Last week, Seattle's running game finally came together. Our young offensive line worked in concert with tight ends and fullbacks to open lanes for Marshawn Lynch, who spent the entire game in Beast Mode, pummeling the Dallas defense for 135 yards.
The Seahawks did that to a Cowboys team that entered the game with the league's fourth-best run defense.
Unfortunately, Tarvaris Jackson threw away the game by tossing three interceptions.
T-Jack's final turnover summed up the game with poignant eloquence. Our quarterback tried to throw the ball to Doug Baldwin, even though Dallas safety Gerald Sensabaugh stood between the passer and his intended receiver. If desperation prompts a quarterback to attempt such a throw, he should loft the ball high to give his out-of-position receiver a chance. Instead, Jackson threw it right at Sensabaugh's numbers, right into his hands. Baldwin demonstrated impressive cornerback skills, leaping over the Cowboy's back and reaching down to grab a share of the ball. Our receiver wrestled relentlessly for the pigskin. Until the official signaled Seahawks possession, at which point Baldwin let go. Whereupon the officials reversed themselves and awarded possession to Dallas.
To summarize: The whole offense plays extraordinary football, but T-Jack's errors rob the team of victory.
In "Tarvaris Jackson Pulls a 'Bad Hasselbeck,'" Seattle Times columnist Jerry Brewer likened our present quarterback (#7) to his Holmgren-groomed predecessor (#8). Both men, the analyst opined, threw picks when they "tried to do too much."
Brewer's superficial comparison ignores the fact that Hasselbeck only took too many chances when nothing else was working--when we could gain nothing on the ground, when we absolutely had to throw the ball, when the whole game rested on his shoulders.
But that wasn't the situation last week. The rest of the offense was firing on all cylinders. Run game? Check. Good pass protection? Check. T-Jack merely needed to manage the game, to complete a few clutch passes here and there to keep the defense honest, to prevent them from keying exclusively on Lynch.
In game after game, Jackson ignores open receivers and tries to force the ball to covered receivers. He ignores easy completions underneath and tries to complete longer, low-percentage, high-risk passes.
If I were Coach Carroll, I would invoke T-Jack's injuries as a pretext to give another shot to Charlie Whitehurst.
If Seattle had kept Hasselbeck, we'd be 5-3 right now, not 2-6. That's the difference between playing a Pro Bowl-calibre veteran quarterback and fielding castoff backups from other teams.
Today, we host the Baltimore Ravens.
Our defense should match up well with their offense, but probably not so well that we can hope to win at our offense, which seems stuck in low gear, scoring about 3 points per quarter.
Their defense will stack the box, stuff the run and dare us to throw.
We need to run a little to keep them honest. With the mammoth Haloti Ngata dominating the middle of their defensive front, our best bet would be to make limited use of Lynch (primarily an inside runner) and let Leon Washington and Justin Forsett run outside and catch some screen passes.
Deon Butler's activation is welcome, further augmenting the embarrassment of riches in Seattle's receiving corps. On almost any other team, Sidney Rice, Mike Williams, and Zach Miller would be posting monster numbers.
If only we had a quarterback capable of delivering the ball to them reliably.
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