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Wow, lot of stuff got covered here. Some thoughts in response:
- Pete may not quite be "revolutionary," in the sense that other coaches have forever changed the way the game is played. But I think it's fair to say his style is about as distinctive as any coach out there, and it's very uniquely his. The 3000ft view of a bland offense and defense are right: that's not where his innovations occur. His defining, unusual traits are: valuing UDFAs (probably #1 in the league at this), trading for star players (he makes ~one big-name trade per year, which is one more than 90% of other teams), trading down in the draft, valuing SPARQ athletes (guys who test ridiculously well in certain specific Combine events), the distinctive "kick-step" CB technique, the rugby style "Hawk tackle" which focuses on dragging your opponent down with torque rather than hitting them like a battering ram, and the "Always Compete “mantra which has caused many a Civic to get supplanted by a surprising scrub.
- Is Pete Carroll a cheater? Yeah, his USC time was undoubtedly fraudulent. Should fans care? I don't see why. The NCAA system is so bad that it's practically begging coaches to cheat. Their rules are esoteric, ineffective and arbitrary, and deserve to be abused. Anyone who doesn't like it should stop caring about college football, and watch a real league.
- Is Pete Carroll a cheater in the NFL, and is this why his teams get screwed so frequently? No, but that's on the right track. Pete's philosophy, which I happen to agree with entirely, is to play as physically as possibly within the rules. Like, go right up to the line and stand there, leaning over it. As a result, the Hawks accidentally go a half step over the line more frequently than other teams: this is what Pete refers to as "the cost of doing business." He is making a conscious decision in his coaching style to trade an increase in penalties for being the most badass, physical team on the field every single game. For my money, it's absolutely worth it. I think it's why the defense is so vicious, and the only reason the o-line ever finds success: they all play nasty. Unfortunately this causes a natural penalty disparity, and an unnatural one as the refs start to resent how close to crossing the line the Hawks come every play. Opposing fans are fond of howling, "Sherm holds every play!" That's patently, grossly untrue, like saying Trump's inauguration crowd was the biggest in history. Sherm actually holds ~half as often as he is called for it: the other half happen because refs have been watching him like a hawk all game, thinking to themselves "some time he's gonna slip up, and then I'm gonna catch him!" That kind of bias is annoying, but again it's just the cost of doing business for the best hand-fighting corner in the league.
- All that said, there was definitely some funky business going on as well back in the 2013-14 seasons. Field Gulls ran an article at one point, looking at the number of penalties called on the Seahawks' opponents. Not us, because I've already laid out the natural conspiracy-free reasons we will always be near the top of the penalty leaderboard. They looked at how often the team playing against the Hawks had been flagged, vs the league average. They found that the relative frequency was so low, like 3.5 standard deviations from the mean, that there were like one in ten thousand odds of it happening naturally. That disparity has since dried up, but I think it is definitive proof that some outside force was trying to keep that team, which was "break up the Seahawks"-level good for those two years, from curb-stomping the league with the ease they should have. Which leads me to my final point...
- ... I think the real problem is that Seattle is on the West Coast, and it isn't LA. The axis of the NFL is the East Coast, its ethos is in middle America, and everything farther west than that is viewed by the league commissioner’s office as a weird, unpleasant outpost of civilization. Trust me, I'm from Alaska, so I'm used to watching people's faces as they try to come up with a tactful way to tell you your home is too far in the NW to be a worthwhile place. Now this may usually be a small, subconscious bias, but it can manifest more strongly when an "undesirable" team threatens to dominate the sport. Thus in a game where the upstart Hawks face the legacy-soaked Steelers, and get NBA-style jobbed right out of the building. Or the referees crusade on behalf of opposing teams circa 2013. And, maybe, the weirdness from Week 1 against the legacy-soaked Packers. The good news is, so long as the Hawks keep playing peewee football on offense, they shouldn't be threatening enough for the NFL to bother to rap their knuckles and tell them to respect their betters. *long-suffering sigh*
- With that said, I think week 1 is pretty explicable without resorting to the invisible hammer theory. It's just two plays. On the first, the block in the back is what cost us the TD. It was small, ticky-tack, and didn't affect the play at all, but the problem is it happened to Aaron Rodgers, Golden Boy (TM). The league hates when you mess with good quarterbacks, so long as they're pocket passers. The Lane ejection was bogus, but the result of an earlier play where Lane and a receiver were talking smack after a play, so vehemently that the Packer got flagged for taunting. Lane has a reputation as the chippiest guy on the field, non-Sherm division, so I'm sure after that flag the ref told both players "I don't want to see any more of that today, you hear?" Like an umpire issuing a warning to both dugouts after a pitch soars over a batter's head. So the scrutiny was heightened, and five minutes later that caused a trailing ref with a bad angle to make a really poor call. Unfortunate, but understandable. As for the Jimmy Graham play, a friend was yelling for PI during the live action and I growled, "naw, it was uncatchable." Wilson was pretty clearly throwing that ball away, and it was a sheer accident that it ended up anywhere near Jimmy. Could he have made a play unencumbered? It would be a 99th percentile degree of difficulty for him, but I dunno, maybe. Am I okay with the refs holding the flag, given how close to uncatchable it was? Yeah. I would have been furious if someone flagged our DBs on a pass that was a good 12ft over the back of the end zone. Reasonable call.