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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Seattle must put end to poor starts

Scott M. Johnson Everett Herald

During their Super Bowl run in 2005, the Seattle Seahawks scored an incredible nine times on opening drives of games. The recipe of forcing their opponents to play catch-up made for some darned fine meals that year.

This year’s Seahawks have been a bit slower to get cooking.

In six games, Seattle (3-3) has scored on just one opening drive – and that came after Nate Burleson’s 72-yard kickoff return started the Seahawks off at the Cincinnati 24-yard line in Week 3.

Other than that, Seattle’s opening drives have been plagued by penalties, a stagnant running game and an overall lack of rhythm.

“We haven’t started the game the way I would like to start the game,” coach Mike Holmgren said this week, “or the way we started the game in years past. We’ve done it a couple times but not consistently enough.”

On the Seahawks’ six opening drives, they’ve accumulated just five first downs while averaging 3.8 yards per play and 16.7 yards per drive. Seattle has had three three-and-outs and scored a grand total of seven points.

It’s no wonder the Seahawks have trailed in the first half of all but one game this season.

“It’s very important to get off to a great start, in any game,” fullback Leonard Weaver said. “Any time you’ve got to come from behind, it makes it tough.”

In some games, such as the wins over Tampa Bay and San Francisco, the offense took some time to get going. In other games, Seattle had some early success but got stopped by mistakes – such as the back-to-back false-start penalties in the loss at Arizona, and a drive-killing sack in Sunday’s 28-17 defeat at the hands of New Orleans.

It’s not just opening drives that have showed signs of rustiness. Too often this season, the Seahawks have needed at least a full quarter of football to find any kind of rhythm. Seattle has been outscored 23-7 in first quarters.

Holmgren likes to script out the first 15 plays of each game. The thinking is that the script takes the emotion out of play-calling early in games, and it also helps to set a tone each week.

But his scripts this season haven’t been the kind of stuff that warrant Tony Award nominations. The Seahawks are averaging just less than 4.0 yards per play on their first 15, and the early touchdown in the Cincinnati game marked the only time the Seahawks have scored points from the script.

“We have been used to, in the past, going to down and scoring a fair amount of time in our first 15,” Holmgren said on Monday. “It’s not happening now, and we’re going to look (at that). That’s one of my projects this week.”

Holmgren added that he plans to continue using the script, although he and offensive coordinator Gil Haskell will be working overtime to make it more successful.

Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who has completed 15 of 20 passes on opening drives this season, said that the problem has not been a lack of rhythm but rather drive-killing mistakes.

“I could be wrong, but I feel like we’ve started off pretty good,” he said. “We just haven’t converted on that key third down – that’s really the difference. But our first play, second play of the game, pretty much all year I feel like it’s been pretty good.

“We’re ready (on Sundays).We’re prepared. It’s just a play here or a play there, a mistake here or a mistake there that shuts the drive down.”