Sunday, October 22, 2006
RAVAGED.
That's Matt Hasselbeck above, in healthier times. I'm pretty sure that's the audible call before the Darrell Jackson touchdown.
I almost don't feel like saying anything about the game, but I'll say stuff.
-- I barely heard Deion Branch's name until the meaningless catches in the fourth quarter.
-- Whoever had Darrell Jackson on their fantasy team had at least something to cheer about today.
-- The way I look at it, with the Seahawks losing a home game, they have to steal one on the road (non-division) to make up for it. Take your pick between Kansas City, Denver, and Tampa Bay.
-- Mack Strong got absolutely no love today. With all the crap we've given Mike Holmgren for abandoning the run, he sure as hell didn't abandon giving the ball to Mo Morris on first down and having him get one and two yards every time. Again, Strong got no love, I barely heard his name called, and it made it worse when Morris dropped a couple of passes.
-- Jerramy Stevens appeared in the game and had a catch overturned on a replay challenge. He didn't catch a single ball today.
-- Nate Burleson didn't have a single catch today.
-- It was much too late before Seneca Wallace started running.
-- Either Chester Taylor's uniform was covered in Crisco or the Seahawk defense was doing their best impression of Randall Godfrey trying to wrap up Ahman Green in the backfield on fourth down in the playoff game in Green Bay in 2003.
-- The tonesetter: blown special teams coverage from the first kickoff, and Bethel Johnson gets a 49-yard return. The Vikings only got a field goal on the drive, but it wouldn't be the first time the coverage unit got burned.
-- I'm tired of seeing this team getting beat on deep balls and trick plays, the latter of which probably lingers from the Super Bowl last February. I'm tired of Marcus Robinson from 2003 reappearing (at least it was Brad Johnson throwing to him today instead of Anthony Wright) and I'm tired of things like Mewelde freakin' Moore throwing a touchdown pass. Sickening.
Now the big story...
It was a 3rd-and-15 play and the Seahawks were in a shotgun formation as the play unfolded. Matt Hasselbeck's short pass to Josh Parry (yes, Josh Parry) went off a helmet, and EJ Henderson rolled into him after he'd thrown the ball, buckling his knee in a play a little too reminiscent of the Carson Palmer/Kimo vonOelhoffen play from last year's playoffs. To me, this looked a little less vicious than that. Given the preliminary diagnosis of an MCL sprain instead of an ACL tear like Palmer had, it seems to be the case.
Through the Seahawks' first four games, through the bye, and even into last week, everyone knew that the Seahawks could scrape by and get wins without Shaun Alexander, as even though he'd played in the first few games of the season, he basically wasn't himself. The Seahawks hadn't had Jerramy Stevens on the field until today, but the Seahawks were scraping by without him too. Bobby Engram has been diagnosed with the thyroid problem, but I know what DJ Hackett can do, and the Seahawks have incredible depth at wide receiver.
I know the Seahawks have ten games left to play. I know they're expecting Shaun Alexander back in a couple weeks. The next two weeks have the Seahawks playing in Arrowhead with the Chiefs coming off a big win against San Diego, and returning home to host the Raiders, who hopefully are back to earth after beating Arizona.
I guess what I'm getting at is this: how much can you reasonably expect out of the Seahawk offense when the only playmakers that are fully healthy (if Jerramy Stevens doesn't even catch a ball today, I'm not convinced he's all the way back) are wide receivers who have a second-string quarterback throwing to them who has had barely any regular-season gametime experience in the NFL? How much can you expect out of a team when they're basically running an offense at about 30% (maybe that's what the math works out to if you surrender your running game and lose the guy throwing to your receivers)? That's what it seems like to me right now, anyway.
They've got no running game, and the guy passing to all the wide receivers is the second-stringer. In other words, it'll be hard to put up points, and the defense will get tired fast.
The four wins the Seahawks have had this year have been great due to what kind of adversity they've had to overcome to get those wins.
...but the two losses so far have been absolutely brutal. At least with the Chicago loss, you could tell yourself every team's liable to have a game like that, and it was on the road in a hostile environment without your MVP running back. This game was a home game against a tough conference opponent, and you came in without your MVP running back anyway but lost your Pro Bowl quarterback to boot who knows the offense inside and out and had the weight of everyone in Seattle on his shoulders to pick this team up to make up for Shaun Alexander being down.
Folks, nothing good happened at Qwest Field today. Nothing.
I need to find something else to do with the rest of my day, because I'll just be distraught if I keep thinking about this.
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