Seahawks' Tim Ruskell couldn't live up to Paul Allen's exacting standards

RENTON — With Tim Ruskell sitting at the same table Thursday morning, Seahawks CEO Tod Leiweke bluntly and honestly explained why Ruskell, the team's president and general manager, was leaving.

"Quite simply, we didn't win enough games," said Leiweke, who went on to say that Seahawks owner Paul Allen has "exacting standards."

Losing isn't an option in Paul Allen's world, and for Seahawks fans, that is the best news that came from Ruskell's resignation announcement.

Allen expects to win. He has established something in Seattle. He isn't about to allow this franchise to return to the dreaded malaise that buried it during Ken Behring's ownership.

Allen, with the help of Leiweke and, yes, former GM and coach Mike Holmgren and scores of players and front-office people, took a foundering franchise — a franchise that was dangerously close to leaving town, a franchise that had lost its hold on Seattle — and slowly, patiently reconstructed it.

The Seahawks built a beautiful stadium that seemed to have its own magic. They reawakened the 12th Man and created a tradition and a belief that no group of fans in any other city could influence the outcome of games the way Seahawks fans could.

They made winning habitual early in this decade. They made the NFC West their turf. They made the postseason part of their season. They reached one Super Bowl and seemed to always give Seattle the hope for another trip there. They changed the mindset in this town.

But, after their first season's success under Ruskell in 2005, the Seahawks slipped. They've lost 19 of their last 27 games, the worst 27-game span since that messy stretch from 1991 to 1993.

We can list all of Ruskell's draft mistakes and free-agent blunders, but the philosophy that mattered most, the belief that sealed his no-deal, was his idea that announcing Holmgren's heir apparent, the season before Holmgren was gone, would lead to a seamless transition.

"I thought we could hit the ground running," Ruskell said of anointing defensive-backs coach Mora.

So, the Seahawks hit the ground running — for no gain.

They changed the offensive and defensive schemes. They changed their approaches to practice. They changed the culture of the team. And it didn't work.

In the spring and into the summer, they promised us that 2008's injury-decimated 4-12 season was an aberration. They promised a quick return to the prominence that many 12th men began believing was their birthright.

Those promises were broken.

This season, the 4-7 Seahawks have been woefully uncompetitive against the league's elite teams — Indianapolis, Minnesota, Arizona, Dallas.

By midseason, in an interview with Seahawks.com, Ruskell admitted that the change couldn't be seamless. And again Thursday he said that, with all of the changes that have been made, the transition "could not be done in one year."

Ruskell was in trouble the moment he wasn't offered a contract extension after last season, but it was that bumpy transition this year that was the last straw for Paul Allen.

"It [winning] didn't happen quickly enough," Ruskell admitted.

Ruskell had to go.

He didn't have a contingency plan for left tackle Walter Jones' bum knee. It was unrealistic to think Jones would return quickly from microfracture surgery. And he didn't have a strategy for replacing guard Mike Wahle, who retired just before the start of camp.

Ruskell hung on too long to safety Brian Russell and running back T.J. Duckett. He tinkered with team chemistry by bringing in the wrong wide receiver, T.J. Houshmandzadeh, whose relationship with the ultimate team guy, quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, has been uneasy at best.

Ruskell presided over the gradual decline of the franchise. That's why he is gone.

All of this losing was unacceptable, to Allen, to Leiweke and to the fan base that the Seahawks' brass worked years to reawaken.

Now the team's owner and the franchise's CEO will be charged with finding Ruskell's successor. Their decision will shape the direction of this franchise for the next decade.

They made the right call Thursday, and I trust the next call Allen and Leiweke make together will be equally astute, because for this town and this ownership, losing is unacceptable.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com