Seattle needs a quarterback

Lets start this blog with the most obvious statement I have ever typed…the Seahawks need a new quarterback if they are going to ever be a Super Bowl contender. Tarvaris Jackson served as this year’s stop-gap between an aging and increasingly fragile Matt Hasselback and the young untested quarterback the Seahawks will pick in this upcoming NFL Draft. At least that’s what we’ve been led to believe.

The fact that Jackson was a stop-gap is hardly a question. General Manager John Schneider signed Jackson for a fraction of what Hasselback was asking. And the length of the deal is only two years. So what’s the risk?…they asked themselves. They have a 4 year veteran with a moderate career QB rating of 79.1 and they aren’t committing a lot of dough in the process.

What I think is more in debate is where that next quarterback of the future is going to come from. Given that Seattle is so good that they won’t pick any higher than 11th in the coming allocation of college talent all the best quarterbacks that you could possibly bank on may be off the board. Yes, I know Tom Brady was a 7th round draft pick. But I’m talking about someone you can plan to be good nearly from the start. Everyone knows Brady is the exception to the norm.

The 15-1 Green Bay Packers didn’t play this year’s MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers in their last game against the 10-6 playoff bound Detroit Lions. You may have missed this because Green Bay scored 48 points against the Lion’s formidable defense. And Green Bay’s quarterback threw for six touchdowns and 480 yards; both Packer records. And …to repeat…it wasn’t Aaron Rodgers.

Packer's back up QB Matt Flynn

Talk of Matt Flynn as a quality quarterback existed long before his record day against the Detroit Lions. Someone is going to make this 26-year old a very rich man.  And it’s not as if Flynn has no history of success behind him.

Flynn won a National Title at LSU

His relative anonymity comes from four years in the NFL as Rodgers backup and only one year as a starter at Louisiana State University where he backed up eventual Number 1 NFL Draft pick JaMarcus Russell. So…what did he do in his one year as a starter at LSU? He led the Bayou Bengals to a National Title, beating Ohio State in the BCS National Title game.

Here is the best news about acquiring Flynn to be next year’s quarterback…he is an unrestricted free agent. So Seattle wouldn’t need to trade anything for him and they wouldn’t need to spend a relatively high draft pick. The only thing that could stand in the way of this free exercise of football capitalism is if the Green Bay Packers tag Flynn with the franchise tag. Doing so would require them to promise a contract to their backup quarterback of $14-million dollars, making trading him very difficult.

Mike Holmgren

Plus I like the history. Hasselback was a Green Bay backup to Brett Favre when Mike Holmgren plucked him out of obscurity and turned him into a Pro Bowl quarterback who led Seattle to our only Super Bowl appearance. And they’re both named Matt. And acquiring someone else’s backup as your starter is at least as successful as drafting a quarterback in the first round. Houston’s Matt Schaab, former Husky Mark Brunnel, the aforementioned Favre, Kansas City’s Matt Castel, and Arizona’s Kevin Kolb have all been successful as starters after having apprenticed as an NFL backup to a Pro Bowler. Flynn could be the next guy; the next Matt to be a star quarterback in the NFL.

So scuttle plans to scour over all those useless college statistics for quarterbacks you aren’t going to get anyway. Schneider and Pete Carroll need to fork over the bucks necessary to bring the latest Green Bay Matt to the Puget Sound.

Thanks for visiting. Comments are welcome.

Related articles

• NFL Draft 2012: Teams That Must Upgrade at the Quarterback Position (bleacherreport.com)
• 2012 NFL Draft Order: Matt Flynn’s Destination Will Shape Entire Draft (bleacherreport.com)
• Forget Tebow Time, It’s Matt Flynn Time! (thepenaltyflagblog.com)
• You: 2012 NFL Mock Draft: How Matt Flynn Affects Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III (bleacherreport.com)
• NFL: Is Matt Flynn the Next Hot Backup Quarterback To Get a Big Pay Day? (bleacherreport.com)

January 3, 2012
Categories: Sports, Washington State . Tags: 2012 season, Aaron Rodgers, Detroit Lions, free agency, Green Bay Packers, JaMarcus Russell, Matt Flynn, Matt Hasselback, NFL, NFL Draft, Pete Carroll, quarterback, Seahawks, Seattle, Tarvaris Jackson, Tom Brady . Author: Michael Schuett . Comments: 3 Comments