Seahawks feel fresh
KIRKLAND, Wash. – Shaun Alexander is in what his coach calls the best shape of the star running back’s career, even after missing six games last season with a broken foot that still may or may not be cracked.
Matt Hasselbeck had his first off-season surgery in mid-January. After a speedy recovery, the Seahawks quarterback is ready to start in the team’s season opener Sunday.
“It was an opportunity to get it done in a quick fashion and it made sense,” Hasselbeck said of the operation on his non-throwing shoulder.
Walter Jones is as fresh as if training camp just started, saying Wednesday, “I feel great.”
Fellow Pro Bowl teammate Mack Strong enjoyed an entire month away from anything football-related this past off-season.
Of course, the Seahawks would rather not be so rested. They’d rather be coming off a second consecutive Super Bowl appearance and thus a shortened off-season of national appearances and star-making attention.
But because they lost in the second round of the playoffs in January, Seattle’s stars are as fresh as they’ve been in years for Sunday’s opener against Tampa Bay.
“Well, I would hope so,” said Strong, who turns 36 next week. “That was as emotional of a season as I have ever played last year, just the expectations, the injuries, the way we played. I played quite a bit more than I ever played.”
Like Strong, Alexander thinks he’s far more ready for this season than last. The 2005 league MVP reported to training camp at 227 pounds, the same weight he’s brought into each season since he replaced Ricky Watters as Seattle’s featured runner in the 2001 season.
“We didn’t have a true, normal off-season last year,” said Alexander, who had 13 carries over the first three preseason games before not playing in the preseason finale last week.
“First, we go to the Super Bowl. Then Matt, Mack and a bunch of us go to the Pro Bowl. Then Matt and I become celebrities, going to the ESPYs, doing the Madden video game, filming Chunky Soup commercials.
“We came into last season tired.”
Alexander said he thinks that is why the NFL went from the 2000 Tennessee Titans until the Seahawks last January without having a Super Bowl runner-up even make the playoffs the following season.
Hasselbeck sees something to that.
“It was a short off-season. I felt the extra attention and the extra conversation about the Super Bowl loss and that streak where the teams who had lost hadn’t been to the playoffs,” Hasselbeck said of his feeling 12 months ago. “It’s a drain on you, talking about it day after day after day.”
This summer, coach Mike Holmgren kept Hasselbeck out of all but the first series of the preseason opener and then 1 1/2 quarters of the third exhibition game. He kept Jones, who also had surgery on his shoulder in the off-season, out of every practice and game after the opening series on Aug. 12 at San Diego. The left tackle and key protector of Hasselbeck returned to practice Wednesday and will start Sunday.
Linebacker Julian Peterson, who had a career-high 10 sacks last season, was held out of the last two weeks of the preseason with a knee injury that Holmgren said would not have prevented him from playing real games.
So the players think they may be fresher. But Holmgren isn’t thinking the extra month of an off-season will be the reason if Seattle improves its league-worst 10-21 record in openers.
“If they think that, that’s OK,” he said. “But I don’t buy into that too much.”