Are the Seattle Seahawks Falling Apart at the Seams?

By Casey Drottar @cdrottar19 on October 23, 2014

Oh what a difference a few months can make.

Just this past February, the Seattle Seahawks put forth one of the most dominating performances in Super Bowl history, beating the ever-loving tar out of the Denver Broncos. Seattle won 43-8, and with the majority of their team intact for the beginning of the 2014 season, they were yet again a popular pick to win it all.

An opening night route of the Green Bay Packers did nothing to dissuade this theory. After making Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers look like a high school walk-on, it was all but set in stone: Seattle’s defense was just as fear-inducing as ever. On top of this, many pundits were placing Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson among the elite signal-callers of the NFL.

Today, things are, to put it loosely, much different.

The Seahawks are coming off a stunning loss to the St. Louis Rams, a team which entered the game with a 1-4 record and a woeful discrepancy in talent when compared to their opponent. The Rams won despite quarterback Austin Davis throwing for a measly 155 yards. They won despite gaining just 102 yards on the ground. Seattle’s heralded defense generated zero turnovers. For the first time since October of 2012, the Seahawks found themselves losers of two straight games.

As if this wasn’t enough, Seattle also found themselves in the headlines for their trade of wideout Percy Harvin. The move was not only notable due to the fact the Seahawks had just signed Harvin to a six-year, $67 million contract in 2013, but also due to the stories coming out about the receiver as he made his way out the door. Reports of physical altercations with teammates and locker room issues sprung up from all over, as it soon appeared as though Seattle felt they couldn’t just possibly move Harvin, they had to.

In the past week, more and more stories continue to pop up painting the Seahawks, once seen as a team effectively built to destroy anyone in their path without breaking a sweat, now as a unit possibly in disarray. The suddenness of this stark change is quite surprising, and it leaves onlookers to wonder if we are witnessing Seattle derail before our very eyes.

A report from Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report has done the Seahawks no favors as they attempt to pick up the pieces from the past week. Freeman details a locker room initially seen around the league as cohesive, but now a place simmering with turmoil. A huge element of Harvin’s removal from the team, Freeman says, was his clashing with Wilson. Not only was Harvin having issues with his quarterback, he apparently was speeding up the process of the Seahawks locker room dividing into pro-Wilson and anti-Wilson camps.

The last statement is equal parts confusing and concerning. Wilson is seen around the league as not only one of the best players in the NFL, but also one of the best all-around people. He’s shown undeniable leadership qualities and talent, as seen by the fact he’s just midway through his third season and he already has a Super Bowl ring. And yet, the team still has a sizable amount of players on the roster who aren’t big fans of him?

Such headlines seem to leave much more questions than they do answers. If one of the primary reasons Harvin was traded was his dislike of Wilson, what happens with the rest of the players who reportedly have issues with Seattle’s quarterback? Are the Seahawks going to discard any and all dissenters of Wilson? Furthermore, just how much debris did Harvin leave behind? Apparently, running back Marshawn Lynch almost refused to board the team bus when hearing the news of the Harvin trade. Freeman claims players told him the locker room was indeed divided in their opinions of Wilson, but is Harvin’s departure enough to fix things? Or will it only rattle the cage of a suddenly fragile looking franchise?

In examining the wave of concerns the Seahawks are now dealing with, I’m not sure which is more troubling, the issues themselves or how quickly they came about.

Just last month, things were status quo with Seattle. No problems, no questionable losses, no stories surfacing of a team laced with disorder. Now, they’re jettisoning locker room poison, divided in support of their quarterback and losing games they should dominate. All in the span of five games, things went from “the Seahawks are definitely going to be back-to-back champions” to “what the heck happened?” They won the Super Bowl just seven months ago. Now they apparently have a problem with the quarterback who got them there.

If Seattle’s issues were only taking place on the football field, this would certainly be treated much differently. The loss to St. Louis could be passed off as typical from a team coming off a championship. The old “Super Bowl hangover,” a necessary shot across the bow to remind players they have targets on their back this year.

As it turns out, though, the struggles on the field are just the tip of the iceberg for the Seahawks. And, honestly, if you would’ve told me to pick a team who would be the subject of these kinds of headlines just a few weeks into the season, Seattle would’ve been my very last guess.

These are stories typical of a franchise mired in constant losing, not one coming off a Super Bowl victory. Teams are typically divided on a quarterback if he’s someone who’s yet to prove his worth, not someone who took his team to the Promised Land in his second year in the NFL.

Locker room chaos has been known to wreck team chemistry and have negative effects with on-field performance, but will it do so in Seattle? At first glance, they certainly don’t seem like a team who would let in-house issues tear them apart. At the same time, though, nobody expected these issues to come up in the first place. Will this past week just be a blip on the screen for the defending champs, or the beginning of a whole mess of problems?

We’ll find out soon enough.

Casey Drottar is a Featured Columnist for www.Rantsports.com. Follow him on Twitter @CDrottar19 or “Like” him on Facebook.