Part 6: The Fellows of Delicacy and No Delicacy

October 31, 2022 – Heathrow Airport, London, UK

At least it was going to be a pleasant plane ride home, and he was able to get Mother those duty-free chocolates she loved so much.

That was what Nathaniel Hackett was thinking as he settled into his Business Class seat on United Flight 263. The victory over Jacksonville momentarily took his mind off what had been an ignominious start to his tenure in Denver.

It was hard to know where things had gone wrong. After all the crow he had eaten for letting the Seahawks game come down to a Mile High attempt at sea level, there had been a swift recovery as evidenced by their wins over Houston and San Francisco. Sure, some people say those wins might be tainted, what with scoring only one touchdown in each game against teams with questionable starting quarterbacks. But they were wins!

Less ameliorating were the next four losses. It’s hard to know which of them stung the most. The loss to the Raiders probably brought the most grief, because they were a division rival whom the Broncos gifted their first win of the season. Also, it came at the expense of two starters who ended up lost for the season. 

The OT losses to the Colts and Chargers stung because there had been chances to win both games. I mean, they had forced the Colts to punt seven times and still only mustered three field goals. Leave it to McManus to do him dirty again, albeit not at the end of the game like last time. But, Nate Hackett thought, at least they were getting their money’s worth out of Corliss Waitman. For a Belgian kid that liked mayonnaise on his fries, it seemed like he was getting paid per punt – 12 in the last two games; 10 alone versus the Niners, with an AFC Special Teams Player of the Week award; and 45 total after eight games.

And the Jets? Well, they were proving to the rest of the league that they might no longer be the bottom-feeders of the AFC East. However, that didn’t make the loss any easier to take. Another measly nine points; but he couldn’t blame that on Russell, because – thanks to a hamstring injury he’d acquired during the Chargers game – he was forced to start Brett Rypien.

It brought to Coach Hackett’s mind the old George Brett quote that “if a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out.” Well, he was getting tired of staying at ol’ granny’s, and she was gettin’ ideas.

He’d started hearing the whispers about his lack of success, but there was nothing he could do about that. If people were looking for patterns – well, they were likely going to find them. The number 16 sure did appear more often than seemed random, and that was a bit concerning. He’d lived in Green Bay, so he knew what that number meant to people like Mark Chmura and his lawyer. What was more troubling were the number of times it showed up in the box score – scoring 16 points in losses to Seattle & the Chargers; scoring 16 in a win against the Texans, and having 16 scored on them in a loss to the Jets. Even the loss to the Raiders had a connection, if you accept the 32 points scored against them was 16 times 2. On the surface, it wasn’t anything; yet on the call-in shows, it was everything.

But they’d beaten the Jaguars, and that was more than a moral victory – it was an actual victory. One that put him closer to .500 and righting the ship. Sure, three punts & a pick weren’t the best way to start the game, but they’d tightened things up by the end – something that was hopefully a sign for the rest of the season.

All week long, people had been going on about Cause and Effect. He was in his first year, and knew not to listen to the rumors. After all, he had a four-year contract that – even if he was fired – guaranteed him $80000 per week for the entire four-year term, regardless of whether he signed somewhere else.

He figured that the Law of Averages would buy him three years, so that even if the Broncos canned him in Year Four, they wouldn’t risk being on the hook for more than one season of free money. And if you were a TNG fan, you knew that “Cause and Effect” turned out okay in the end. Going 3 & 5 in his first season wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. After all, Matt Rhule had been gotten by the Panthers on October 10th. So even if the worst case scenario came to pass, he’d at least made it two months.

But that wasn’t going to be the case. He had a good feeling about this.

Vierzehnter November 2022 – München, Deutschland

If you had asked Pete Carroll the day before the season started, he wouldn’t have admitted it but he likely would have been thinking he’d be flying home from Munich without a job. At least the history tours would have been worth it – learning about the Allied bombing of Munich made Pete realize that steel beams can, in fact, melt. It was a shame he couldn’t visit Nürnberg, but all it had was a disused stadium Nick Saban would probably brag that he could fill.

But the completed renovations of the city fellow edible enthusiast Rick Steves wrote about in his guidebook made him understand the bigger picture of how you can rebuild while both honoring the heritage of what you have built and castigating the architect of that glory.

It was that understanding which gave him hope for what he’d accomplished so far this season in Seattle. He’d guided the team to a surprising 6-4 record. The press had stopped asking about his possible dismissal, and the online yokels were now turning their attention to the possibility of a playoff spot – something that meant Pete could work his split shift at Starbucks without facing the usual animosity from guys like “Gryffyn in Mountlake Terrace”.

But he had to give full credit to John Schneider for the smartest PR move of the weekend. There was no better way to show both the NFL and the media that the Seahawks were over Russell Wilson than by making Marshawn Lynch tearing up Munich the video highlight of the first NFL regular season game ever played in Germany.

Dating back to Super Bowl XLIX, the controversy over the Red Zone choices made that day have haunted the franchise.

There had always been an issue with the personalities on the team – Russell Wilson was the business side, and Marshawn Lynch was the entertainment side. Russell was what management wanted the team to be & be seen as, but Marshawn and the LoB were who the team were & who the fans identified with. As time had gone on, and the Super Bowl seasons faded into the distance, the fans appeared to have settled on wanting the team to be fun, if not successful.

If you’d put a gun to his head, he never would have predicted that Geno Smith would be the catalyst for getting this team to this point. Aside from a few “oopsies” in the early part of the season, Geno seemed to have settled into the starter’s role, keeping Drew Lock safely on the bench. He didn’t have Russell’s arm, but he did have better scrambling ability – a fact which seemed to cut down on the panicked throws that had upped Russell’s interception ratio over the last few years. Better yet, he seemed to be enjoying himself – no doubt a byproduct of being given a chance versus being stared at by people who were waiting for him to fail. None of the angst Russell had brought to work was apparent.

His confidence seemed to be contagious, and was working down through the rest of the offence. DK Metcalf seemed to be having the time of his life, and wasn’t complaining anymore about “Ciara’s bitch” not throwing him the ball. And Tyler Lockett? Aside from making fantasy owners mad with his constant sliding to avoid contact, he was on-pace for another 1000-yard season. Sure – there was a pretty steady drop-off after that, but that’s only because of how well Geno was spreading the ball around. Everybody was getting a chance, and whatever drops there were seemed to be the fault of either both parties or neither.

The running game had gone from strength to strength too. Losing Rashaad Penny (again) threw a wrench into the plans, but drafting Kenneth Walker THE THIRD turned out to be a stroke of genius. He was dynamic, and had tools the Seahawks hadn’t had in the backfield since they’d decided to throw on second-and-goal from the one.

There was still lots of work to be done – the run defence was atrocious; kickoffs were an ongoing concern; and there was the matter of the reality of how good the Niners were despite their current record. Sure, they had had to go back to Jimmy Garappolo after the Trey Lance injury, but the Panthers’ fire sale after they canned Matt Rhule allowed the Niners to pick up Christian-Fucking-McCaffrey at a bargain price. The two-game lead the Seahawks had at their bye Pete Carroll knew was really an illusion: they had to play each other again, and Seattle still had Kansas City on their docket. If this rebuild they were on didn’t come to fruition by then, Pete knew it was likely inevitable that his team would be looking up at them sooner rather than later.

But for right now, he was going to enjoy the moment. He had earned it. As he settled into the charter’s sleeper seat, he put on a relaxing movie to help lull him into unconsciousness.

As he nodded off, he seemed concerned that Baron Zemo was in a World War One movie, but he figured that time travel was just part of the story. He just hoped he didn’t fall asleep before Thanos showed up.