Welcome to the Last Day of the Tim Ruskell Era

Ruskell: Quitting

News came last night that Tim Ruskell will resign as general manager of the Seattle Seahawks at 10 a.m. news conference.

One reporter has already spoken to Ruskell, ESPN's Mike Sando. Sando reports that Ruskell left because he hadn't had his contract renewed yet, and felt that was affecting his ability to do his job.

"We were getting ready to go into those meetings about free agency and the offseason. If I am not going to spearhead those meetings and it wasn't going to happen no matter what our record was, you become a lame duck. And I did not want that."

Sando says he thinks the Seahawks will promote someone on an interim basis for the rest of the season (as the Mariners did after Bill Bavasi's firing in '08) and commence a wider search in the off-season.

I'll have more tomorrow, once the sports literati weighs in, but a few thoughts:

1) This is bad news for Jim Mora. A new GM will arrive with his own ideas on how to run a team, which may not mesh with Mora's defense-and-running-game philosophy. Mora has three years after this one left on his contract, but another losing season and he'll be gone. Under Ruskell he would've had a longer leash.

2) It's bad news for some Seahawks players, especially small fast ones. Ruskell's defensive philosophy is based on speed; guys like Kelly Jennings and Josh Wilson may not fit in a new GM's scheme.

3) Will the Hawks go for an offensive mind now? It was clear that Ruskell's hiring was an attempt to get a defense-building expert in the fold after so many years of Holmgren's offensive needs dominating the organizational mindset. Now with the defensive-minded Mora as head coach, will the Hawks look for an offense guy? (The most obvious name that comes to mind, of course, is one Mike Holmgren.)