Apparently this job comes with some pretty big shoes to fill. On my first day of this job—digital media reporter for the Seattle Seahawks—I found out quickly that I really had a different title:

New Clare.

Yes, I am indeed now covering the Seahawks for Seahawks.com, which means comparisons to the great Clare Farnsworth, who recently retired after covering the team for 36 seasons, are inevitable. Of course, I am not Clare. I lack the visor collection, tie-dye shirts and a few decades of experience, but hopefully I can still manage to be an informative and entertaining source of Seahawks coverage nonetheless.

For some of you this probably isn't an introduction. I've interacted with a lot of great Seahawks fans over the past six seasons while covering the team for the Everett Herald, which until last week had been my home for eight wonderful years. So just a day after saying goodbye in that paper, it's time to say hello in this space.

For those who don't know me, I'm new to this job, but not the team nor the area. After two years covering the University of Washington, and several years covering high school sports before that, I moved to the Seahawks beat in 2009. So in a relatively short span, I've seen everything from a 5-11 season to a Super Bowl victory. I've been fortunate enough to watch Pete Carroll and John Schneider rebuild the franchise in remarkably short order; to have seen young players develop into Pro Bowlers and All Pros; and to have seen an entire region of fans form the kind of bond with a team that is rarely seen in sports.

I was around for lime-green jerseys and blowout losses, but I also saw Marshawn Lynch rumble through the Saints defense, Richard Sherman tip Colin Kaepernick's pass to Malcolm Smith and the Seahawks defense dominate Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl. Nothing is guaranteed in the NFL, but I'm pretty confident that the Seahawks' shrewd talent acquisition—recent hiring of a digital media reporter notwithstanding—means we'll all be watching a lot more good times than bad in years to come.

Whether I'll cover this team as long as Old Clare did remains to be seen, but at the very least I'm hoping New Clare has a better run than New Coke. My goal is to make this space as informative and fun as possible, doing some things you've seen here before while also bringing some of my own new ideas to the job. I'll also continue to report on the team (and tell really bad jokes) via Twitter, so if you weren't already, follow along at @johnpboyle. Thanks in advance for joining me on this new adventure.