Remember thou art mortal

In ancient Rome, as a conquering general reveled in his victory parade, a designated killjoy would stand behind him, whispering "Remember thou art mortal" in an effort to ensure that the general did not get carried away and challenge the emperor's authority.


People are pretty high on Seattle right now, because we beat the Bears in Chicago and then pulverized the Cardinals at home.


However, the Seahawks need to keep humble and stay hungry.

Remember we are mortal, especially on the road, where Seattle is 2-5.

Especially in the eastern time zone, where we have always struggled to win.

It doesn't matter that the Buffalo Bills are 5-8 and 3-3 at home. Seattle has lost to several bad teams on the road this year, including Arizona, Detroit, Miami, and St. Louis. (The Rams were a losing team when we met them earlier in the season; since then, they have improved significantly.)

Seattle hasn't won more than two games in a row since December 2011. We need to win this game to safeguard the #1 wild card slot, and to remain potential challengers for the division title.

Continuing injury problems in the secondary pose a particular challenge this week. Starting corner Brandon Browner is still serving his suspension. Walter Thurmond filled in admirably for him last week, but pulled a hamstring in practice and won't play this week. Marcus Trufant also remains hobbled by his hamstring.

With 3 of our best 4 corners sidelined, Seattle must rely on two untested players: Jeremy Lane and Byron Maxwell, 6th-round draft picks from 2011 and 2012. Both saw some playing time in last week's blowout.

Ryan Fitzpatrick is a capable quarterback. If I were the Buffalo coaches, I would deploy multiple receiver sets to test the Seattle secondary, spread out our defense, and create space for CJ Spiller to run.

Fortunately, the great Richard Sherman and our Pro Bowl safeties (Earl Thomas & Kam Chancellor) remain in the lineup.

Meanwhile, Seattle continues to struggle with excessive penalties.

On December 8th, I wrote about Seattle's problems with offensive pre-snap penalties, but those are just part of the problem.

Among the 32 NFL teams, the Seahawks rank...

6th in total penalties
2nd in delay of game penalties
4th in false starts
8th in offensive holding
5th in roughing the passer
5th in unnecessary roughness

On offense, we are undisciplined: our quarterback loses track of the game clock, our offensive players don't know the snap count, and our O-linemen often hold because they can't manage to block defenders legally.

On defense, Seattle is equally undisciplined. Our defenders take too many cheap shots on defenseless players. This is not playing tough. It's playing dirty and jeopardizing the health of your opponents. Football is dangerous enough when we play within the rules. We need a revived ethic of sportsmanship to keep the rough stuff within the rules and between the whistles.


There is good news on the penalty front, at least with regard to our secondary. In 2011, Seattle ranked 5th in defensive pass interference penalties. This year, Seattle has fallen to 25th, while our pass defense has improved. Same athletes, same coaches, better results. I would like to see similarly remarkable improvement in all of the above penalty categories.