Frye doesn’t get job done, but he has plenty of company

SEATTLE – Charlie Frye?

The Charlie Frye you know owns the feed store. Charlie Frye works magic with tranny rebuilds. Charlie Frye used to be the conductor on the City of New Orleans, or one of the old men in the club car, playing penny-a-point. Charlie Frye grows those big rutabagas and enters them in the fair every year.

The closest Charlie Frye gets to a National Football League game is the big screen at Sweaty’s Sports Saloon.

What Charlie Frye isn’t – what he never is – is an NFL quarterback.

We pretty much suspected that before, but it was confirmed Sunday when the Seattle Seahawks had to call someone named Charlie Frye out of the stands to play when Matt Hasselbeck became the latest state-of-Washington quarterback this year to contract the plague.

Like ol’ Rout(e) 66 the Cougars keep traveling at Washington State and the dead-man-walking calls that follow Tyrone Willingham at Washington, all you need to know about the state of the Seahawks in 2008 is that they were depending on Charlie Frye to keep them from falling into the cellar of the NFC West.

Not to pick on Charlie Frye, who surely is a fine fellow and is due back at his day job this morning, but this is the same guy who opened the 2007 NFL season as Cleveland’s starting quarterback and lasted exactly 22 minutes, 8 seconds.

Not because he got hurt. Because Browns coach Romeo Crennel had seen enough and traded him to Seattle at halftime for a hot water bottle and two Tylenol. Here, Charlie Frye – he is one of those guys you have to call by both names – promptly became a fixture as the Seahawks’ if-hell-freezes-over third-stringer and perfected the split-finger grip on a clipboard.

And yet, truth be told, the Seahawks didn’t stumble through their fourth loss in five games on Sunday, a 27-17 spanking from the Green Bay Packers, solely because they had to turn to the quarterback rack at Value Village and came up with Charlie Frye.

Seattle managed only the vague notion of a pass rush. The secondary couldn’t corral Packers receivers whether the coverage package was nickel, dime or Series E savings bond. The Seahawks couldn’t convert a third down or stop Green Bay from doing so, and showed only a fitful running attack – which was supposed to be their bailout plan.

“And then you get behind and I feel you need to throw it a little bit more,” coach Mike Holmgren sighed, “and that’s a bad situation for us.”

Hey, Charlie Frye, thanks for playing our game.

Actually, Holmgren may not have been referring to his emergency quarterback in that context. This was already one of the NFL’s worst passing teams – 28th of 30 – even before Hasselbeck hyperextended his right knee against the New York Giants last weekend and couldn’t get it fit enough to play. Seneca Wallace, Hasselbeck’s caddy-for-life here in Seattle, continues to deal with a balky calf he hurt warming up to play wide receiver a few weeks ago – yes, it’s almost Cougarish – and wasn’t available, and so the spotlight fell to Charlie Frye.

“I thought I was average,” the fourth-year pro out of Akron said.

What might have pulled his grade up that high were a second-quarter touchdown lob to John Carlson that gave the Hawks a brief 10-3 lead and a 27-yard scramble that kept alive their only true drive – the 72-yarder that produced a meaningless fourth-quarter touchdown.

Otherwise, Charlie Frye passed for all of 83 yards, got wasted on three brutish sacks and threw a couple of unsightly interceptions. You could blame it all on him trying to do too much, except that if Holmgren had abridged the playbook any more it would have been a Post-it.

It isn’t that the Seahawks have become one-dimensional, it’s that pretty much all their dimensions have grown bad at the same time. Cornerback Marcus Trufant – lauded by Holmgren last week for having a terrific year – was terrible Sunday, especially on the 45-yard Aaron Rodgers-to-Greg Jennings touchdown pass that gave the Pack the lead for good.

“Everybody was in man coverage and we expect each other to hold up,” Trufant said. “I got to be accountable and hold up my end of the bargain and make the play.”

And the one time the Hawks did bust a big run – a 51-yarder by Julius Jones – it was called back on a hold against guard Mike Wahle, a momentum killer for sure in a tie game, though too much time remained to make it the tipping point.

“We don’t have the ability right now like we have had in the past to overcome those things and score a lot of points,” Holmgren said, “so the game has to fall a certain way right now. I hope that down the road, it will be different.”

It doesn’t hurt to hope. Maybe.

“I don’t think about the future,” safety Deon Grant said. “I live for the moment.”

Yeah?

Well, then life is just another three-and-out with Charlie Frye.