Seattle’s conservative play turns victory into loss
SEATTLE – The No. 1 defense in the NFL? Gone. The chokehold on the NFC West Division? Gone. The 10-game home winning streak? Gone.
The seemingly insurmountable 17-point lead with less than six minutes remaining? Long gone.
The Seattle Seahawks undid three quarters of quality football with a stunning pratfall Sunday. It was the perfect storm, a convergence of Seattle becoming conservative on both sides of the ball just as the rival St. Louis Rams were roused from a three-quarters nap.
The Rams hit Seattle with a flurry of big plays, building momentum on every down until they evened the score with eight seconds left in regulation. Overtime lasted just six plays, the capper coming when Marc Bulger delivered a 52-yard touchdown pass to Shaun McDonald for an improbable 33-27 victory.
And next up for Seattle, the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots in Foxboro, Mass. Going, going … gone …
Nope, too early for that. Way too early. Just as, in retrospect, it was way too early to proclaim that Seattle had arrived two weeks ago after dusting off San Francisco.
The only thing Seattle has arrived at is a crossroads. The Seahawks are 3-1 and still lead the NFC West, but they’ll have to answer one burning question: Will this haunting loss stick with them?
It figures to go a long way in determining how the rest of their once-promising season unfolds.
“Stunned? I would say we’re upset, not stunned,” center Robbie Tobeck said in a quiet locker room. “This team expects to win a game when we’re up 27-to-whatever-the-hell-we were-up at half. So we’re upset.
“You can realize that next time, when you’re up (24-7) at half, that the game’s not over. We talked about that at half, but you have to come out and finish them. I always compare it to a fighter when you have a guy on the ropes. You have to finish them. You can’t let a good team like that off the ropes. And we did.”
And paid mightily for it. Instead of holding a lead of three games in the loss column over the Rams, Seattle is now only a half-game in front. Instead of sending a statement to the Rams, the rest of the division and the NFL, the Seahawks packed up early and went home. Problem was, nine minutes remained against a Rams outfit that can still put up points in hurry.
“It’s probably kind of hard to keep that same intensity when you’re up by 17 points in the fourth quarter,” cornerback Ken Lucas said. “The good teams do that, but we just didn’t do it today. As a secondary we wanted to be aggressive. Everything they do is based on timing with their offense and we wanted to disrupt their timing a little bit. The second half we kind of played off a little bit. Their strength is that they have very good pass-pattern receivers and we allowed them to do what they do best.”
Indeed. Bulger, given time that he wasn’t afforded in the first half, picked apart Seattle’s defense in the second half and in overtime. Many of his biggest strikes weren’t to superstars Isaac Bruce or Torry Holt. They were to Brandon Manumaleuna, Kevin Curtis, Dane Looker and McDonald, three Pac-10 grads and Curtis, a former Utah State Aggie.
Said McDonald, an Arizona State product, when asked why St. Louis’ passing game caught fire in the second half: “They didn’t blitz off my side too much.”
“We played like crap at every position on defense,” offered Seattle defensive end Grant Wistrom. “It was a total breakdown. We weren’t getting pressure on them. Guys were running around free because he had so much time to throw. We pretty much self-destructed out there.”
Blame must be distributed evenly in this one. The offense, after ringing up 306 yards in the first half, made just three first downs and gained 85 yards the rest of the way – and 41 of those yards came on a Shaun Alexander run on Seattle’s first play of the third quarter.
As these things tend to go, coach Mike Holmgren was asked afterward if his play-calling became too conservative. (To be fair, it was hard to tell since Seattle usually only had the ball for three downs before punting in the second half). And then minutes later, he was asked why, with a 3-point lead, he elected to throw the ball twice on Seattle’s final possession of regulation when running plays would have kept the clock moving. The Rams had expended their timeouts.
“If we complete the ball, the game is over,” he said. “So I thought we should try that.”
But Matt Hasselbeck threw behind Bobby Engram, who was open over the middle. Two plays later, the Rams blitzed and Seattle left defensive end Leonard Little unblocked. He sacked Hasselbeck and forced a fumble that Tobeck alertly recovered or the Rams might have won it in regulation.
Instead, St. Louis settled for a tying field goal, won the coin flip in overtime and made a beeline for the end zone, setting off a wild on-field celebration in which Seahawks safety Ken Hamlin booted an unoccupied Rams helmet in frustration.
New England, at 4-0 and winners of an NFL-record 19 straight games, hardly seems like an ideal opponent for Seattle to find a cure for its Rams’ hangover.
Then again …
“No,” Alexander replied, when asked if he expected any lingering effect from the loss. “If it does, then we’ll know what kind of team we are. If it doesn’t, we’ll know what kind of team we are.”
We’ll be waiting.