What's going on with the Seahawks?

Last week, Tim Ruskell, the GM of the Seahawks, resigned. I follow the Seahawks pretty closely, and there was no indication that Ruskell's job was in jeopardy, apart from the fact that former Mike Holmgren was interviewing for GM jobs, and Seattle didn't have an opening. So Paul Allen fired Tim Ruskell so that he could hire Mike Holmgren, right?

Don't be so quick to draw this obvious conclusion, say Seahawks experts Art Thiel and Eric Williams. As evidence they site the statements made by Seahawks CEO Tim Leiweke (yeah, I never heard of him either) in a press conference the day after Ruskell's resignation. From Williams' blog:

These words spoken by Seahawks CEO Tim Leiweke on Thursday stood out the most during the half-hour long affair.

“We’re not going to join them, they’re going to join us,” he said, when asked the GM search. “I think that one of the difficult things is, when you audit what’s happened over the past number of seasons, we’ve really become, in many ways, a pretty good organization.

[...]

That statement, along with the fact that the team retained Ruston Webster as the interim general manager and the rest of the scouting department, seems to suggest that the organization believes minor tweaking and not a major overall is needed.

Right. The organization believes "minor tweaking" is needed. Solution: fire the GM in the middle of the season.

This is bullshit. The message from the press conference was "We don't need to make any major changes, we love Jim Mora, and we're not just gonna do anything to get Mike Holmgren to run the team, who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?" It's just a coincidence that Ruskell exited two weeks after Mike Holmgren started interviewing with other teams.

Why does Williams write "the organization" when he means "Paul Allen?" I've read that Paul Allen is undergoing cancer treatment, and that he probably doesn't have time for trifling matter such as who runs his NFL team. Also bullshit. "Let's fire Ruskell while Paul is having cancer treatment -- I'm sure he doesn't care. And he probably doesn't have any time to think about it while he's waiting for his radiation therapy."

I understand that most NFL coach/GM types are either "offense guys" or "defense guys." Holmgren is an offense guy. Ruskell is a defense guy, and so is Jim Mora, who he hired and made heir-apparent before Holmgren had even left. Ruskell took over the team the year they went to the Super Bowl. Imagine you are Paul Allen: how happy are you with the direction of the team since then? Do you miss the once-explosive Seahawks offense at all? (By the way: have you noticed the Seahawks defense sucks, too?)

I presume it isn't a done-deal, there is the small matter of "money," but I'll be shocked if Holmgren isn't the Seahawks GM by the beginning of 2010. (And, oh yeah, Jim Mora is toast, either this off-season, or the next.)