Failure in Phoenix

I had a good time at the game last Sunday, even though Seattle lost.


The Seahawks acquitted themselves reasonably well.

Leon Washington busted a couple of great returns.

The defense looked good, although our inability to exploit the inexperience of their offensive tackles suggests that our pass rush remains a weakness. Arizona defenders ruthlessly exposed our experimental rookie right guard JR Sweezy as not quite ready to start at the professional level.

Despite limited run support, poor pass protection, and a dearth of open receivers, Russell Wilson exceeded expectations. With Houdini-like escape skills, he repeatedly eluding defenders in the backfield and either made plays, salvaged plays, or limited our losses.

But I still would have benched him in the fourth quarter. Wilson is the right quarterback for this team when the defense doesn't know whether a run or a pass is coming, because his mobility keeps the defense guessing.

However, late in the game, when it became clear that we would have to throw on every down in order to win, that was the time to insert Matt Flynn, who is a better pure passer than Wilson.

I have never bought into the notion that quarterbacks need to be coddled. They're like any other player. The circumstances of the game should dictate when they play and when they sit.

No matter who throws the ball, they need open receivers. I hope Seattle is looking for upgrades at wideout and tight end. Perhaps the lack of interest in Kellen Winslow on the free agent market will influence K2 to accept a pay cut and return to the Seahawks.

This was my first visit to Arizona's attractive new stadium in Glendale. (I continue to refuse to acknowledge naming rights auctioned for a fraction of a facility's cost; as far as I'm concerned, every stadium should be named by or for the taxpayers who paid for it, or by their elected representatives. I am particularly loath to honor naming rights held by an unscrupulous private diploma mill with a business model predicated on duping people into overloading on federally subsidized loans in order to pay exorbitant tuition for an education no better and often considerably worse than more affordable public alternatives.)

When the Cardinals played in Sun Devil Stadium, most of the seats were empty and Seattle fans appeared to comprise up to one third of the crowd.

Now that the Angry Birds have their own facility, most of the seats are filled, though not all of them. The Cardinals claimed that last Sunday was their sixtieth and something consecutive sellout, but the stadium appeared perhaps one-third empty, including some entire sections on the mezzanine level. (Do other stadia have similarly dubious definitions of a sellout?)

Seattle fans are a smaller fraction of the crowd now, but there were still enough of us to prompt Seahawk defenders to gesticulate to solicit crowd noise, and we happily obliged.

Arizona fans didn't cheer that much until the last two minutes, but they were never louder than the public address speakers, which were turned up to 11. They maintain a count of false start penalties since they opened the new stadium, but the relationship between their tame, meek crowd and errors by opposing offenses is about as strong as the correlation between tattoos and good taste.

Throughout the first half, the Cardinals presented only partisan images on the big screen, confining themselves to replays of Arizona successes. At some point in the second half, they shifted gears and presented replays in a more evenhanded fashion, belatedly fulfilling the league promise that the stadium audience would see the same replays as the TV audience.

 I saw two other Seahawk fans representing with #71 jerseys like me, in honor of  Big Walt.