Nothing symbolizes the breakup of the Seahawks, Super Bowl champs just five years ago, better than the detonation of the Legion of Boom. They really are going out with a boom, not a whimper. The three players who formed the core could be gone by opening day two months from now.
The nature of the NFL in this era is what did them in more than anything, though. Between the unavoidable physical toll football takes on players, and the inevitable economic clash between teams and players, it’s a minor modern-day miracle that the Legion stayed together as long as it did.
Put another way: The Fearsome Foursome (eight years in the 1960s) and the Steel Curtain (nine years in the ‘70s) ain’t walkin’ through that door.
Keeping iconic units like that around were rare even then, before free agency, the salary cap and the rest of the NFL’s current financial structure ever was put in place. Now, when a group like this stays around long enough to earn a memorable nickname, it deserves notice.
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Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas had played together in the Seahawks’ secondary since 2011. For three of those years, through the Super Bowl rout of Peyton Manning and the Broncos after the 2013 season, Brandon Browner had joined them; since his free-agent departure after that title, the other three stayed, flourished, incited fierce love and hatred, made good coin, and forged a unique identity.
It’s the kind of identity and longevity that’s too hard to maintain for long periods of time today … and the clock has been ticking for a few years now. It’s about run out.
Sherman is already gone to the 49ers in free agency. Chancellor all but announced his retirement last week because of his lingering neck injury. Thomas is apparently just a phone call away from being traded before the season starts. (That stubborn Cowboys speculation refuses to die down.)
It’s been commonplace for years now that championship teams don’t stay complete long. The Eagles won it all last year, and their defensive line and receiver units will be different in 2018. The Patriots could not keep Danny Amendola after losing in the Super Bowl last year, and after they won it the year before, they found no use for LeGarrette Blount.
The rosters of the Ravens and 49ers, the Super Bowl 47 teams the year before the Seahawks and Broncos made it, started coming apart almost immediately. There are still hard feelings in Baltimore after Anquan Boldin was essentially given away to the 49ers after that win. The implosion of the 49ers roster starting the year after losing to Seattle in the 2013 NFC championship game is still breathtaking in its speed and totality.
That only serves to highlight how nearly an entire unit can stay together for seven years. But their days had been numbered since 2015, when Chancellor held out for the first two regular-season games looking to renegotiate his contract. A bit part of his premise was that, despite having an extension already in hand, he had played through injury a lot already and sensed he wasn’t going to have many paydays left.
As it turned out, he was right: Chancellor was 27 the season he held out, and after he returned, he missed 14 games over the ensuing three seasons with injuries. He finally got his extension, before last season; now, at 30, he appears to have played his last game.
Sherman got squeezed at both ends, between his torn Achilles at midseason last year, and the Seahawks’ cap, which had them moving bodies the last two seasons, including Michael Bennett this offseason. They had been hinting for two years about getting out from under his scheduled $13 million salary for 2018. This was their chance.
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Now it’s just Thomas, who arrived along with Chancellor in 2010 as the original pieces. It will not be a total shock if the season begins with Thomas in a Seahawks uniform, but pretty close. Again? Money. A mild injury concern, although he clearly was fully recovered from his 2016 broken leg. And he just turned 29 in May.
But Thomas is entering his contract year. He may or may not hold out of training camp at the end of this month. He also may or may not be in some other training camp besides that of Seattle.
In a way, though, that will hardly matter. The Legion is already broken up. The NFL tears everything and everybody down sooner or later, so why wouldn’t this group be any different?
