Too Little Talent Dooms Seahawks
It takes more than a game or two for football teams to begin developing a pattern and now, after six games, you can see one beginning to form for the Seattle Seahawks.
It has to do with a team that’s a little short on talent, especially on defense, and hasn’t learned how to win together. It is the rut teams find themselves in when they try to compensate for their talent deficiencies by trying to do too much and wind up doing not nearly enough.
To overstate it, the pattern is one of too little, too late. Too little ability, which leads to too little confidence, which generates mistakes and puts them in a position at the end of the game where there’s not nearly enough time to get the job done.
“That’s a scary team to play against,” Buffalo defensive end Bruce Smith said after the Bills’ wind-blown, 27-21 victory Sunday at Rich Stadium, “and it’s probably a scary team to watch for the same reason. They have talent on that team in spots, the kind of talent that can beat you, but they’re in a transition with a new coach and unless you’re Jimmy Johnson taking over the Cowboys, it’s hard to get everything going in the same direction that first year.
“If we didn’t get those turnovers, they would have beat us,” Smith said. “That’s kind of scary to think about.”
Three interceptions and a lost fumble cost the Seahawks 17 points in a game they led early and were in a position to control, only to give it away.
Worse, the Seahawks again looked like one of the least opportunistic teams in the NFL. Gracious to a fault when they have the ball, it has been 11 quarters since Seattle has had a takeaway. The last one came in the first quarter of the Denver game when Michael Sinclair forced a fumble by John Elway and it was recovered by free safety Eugene Robinson.
Four turnovers Sunday with no takeaways from the Buffalo offense left the Seahawks minus-seven in takeaways, which will rank them somewhere in the bottom third of that category when they add them all up after the Monday night game.
“You can’t turn it over when you’re on the road against a good football team like that,” said Seahawks coach Dennis Erickson.
Buffalo coach Marv Levy was even more emphatic about the contribution Seattle turnovers had in the Bills’ victory.
“You win the turnover battle and you almost always win,” Levy said. “If you win by a lot of turnovers, it’s almost certain that you will win.”
It all gets back to talent and confidence, two components of winners that almost are inseparable. In the second half, the Seattle coaches benched safety Robert Blackmon for having blown an earlier coverage. He was replaced by Rafael Robinson, who was on the field after one of Rick Mirer’s interceptions gave Buffalo the ball near midfield.
On a third-and-10 from the Seattle 30, Jim Kelly threw down the sidelines to Billy Brooks who was being competently covered by cornerback Carlton Gray. But Gray was supposed to get help on the deep pass from Robinson who got there late, allowing Brooks to make a remarkable one-handed catch in the end zone for a 24-7 lead.
“They’ll continue to get better,” Levy said of the Seahawks. “They’ve had a tough run now, but watch out for them later.”
Still, there’s only so much you can expect from a halting horse and until the Seahawks are able to upgrade their talent, this team isn’t going to get a whole lot better.
“I’ll tell you one thing they need,” said Bruce Smith, “they need some help for (defensive tackle) Cortez (Kennedy) in there. They don’t have an outside pass rush, it just isn’t there.”
The almost complete lack of a pass rush puts a great deal of pressure on the secondary, which causes players to do too much, which gets them out of position, which results in big plays. So you sit the player down, and the next guy does the same thing.
Too little talent and it’s getting too late to do much about it this year.