Studio711.com – Ben Martens

seahawks

Get Your Seahawks Tickets

seahawksticketsI’ve been in the Seattle area for almost 10 years now and I still haven’t been to a Seahawks game. It’s a combination of me being cheap and the tickets being nearly impossible to aquire firsthand. I don’t love buying tickets secondhand, but if I’m ever going to see a game, that’s probably what I’ll have to do.

How hard is it to get a ticket straight from the Seahawks? An article in the Seattle Times mentioned that there will be a total of 5800 single game tickets available for sale in the coming months. I’ve tried to snag those before and it’s nearly impossible. They sell out in minutes. Do you want season tickets? I hope you’re ready to wait. There are 70,000 people in line for the 61,500 season tickets and 99.6% of last year’s season ticket holders renewed.

benmartens March 17, 2016 Sports

Goodbye Lynch

lynchretirementMarhsawn Lynch has been a staple of the Seahawks since arriving in 2010. I loved his style of running. He’d smash you in the mouth, plow you over, and leave you behind unless you brought two or three other buddies along with you. And sometimes even that didn’t stop him. His “Beast Quake” run is a great example of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPcfkxmhS_A

But now it looks like Lynch’s run (hardy har har) in Seattle might be coming to an end. He’s 30 years old and he already talked about retirement last year. I think that given his popularity, Seattle will happily give him the option to retire. Otherwise he’ll get traded away or just cut and the Sehawks will have about $6.5 million worth of extra room in their salary cap. That could go a long way toward beefing up the pourous offensive line. They could even ask for $5 million in signing bonus back from Lynch if he retires, but I bet they won’t.

Why the sudden change? When Lynch got hurt this year, Thomas Rawls came on board and stunned us. He looked like a younger, fresher Lynch. People went from worrying about Lynch being out for so many games to not caring if he came back.

And when Lynch finally was ready to come back, he didn’t win many friends with his apparent bad attitude. Everyone said he was ready to play. He had three full practices. Then on Friday afternoon he decided he ruled himself out and didn’t even travel with the team. Huh? Not only was it a late surprise, but because he practiced all week, the backups didn’t have as many reps with the offense. When Lynch returned in the game against the Panthers, he didn’t do much of anything and spent quite a bit of time on the sidelines.

It’s like he flipped a switch this season from “nothing can stop me” to a petulant child. And since he has this ridiculous thing where he doesn’t talk to the media, we’ll probably never know the truth.

Back channel rumors have it that he doesn’t have much respect for Carrol in practice and you know how much Pete puts up with stuff like that.

I’ll be shocked if Lynch is wearing a Seahawks jersey next year. And unless I actually hear his side of the story and it’s convincing, then I’m not sure I care. I appreciate all he did in Seattle, but his attitude seems pathetic.

benmartens January 26, 2016 Sports

Jimmy Graham

jimmy_graham_seahawksThe Seahawks made a big trade to get Jimmy Graham as a TE. They gave up Max Unger to do it which is a pretty big price, but hopefully it’s worth it. I won’t get into the discussion about whether or not this was a good idea (I’m unqualified), but here’s one interesting point: last year Graham had 85 catches for 889 yards and 10 TDs. That would BY FAR make him the most prolific receiver on the Seahawks. The Seahawks only had 20 TD passes total the whole season!

Obviously he isn’t going to magically come into this offense and put up those numbers. He got those numbers catching balls from a future Hall of Fame QB, Drew Brees, in a pass happy offense, but it will be fun to see how this changes the Seahawks offense. Willson, Helfet and Moeaki are going to see a lot less playing time now and I doubt whether the Seahawks will keep all those tight ends around.

benmartens March 11, 2015 Sports

Sucked Out On The River

kearsegamewinningIn poker, there is a term called “sucking out on the river.” It means that a player who has almost no chance gets super lucky on the very last card played and comes back to win. Usually that player jumps up in surprise, screams in victory, and then sheepishly turns to the opponent and says “… sorry.” You know you got away with something you didn’t deserve.

That’s what the Seahawks did yesterday against the Packers. Neither side played great, but Seattle was the worse of the two for the first 55 minutes. They had FIVE turnovers and their offense was pathetic. With just under 5 minutes left in the game, they were down by 12 and the only points they scored were from a fake field goal by their special teams. The Seahawks then rattled off some combination of very lucky and very skilled plays that will be remembered for a long time by fans on both sides.

I, and other fans in the house, had come to grips that the Seahawks were going to lose. It stunk but ok, whatever, it’s just sportsball. The painful part was watching them go out in such a horrible way. This wasn’t the team that had gotten to this point in the season. They were down to their last card and they sucked out on the river.

So congratulations Seahawks. Sorry Packer fans. This game was a hot mess all around, but for most of the game, Green Bay was less of a mess. At least there were no bad calls that decided the game this time.

The Seahawks head to Phoenix to face the Patriots. If the Seahawks didn’t get this all out of their system, they are going to get annihilated. They better spend these two weeks taking a hard look at what went wrong and figure out plans both to stop Tom Brady and also to wring some points out of their meh offense.

bostick

benmartens January 19, 2015 Sports