Seahawks Kick Losing Habit Mirer Shakes Off Cobwebs To Lead Seattle To A Win

Rick Mirer tried to downplay his performance. Tried to short-sell his effort as nothing out of the ordinary, nothing much better than in some other games when he’s been lustily booed.

“We just had their number on a couple of plays,” the Seattle Seahawks quarterback said Sunday.

Well, as Steely Dan once advised: Ricky don’t lose that number.

Especially after what you’ve been through.

Sure, athletes are victims of some natural ebb and flow through the course of competition.

But Rick Mirer has been a human tsunami.

Mirer, who seemed like an irredeemable liability the week before, turned into a hot commodity Sunday in a 30-28 win over the New York Giants, completing five of six passes while marshaling the Hawks on the game-winning drive in the fourth period.

“Today, it’s just that the bad plays weren’t real bad, they didn’t bounce around and get picked off,” said Mirer, who leads the NFL in interceptions. “I can’t say that I played a ton better than I have.”

Anybody who witnessed the resurrection and redemption of Rick Mirer in the Kingdome on Sunday would debate that point.

“There’s no question that he came out and played extremely well,” said Seahawk coach Dennis Erickson, who benched Mirer last week because of his inconsistency. “That’s got to give him confidence; it’s got to give everybody on the team confidence.”

Mirer threw only two passes while subbing for John Friesz last week, and both of them were interceptions. His passing statistics were some of the worst in the NFL and his career seemed to have mysteriously unraveled.

Even Inside Seahawk magazine, a publication not given to biting critique, ran a story about Mirer’s benching with the caption “It’s about time.”

All of which made Mirer’s two-touchdown, 253-yard passing effort more satisfying to his supporters.

“None of us can even imagine what happened to him last week and the things he’s been going through the last four weeks,” Erickson said. “For him to come out and play like he did and compete like he did is something special for Rick and for this whole football organization.”

As the national prep player of the year in high school, and as the Golden Boy under the Golden Dome at Notre Dame, Mirer never heard the boos, never faced such unrelenting adversity, never had to search so deep inside himself.

And one got the impression that Mirer felt that he was, somehow, to blame for all the Seahawk short-comings, and that if he could just force one big play, one dramatic completion, things would turn around.

“That’s the most frustrating thing, that everybody else is playing hard and you know that if you don’t make major mistakes, you’re going to win games,” Mirer said.

But that’s an attitude that would set up any quarterback for failure.

Receiver Brian Blades, who caught two touchdowns on Sunday, talked to Mirer before the game, trying to get him to not take the weight of the franchise on his shoulders.

“I told him before the game, let’s just go out and play pitch and catch,” Blades said. “Let’s just take advantage of what they give us and you’ll end up having a big ball game.”

Good advice.

“Well, I’m the one who has had problems lately, so I guess it’s fun to get that monkey off my back,” Mirer said. “I was mostly concerned with getting out of that losing streak and getting things back on track for everybody.”

Mirer didn’t want to examine too publicly how his extended slump has affected him away from the field, but he concedes that it was something from which he could never fully escape.

“Personal feelings are personal,” he said. “I do my job the best I can every day. When I go home, I watch TV like everybody else and I try to get my mind away from that stuff.

“But it’s not like you can block it out and not think about it; I think about it every day. It really does affect every day until you can go out and get a chance to redeem yourself.”

Which he did Sunday, spackling up that confidence one pass at a time, first down after first down.

“Finally we can have a good week and be happy and not have to hang our heads,” Mirer said.

And he doesn’t have to worry about his job, either. At least for a week.

“We won a game, so we’re gonna start Rick,” Erickson said. “He’s got confidence now.”

, DataTimes