First full day of NFL 2006

All Pro Sports Football Series Four DVD Box Set
Originally uploaded by brucesingman.

The multi-award winning "All Pro Sports Football Series"

the most innovative football ... see http://www.allprosportsfootball.com ... , basketball and automobile racing series ever produced for home entertainment featuring: eleven of the greatest NFL football players and the most successful coach in NFL history; five of the greatest NBA basketball players and one of the most successful coaches in NBA history; and six internationally recognized automobile racing champions ... . sharing their life stories and demonstrating their skills in a very entertaining setting of upbeat music, three dimensional digital graphics and action footage

Sunday, September 10, 2006 - 12:00 AM
Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use, must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale@seattletimes.com with your request.

JOHN FROSCHAUER / AP
Star quarterbacks Peyton Manning, Jake Plummer, Matt Hasselbeck (pictured) and Tom Brady of the New England Patriots each have led their teams to playoff berths in each of the past three seasons.


WESLEY HITT / GETTY IMAGES
Peyton Manning


DAVID ZALUBOWSKI / AP
Jake Plummer



Danny O'Neil
Hawks trying to dodge NFL's great equalizer


This is the morning when the NFL gushes with the hope of a kid on Christmas.
The first full day of games begins when the season is still a blank check, equal parts potential and possibility. The Texans are even with the Cowboys at least for a day, the 49ers are eye-to-eye with Seattle and a franchise like Arizona can awaken to not only optimism, but expectations.
This is the trump card in the NFL's appeal. Everyone has a chance. Twenty-six of the league's 32 teams have made the playoffs at least once in the previous four seasons, and people in every part of this country wake up this morning to the notion that maybe, just maybe, this is their year.
Except it's different in Seattle this season. Being a contender isn't so much a possibility as it is an expectation. The Seahawks went to the Super Bowl last season, and everything has changed, from the sale of 61,000 season tickets to the criteria for judging a season. That's dangerous in a league where the only thing tougher than finding success is sustaining it.
This is the underside to the NFL's parity. For every unexpected success, there's an unforeseen disaster. For every team that pole vaults from worst to first, there's a team that started the season with champagne dreams only to end up lying facedown in the gutter.
The NFL's pecking order is like a teeter-totter. One team's rise coincides with another's fall. Chicago went from 5-11 in 2004 to 11-5 last season while Philadelphia went from 13-3 to 6-10. The Rams lost 12 games in 1998 and won the Super Bowl the next season, while the Falcons played in the Super Bowl in '98 and lost 11 games the following season.
In 2003, four of the 12 teams to make the playoffs the year before returned to the postseason. In 2004, the number was seven and last season it was five. That means more than half of the teams that made the playoffs weren't back the next season.
The Seahawks are one of only four teams to make the playoffs the past three seasons. Are they already living on borrowed time?
"There's no reason to think that you have to fall off the cliff," Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said. "You can kind of be competitive and be a playoff-caliber team for a while."
His explanation starts in a predictable place: quarterback. Continuity at that position is non-negotiable if you're talking about consistent contention.
Four teams have made the playoffs the past three seasons: Denver, Indianapolis, Seattle and New England. All four had the same starting quarterback each of those three seasons.
Finding the quarterback is only half the equation. Keeping him is the other, and it is made more difficult by a salary cap that forces a team to make tough decisions as to who is essential to a team's success, and who is a luxury. Used to be all it took to keep a championship contender was an open checkbook. Now, a team must make belt-tightening decisions.
Seattle got its first taste of that this summer when the Seahawks made a calculated risk with guard Steve Hutchinson in free agency. It backfired when the Vikings made the offer the Seahawks hadn't been willing to make. Hutchinson was embittered enough that he didn't care Minnesota's offer was engineered so Seattle wouldn't match it. He won't be the last player to leave this team for financial reasons.
The result is the NFL no longer has to stack the schedule against the league's better teams. It's the salary cap that keeps the league from becoming lopsided, and it's the great equalizer in a league built on the premise that every team has a chance when the season starts.
"That's the great thing about the NFL," Detroit quarterback Jon Kitna said.
It's certainly great for the Lions, who have lost 10 or more games each of the past five seasons, but now have a blank slate. Seattle, on the other hand, waited 30 years to be great, and is now swimming against the current in a league that has promoted parity.
Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company


the most innovative football ... see http://www.allprosportsfootball.com ... , basketball and automobile racing series ever produced for home entertainment featuring: eleven of the greatest NFL football players and the most successful coach in NFL history; five of the greatest NBA basketball players and one of the most successful coaches in NBA history; and six internationally recognized automobile racing champions ... . sharing their life stories and demonstrating their skills in a very entertaining setting of upbeat music, three dimensional digital graphics and action footage