What if we had resigned Matt Hasselbeck?

[Sarlacc83]

Hasselbeck wouldn't have survived the Pittsburgh game. And you can't talk about how TJ held the ball too long without mentioning that Hasselbeck would throw it up for grabs during those situations. So it's just as likely Hass would have lost a few games that TJack did win simply by virtue of the fact that TJ did what he could to avoid turnovers.

 

[Missing_Clink]

At the beginning of the year in that season, the O line was as bad as any I have ever seen in the NFL. Hass would have ended up on IR by week 3. I think he wouldn't have done any better than T Jack, and likely would have done worse. He was well past his prime in that point and needed a very good O Line to protect him, which we did not have.

 

[Snohomie]

I'm almost certain Matt would've ended up on IR that season.

More than that, I doubt we would have had the defense or running game that we had with TJack. Matt's inability to get the ball downfield would have limited the run game by putting safeties in the box, and he wouldn't have been able to make them pay (especially because we probably wouldn't have gotten Rice with Matt as our QB). That'd hurt the defense, but so would Matt's tendency to try to save the game by throwing interceptions (yeah, that sounds stupid, but that was the defense people gave Matt in 2010). I really don't think we'd have developed our ground game with Matt - certainly not in our current scheme.

 

[DavidSeven]

If Hasselbeck survived the OL, he would have made a difference in the Browns game and possibly made the Bengals game more competitive (with a chance of winning that game).

A healthy T-Jack would have done exactly the same, though.

 

[Kixkahn]

So you all know Hass turns 38 tomorrow. He shares birthdays minus one year with mr kixkahn.

 

[volsunghawk]

If Hasselbeck survived the OL, he would have made a difference in the Browns game and possibly made the Bengals game more competitive (with a chance of winning that game). He may have helped them win the xmas eve game against the 9ers that TJack fumbled away late. Cardinals final game?

Definitely would have kept them from signing Flynn but they weren't resigning Whitehurst, so who would they have brought in before the draft? They probably would still draft Wilson, given the chance. If it was Matt vs Wilson in a 2-way competition and Wilson won, the local media and fans would have been more divided than they were with Flynn and Wilson. Softy, Hawkblogger, KJR and all the local beat guys would have whipped the fans into a frenzy.

Things worked out well for all involved. Moving on from Matt was always going to be a tough one but he got a chance to continue as a starter for awhile and now is backing up a pretty good young QB. It may have been harder for him to accept being the backup for the team he had been a starter of for 10 years.

Excellent points. I am SO glad that we had an "interim" year between Hasselbeck and whoever the franchise QB of the future was going to be. The calls for an unproven commodity like Flynn were ridiculous 4 weeks into last season. Can you imagine what it would have been like with Wilson struggling while Hasselbeck was holding the clipboard? Unbearable.

T-Jack not only provided a tough fill-in at the QB position in a clearly transitional year, but he also served as a buffer between the past and the shiny, new future. I think we needed that kind of stopgap guy to take the heat off of the future starter.

 

[Happy]

If Matt had started behind that 2011 offensive line I'm not sure he would be playing football today. A younger much more athletic t-jack took a heck of beating in the first half of the season, and he was at least a threat to throw the ball deep. Defenses did not respect matt's arm and they could cheat up at will and compress the area of play so it would have been even worse.

Matt's days as a starter were clearly coming to an end. That meant going to another team. The Seahawks were right to just get it over with and move on.

As tech worlds stated and as Tim Ruskell demonstrated, better to say goodbye a year early than a year late.

Things worked out about as well as they could have. Only unfinished business is for Matt to retire as a Seahawk.

 

[C-Dub]

Hasselbeck might not have even made it to week 2 with the Oline. TJack took a beating and barely made it out. I've got a lot of respect for TJack.

 

[MontanaHawk05]

The O-line would look completely different right now had Hass been resigned. The one we have was selected with a mobile QB in mind who could handle some of his own pass protection, so that Pete could concentrate on finding run-blockers in his linemen. Had he run with Hass, Pete would probably have been smart enough to obtain an OL with the premium on pass protection. He also wouldn't have gone with marginal route-runners like Golden Tate had he been envisioning Hasselbeck at the helm beyond 2010.

I agree with Snohomie, though, that it wouldn't have mattered. Hass's declined arm strength would have curtailed the entire offense, run game included.