Sidney Rice

When you lose a player like Percy Harvin for basically the whole season, it hurts. It doesn't hurt Seattle nearly as much as it did Minnesota last year — the Seahawks, after all, nearly made the NFC title game without him — but that's a big talent sidelined.

By RALPH VACCHIANO

No one has ever won an NFL championship in the spring and summer, and no one has ever lost one either. That’s not for lack of trying, of course.

Just ask the “Dream Team” in Philadelphia, or any of the up-and-comers pumping up their chests and thinking about a Super Bowl run. There are probably 32 teams thinking that way at the moment, even though a few of them are clearly braced for a fall.

Pete Carroll did the Seahawks shuffle when he took over as coach, engineering 284 roster moves in his first 12 months. During this dizzying transformation, he lost his players in a big way at midseason (dropping six of eight games), got them back in a bigger way at season’s end (rescuing the postseason) and turned them strangely historical — coming up with the NFL’s first losing team (7–9) to collect a division title and win a playoff game (41–36 over New Orleans).