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THE NEW CAPTAINS

How’s this for a jaw-dropping stat: with the acquisition of Zach Miller, all but one of the 11 starters on offense will be a player signed or drafted by Pete Carroll and John Schneider.

If Carroll and Schneider fail to bring this franchise back to the Super Bowl, it won’t be due to any lack of effort on their part. We all remember the free agent free for all last season and how Seattle led the league in transactions with well over 200. The Hawks will be hard pressed to break that mark this year, but the amount of turnover is impressive nonetheless. Most painful for fans has been the departure of fan favorites Matt Hasselbeck and Lofa Tatupu, the latter cut in a move that was not as surprising as first thought given Tatupu’s injury-plagued decline. This is not the team we saw just two years ago. It’s barely the team we saw just two WEEKS ago.

As a result of all of the changes and the release of some of the team’s best known veterans, Seattle is now the second youngest team in the league, and that youth brings both a fresh start and cause for concern. The Seahawks as a whole are talented and have potential, but are also incredibly raw. The projected starting offensive line has only one player—Robert Gallery—who has started more than three games at his current position. Most of the defensive backfield consists of Seattle’s last two draft classes. Nobody could argue that this team needed to jettison some of its older, creakier veterans, but what remains is a team sorely lacking veteran leadership right now. The Seattle Seahawks don’t win last January’s playoff game without a crafty vet in Matt Hasselbeck coolly dissecting the New Orleans Saints defense. Likewise, the Seahawks will miss Lofa Tatupu’s innate talent for quarterbacking the defense. Who steps up and leads this team when seemingly half the roster is under the age of 25?

We have already seen the first of the new leaders emerging. Robert Gallery cannot practice with the team until Thursday but has already worked with several of the younger linemen, helping them to grasp Tom Cable’s system. He will be a big boost for a team lacking direction, but who else will step up? Where are the new captains?

Pete Carroll has made it clear that winning now is his primary focus, and a second straight division championship is well within reach in the still-weak NFC West. But the most important task facing the Seahawks in 2011 is building a nucleus of players that can serve as a foundation for the years ahead. This year’s team is raw steel ready for the forge. They need to struggle, they need to suffer, and they need to grow stronger. And in that process players need to step up and become the new leaders this team needs in order to prosper. Last year’s Seahawks made the playoffs with a hodgepodge of old players and new ones. This year’s Seahawks may not make the playoffs and may not acquit themselves well in the standings. But if they finish the year with three, four, five players that the rest of the team will follow without question, then 2011 will be a successful season.

Tim Ruskell gets criticism for focusing on character and intangibles at the expense of virtually everything else, and rightfully so. The Seattle Seahawks were badly short on talent after his tenure and Carroll and Schneider have done everything in their power so far to fix that mistake. They continue to bring in big, explosive players that can stretch the field, throw the punishing blocks, and make plays. But Ruskell was right about one thing: intangibles do matter and leadership is the intangible that counts most of all. The Seahawks lost two of their best leaders this past week. They need to find new ones. This season is all about doing exactly that.

And if that happens? Then the future looks very bright indeed.