History not on the side of Seahawks
KIRKLAND – Being on a roll this time of year is nothing new to the Seattle Seahawks. Maintaining it? Well, that’s been a bit of a bugaboo.
The past two seasons, Seattle followed 3-0 starts with a loss in its fourth game. Last year the Seahawks dropped three in a row to fall to 3-3.
So Sunday’s convincing win over Arizona, the 2-1 overall record and a piece of the NFC West lead aren’t enough to get them overexcited.
“Really what I say (to the team) is it’s a long season, take them a game at a time and let’s keep our momentum going,” coach Mike Holmgren said of how to temper his team’s enthusiasm. “All the normal coaching clichés you’ve heard a million times.”
Unlike the past two Septembers, Seattle won’t have a Week 4 bye. The annual idle Sunday has a recent history of halting the Seahawks’ momentum – they are 0-6 after bye weeks in the Holmgren era – so this Sunday’s game at Washington is being seen as a welcome opportunity to keep pushing forward.
“We don’t have anything to break our momentum right now,” Holmgren said. “There’s no magic formula for that. You just have to talk about it, keep doing what you’re doing, keep them working hard.”
With three games under their belts, the Seahawks are looking pretty good. They have the NFL’s No. 2-ranked offense (399.0 yards per game), the league’s eighth-ranked defense (283.7) and two offensive stars who rank among the top three in the NFL (receiver Darrell Jackson, third with 22 receptions; and running back Shaun Alexander, second with 357 rushing yards).
But things won’t get any easier. The next two games come at sites where the Seahawks have typically struggled: Washington and St. Louis. Seattle has not won in either place since 1997, going a combined 0-for-5 in road games against the Redskins and Rams during the Holmgren era.
The Redskins, who host Seattle on Sunday, have given Holmgren all sorts of fits. He is 0-3 against Washington since 2001, including a 14-3 loss at home in 2002 that Holmgren described Monday as “the worst offensive football game I’ve ever been associated with.”
“I was very disappointed in how we played that day,” Holmgren said of a game that saw the Seahawks’ final five drives finish in Redskins territory yet without any points. “But you learn from everything. We’ve never had a game like that since, in my opinion.
“I didn’t think we played hard enough. That’s a terrible thing for a coach to say, to have to say.”
With everything working in their favor again this week, the Seahawks would appear poised for another letdown. But Holmgren doesn’t expect that to happen.
“It’s so early in the season that there shouldn’t be any letdown that way,” he said, “because you really haven’t done anything yet. We won a couple of games, and that’s about it. We shouldn’t have any trouble keeping the momentum going.”
Wallace to get snaps
Holmgren said lingering soreness to quarterback Matt Hasselbeck will probably force Seneca Wallace to split time with the No. 1 offense at practice again this week.
Wallace and Hasselbeck have seen about the same amount of practice snaps the past two weeks.