Do the Seahawks want to win, or not?

Upon hearing that Tarvaris Jackson is going to get the first reps in training camp, the last thing I want to hear is that the coaching staff derived this decision by what is “fair” and “unfair” to him. The Seattle Seahawks and their fans know what they have in T-Jack; they have six years of statistical and won/loss data to contemplate what that is. I know T-Jack has developed “sympathy” and “cache” with his teammates by playing hurt, but then again Brett Favre started 297 straight games with a laundry list of far more debilitating injuries, setting records in virtually every career category including victories--and at least he does have one Super Bowl win, a game in which he legitimately should have been the MVP. The question for T-Jack’s teammates shouldn’t be “camaraderie” or what is “fair,” but if they want to win or not. Everyone knows T-Jack’s limitations, Darrell Bevell above all else. Shouldn't it be telling that Arizona’s John Skelton had five game-winning drives last year, and T-Jack had none? Wasn't his failing the difference from the Seahawks being a playoff team or not?

What about Matt Flynn? In two starts, he came within a timeout of having two game-winning drives against two playoff teams on his résumé. Isn’t this something that his new teammates, let alone the coaching staff, would take into consideration—especially coming from a “system” that produced 80,000 yards passing and nearly 600 TD passes in the past 20 years? What is not to like about that? It isn’t like T-Jack has been on the team for years; the Vikings did, and they had so much faith in him that after giving him one last chance in 2010 after Favre was knocked-out, he was replaced by the third-string rookie the rest of the year. So, are we seeing a repeat of what occurred in Green Bay, when the GM (Ron Wolfe) and coach (Mike Holmgren) were not on the same page initially about acquiring the services of a certain quarterback whose résumé consisted of four pass attempts, no completions and two interceptions? Holmgren treated Don Majkowski with the same deference that Pete Carroll is showing T-Jack, but when his hand was forced after Majkowski's injury in that fateful game against Cincinnati, there was no turning back the clock.

I have no doubt that John Schneider believes that Flynn has the potential to be a difference maker, but the question is does he have the force of character to oversee the direction of the team in the way Wolfe did in Green Bay? We can even say that is true about Ted Thompson, in the way he forced out Favre in favor of Aaron Rodgers, who didn’t exactly have much of a résumé himself after three years, and who “led” a team on the cusp of a Super Bowl to a 6-10 record his first season as a starter. Will it take more than empirical observation to convince Carroll as well?

With Russell Wilson complicating matters by attracting a legion of partisans, based on what at this point can only be called wishful thinking, should we question whether Carroll and Bevell will put away “politics” and give Flynn the best opportunity to succeed?