RENTON, Wash. — The odds tell the story of the last 12 months for the Seattle Seahawks.
As they entered the 2022 season, the Seahawks were listed at 170-to-1 odds to win the Super Bowl, via Pro Football Reference.
Only two teams were given less of a chance — the perennially woeful Houston Texans and the Atlanta Falcons, who'd just jettisoned longtime QB Matt Ryan.
Now, as the Seahawks enter the 2023 season, they are 30-1, with only 11 teams ahead of them.
They'd like to have even better odds, of course, but as a representation of how much things have changed in a year, it'll do.
"Everything about it is on the up," Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said during training camp about the feel around the team.
And how many people would have thought that a year ago when the Seahawks, coming off their first losing season in a decade, had traded away the most successful quarterback in franchise history in Russell Wilson (setting up what one NFL analyst called "the most embarrassing, saddest, pathetic quarterback competition of all time" between Geno Smith and Drew Lock) and cut Bobby Wagner (leaving no one from the Super Bowl team on the squad)?
Carroll — as could be expected — insists he did, saying he thought all along the foundation of the organization was strong enough to withstand a little (or a lot of) turbulence.
"It's a lesson for a lot of people [who] watched us that it isn't always so obvious as players leave and you fall apart," Carroll said once last season. "It just didn't happen. We didn't feel like it was going to happen."
Still, while a 9-8 record and a wild-card playoff berth was more than almost anyone expected, it's nowhere near the end goal for a team that proudly practices every day in the shadow of a huge banner in its indoor facility celebrating a Super Bowl title that — while 10 years ago — was orchestrated by the two men who still lead everything, Carroll and general manager John Schneider.
So now the question: Was 2022 truly the beginning of another golden era or a season in which a few unexpected early wins, and the complete collapse of division rival Rams and Cardinals, made things look better than they are?
That answer could be in this question: Can Geno Smith, the Comeback Player of the Year last season after throwing 30 touchdown passes and having stood on the sidelines for seven years, do it again?
While football might be, as Schneider often says, "the ultimate team sport," it is also one in which no player is more important than the quarterback.
There is a reason that the top 15 highest-paid players in the NFL entering this season are quarterbacks, according to OverTheCap.com.
Standing right outside that list is Smith, with an official average per year from OTC of $25 million a season on a new three-year deal signed March 17.
It's a contract in which even the Seahawks seemed to be hedging their bets just a little on whether Smith, who turns 33 in October, is truly the long-term answer.
The deal gave Smith a fully guaranteed $27.3 million, more than the $17 million he had made previously in his career.
But it has no guaranteed money beyond this season.
Instead, Smith is due a $9.6 million roster bonus March 20, 2024, one week after the start of the free agent signing period.
That means Seattle could cut Smith before the free agent period next year without owing him another dollar if things go sideways this season.
The deal is also heavily incentive laden.
Smith can increase the size of his roster bonus for each of the years on the contract by up to $10 million by surpassing his 2022 stats in passing yards (4,282), touchdowns (30), completion percentage (69.8), passer rating (100.9) and wins (nine).
He gets an additional $2 million in possible bonus for each of those stats he betters — hitting all of the incentives is why the deal was initially advertised as worth up to $105 million.
The structure of the deal is why Carroll said at the time that Smith "is gambling a little bit on himself."
To which, Smith said, it's a bet he expects to win.
"I just believe in my ability," he said. "I believe that with the guys around me, with the coaches that we have, I think the future's very bright for us. And so with the contracts and the incentives, it's just a way, obviously, for both parties to make it work."
But if Smith bet on himself in March, so, too, did the Seahawks place their own gamble on Smith the following month.
The Seahawks entered the draft with what they hope is the highest pick they will have in a long time — the fifth overall, which they got thanks to the Wilson deal, a pick no one at the time the trade was made would ever figure would have been that lofty.
Seattle also had its own pick at No. 20.
And if the Seahawks had really wanted, they could have used that draft capital to assure getting one of the consensus top two or three QBs in the draft, as did Carolina, which four days after Seattle re-signed Smith sent first-round picks this year and next year, as well as receiver D.J. Moore, to Chicago to move up from nine to one to take Alabama's Bryce Young.
That Seattle didn't get a quarterback in the draft seemed a sign the Seahawks think that in Smith and the rest of the roster, they have what it takes to be a legitimate Super Bowl contender right now.
If that seems a lofty goal considering the 9-8 record of last season, consider also that Carroll turns 72 on Sept. 15.
True, everything Carroll does belies his age, and his contract runs through 2025. But Carroll also isn't likely to want to start over with a new QB a year from now.
The Seahawks seem to feel they have put the pieces around Smith to allow him to take the team even further.
Seattle got essentially six starters out of its 10-man 2022 draft class, including bookend offensive tackles in Charles Cross (taken at nine overall with one of the Denver picks) and Abraham Lucas, as well as 1,000-yard rusher Kenneth Walker III and cornerback Riq Woolen, the only player on the roster a year ago who turned out to be a bigger surprise than Smith, rising from unknown fifth-round pick to a Pro Bowler.
To that they added 10 picks this year, all of whom made the 53-man roster.
The only one who might be considered a starter on opening day is receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who was taken 20th overall and is expected to be the third receiver alongside DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett.
Cornerback Devon Witherspoon, taken with the fifth overall pick once Seattle decided not to bother with QBs, has been dealing with a sore hamstring in camp and his availability for the start of the season is uncertain.
But that hasn't dampened Carroll's enthusiasm for what the infusion of youth has done for the Seahawks.
"Another draft class [that] is really upbeat, flying around, and making big impressions on the team adds to it," he said.
To put it another way, just 21 players on the 53-man roster as the team began its week of practice to prepare for the opener against the Los Angeles Rams were with the team when Wilson played his final game.
One of those is Wagner, returning after a year in L.A.
But as Wagner recently noted, it might be faulty to try to compare the last two draft classes with the ones that built Seattle's Super Bowl winner following the 2013 season.
"I think everything is different," he said. "... You have different mentalities. Nobody is going to be Kam [Chancellor], nobody is going to be Sherm [Richard Sherman]. For me, that comparison comes so often. If we get some good DBs in here, the first thing they say is 'Legion of Boom 2.0.' That's just something that you can't live up to. You have to make your own mark and do your own thing. That's what I preach. I don't preach comparison. I preach, 'How can you take it further than we did at our age?' "
And where that team famously was one of the youngest ever to win a Super Bowl with an average of 26 years and 5 months — and only one starter older than 30 — this team will be counting heavily on the 33-year-old Wagner and the 30-year-old Lockett, Quandre Diggs and Jarran Reed.
But as much as anybody, they'll be counting on the 32-year-old Smith.
If, for some reason, Smith were to take a step back, Seattle could be left in that worst of NFL states of trying to find another quarterback (that the Seahawks moved aggressively to keep Lock on a deal worth up to $4 million was at least another sign that the team was covering all of its quarterback bases).
Carroll indicated he has no worries after watching the way Smith has performed in camp.
Asked last week if his comfort in knowing what he has now in Smith gives him a better feeling heading into this year than 2022, he said, "Yeah, it does."
"He's been so consistently on it's just obvious," Carroll said. "Last year [at] this time, he could have days like that, and we would think, 'Ah, it's a good day.' But now he's just doing it. [There's] belief from the people around him, but also being sure in himself is high as it's been. He deserves to be thinking that way. That's when you're really at the precipice of really doing great things when you know what you've got is what you need. He's there right now."
Smith agrees.
"I think every part of my game has improved," he said during camp. "Obviously, I've gotten more experienced and developed more. So, just everything. Everything has improved and is going to continue to improve. I take that approach every day, and I look forward to every new situation and every new learning experience. I just want to continue to get better."
For both Smith and the Seahawks, a lot is riding on proving he can do just that
