Seahawks vow to give their all with chances fading

Tom Cable was speaking for his offensive line. He could have been talking about the entire Seattle Seahawks team.

Asked how much longer he can afford to wait for his scrambled offensive line –starters in three new positions – to improve or be at least semi-passable, the veteran line coach looked sternly into the eyes of his questioner.

“What other choice do you have?” he said.

It was the most dead-on response yet from an underachieving, 4-5, two-time defending NFC champion – one that hasn’t had many positive responses this season.

The Seahawks have no other choice than to start their long slog back into playoff contention over the final seven games of the regular season with what they already have.

There is no cavalry coming, before or after Sunday’s off-the-mat game against San Francisco (3-6). It comes one week after the mistake-filled, 39-32 home loss to first-place Arizona that cost Seattle any realistic chance of a third consecutive NFC West title.

“They want to do right,” coach Pete Carroll said when asked for a psyche check on his players. “We got in our own way last week so much that they all realize that. So we want to play well and play good football and see where that takes us.”

Seattle is three games behind in the division the Cardinals are on their way to winning. The Seahawks are playing for a wild-card way into the playoffs. They are two games behind Green Bay and Atlanta for one of those two spots.

The once seemingly invincible Packers, who beat Seattle in September on their way to a 6-0 start, seem endangered after losing three straight. Atlanta has lost three of four; the Falcons’ latest loss was to a 49ers team the Seahawks mauled 20-3 in the Bay Area last month.

So, yes, there’s still hope for Seattle.

Then again, the way that offensive line has ruined third downs, drives, red-zone chances and seemingly some of Russell Wilson’s decisions – not to mention the defense’s field position and length of time spent on the field – why do these Seahawks have hope?

“We still got those same guys in the room,” All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman said, pointing his thumb toward the locker room housing the NFC’s last two champions. “That’s why you still feel the same way you always felt. Obviously, circumstances sometimes dictates some people’s opinions. But they never dictate ours.

“Critics are people with no talent dealing with people who have talent.”

Seattle has 17 of 22 starters back from the team that won eight straight beginning about this time last year to reach another Super Bowl.

“I think there’s always time, especially with our team. We always find a way to get things done,” Sherman said.

Since the NFL went to its current postseason format of six teams per conference, 300 playoff entrants ago in 1990, only nine teams that finished the regular season 10-6 failed to advance. So history says if the Seahawks can go 6-1 the rest of the way they will be in the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season.

“We always feel like we’ve got to win every game,” Sherman said. “Last year, we felt like we had to win every game. This year it comes down to the same thing.”

We could revisit the formerly feared Seahawks defense losing fourth-quarter leads in all five of the team’s losses this season, and in seven of its last 11 games dating to January’s NFC championship.

We could talk about how Avril and Michael Bennett besieged Kaepernick and ruined the Niners’ offense in that easy Seahawks win in Santa Clara Oct. 22. Or how Seattle has won five of six in this faded division rivalry, including the last three by a combined 56-13.

But Sunday, next Sunday against Pittsburgh, the Sunday after that at Minnesota –the rest of this season – it’s going to come down to the Seahawks’ offensive line. Can it be even remotely functional for more than a series or three per game?

Patrick Lewis is starting again Sunday at center for the third time this season. Cable and Carroll said Lewis played well last weekend when Seattle allowed the blitzing Cardinals two sacks. On was on a scramble by Wilson for zero yards – though that doesn’t count when Wilson ran into left tackle Russell Okung scrambling away from pressure near the goal line and lost the ball. The fumble tumbled into Seattle’s end zone for a safety.

The fact two sacks allowed in a game is progress is what happens when a team has allowed 33 sacks in nine games, the most in the NFL. The line isn’t opening many rushing lanes, either. Marshawn Lynch’s yards-per-carry of 3.8 is outside the top 40 in the league among running backs. That’s not where the NFL’s rushing leader and top touchdown producer since 2011 is used to being.

The Seahawks’ trade of two-time Pro Bowl center Max Unger for tight end Jimmy Graham, the experiment of a now-benched college defensive tackle at center (Drew Nowak), a college tight end at right tackle (Garry Gilliam) and 2014’s rookie right tackle at left guard (Justin Britt, after the team let James Carpenter leave in free agency) has failed.

For the last three years the Seahawks have scrounged together whatever low-cost parts they could cobble and asked Cable to make starting linemen out of them. That and recent draft picks that haven’t panned out have caught up to Seattle so far this season.

Asked if the performance of this line changes his strategy on how to build future ones, Carroll said: “Not at this point, no.

“I did think it would go quicker,” the coach said of progress up front. “I was holding out hope that we’d be able to turn it in the first three or four games, and maybe by game five we’d really feel like we were making progress.”

It’s now game 10. There are no more mulligans.

“I’m disappointed that we haven’t taken advantage of some fantastic chances. Three great teams we’ve played, three great opportunities to win all those games, and those getting away, that’s frustrating,” Carroll said of blown leads late against Cincinnati, Carolina and Arizona. “Because we were good enough to win those games.

“I don’t want that to be the story of this season. I want to get this thing rolling so that isn’t the story and we have a chance to do some really good things at the end of the year.”

But even Carroll acknowledged: “We’ve got a long ways to go to get that done.”