it work. Injuries and underperformance required Seattle to try ten different offensive line combinations over the course of the season. No wonder our running game was so bad.

It would have been worse had we not acquired Marshawn Lynch. Since our O-Line couldn't find any daylight, we needed a beastly runner who could make some of his own.

GM John Schneider and Coach Pete Carroll dismantled Seattle's receiving corps, purging last year's best receivers and gambling on unproven wideouts. They refused to pay Nate Burleson, encouraging him to escape in free agency. Then, they cut TJ Houshmandzadeh, paying him $6 million to play for Baltimore. Finally, they traded Deion Branch back to the Patriots.

It took time for Mike Williams and Ben Obomanu to develop into serviceable starters. Deon Butler began to emerge, but then was lost to injury. Golden Tate simply disappointed. We needed to sign Brandon Stokley to find a reliable slot receiver.

Bates may have proposed signing Stokley, since he worked with the wideout in Denver. But it is hard to blame him for the underperformance of our receiving corps. Kippy Brown is the wide receivers coach, and he hasn't been fired, yet.

As offensive coordinator, it was Bates' job to make the most of what we had, and this is where he struggled.

For most of the season, he failed to adapt his playcalling to the team's limited resources. His predictable playcalling made it easy for opposing defenses to shut down our feeble ground game. His desire to throw deep set up Hasselbeck to throw a lot of interceptions.

Late in the season, Bates seemed to hit his stride. In the last few games, he installed new formations and new plays that befuddled opposing defenses.

In the regular season finale against St. Louis, he crafted an offensive game plan that fit Charlie Whitehurst, taking advantage of his mobility, and allowing him to conduct a patient, clock-chewing ball control offense.

The next week, in the wild card game, Bates cleverly exploited the weaknesses of a Saints secondary that had allowed only 12 touchdown passes during the regular season. Hasselbeck shredded New Orleans for four passing touchdowns.

Last week, in Chicago, Bates called a remarkably good game. His original plan relied heavily on tight ends, but a concussion subtracted John Carlson from the lineup after our first offensive play, and an injury hobbled our backup tight end. Reduced to a mere corner of his original play sheet, Bates nevertheless called a good game. Hasselbeck threw the ball accurately, and our receivers got open, but they simply couldn't catch the ball. Again, if we're going to blame a coach for that, it should be the position coach, Kippy Brown, and not the offensive coordinator.

Before those last three games, I would have agreed with Bates' firing.

Now, I'm not sure.