Don't get cocky

For the first time this season, Seattle has compiled back-to-back victories. Not quite a winning streak... more of a winning hyphen.

By contrast, the Washington Schmucks enter Seahawks Stadium streaming the inglorious stench-clouds of a six-game stretch of futility.

Washington has won only one road game all year, in St. Louis, almost two months ago.

However, they have played close games against tough competition. They have faced the Cowboys twice, and both times came much closer to beating them than we did. The Skins competed better against San Francisco than we did. Like us, they defeated the Giants.

No team in the NFL is so good that they can take any opponent for granted. Seattle's 4-6 record should give us all the humility we need to take this game seriously. We have painted ourselves into a corner; if we hope to make the playoffs, we need to win out. Unless their team plane crashes, San Francisco will win the division, so Seattle can only hope for a wild card berth. 10-6 teams often qualify for the playoffs; 9-7 teams rarely do. No team without a winning record will make the playoffs in the NFC this year.

Last week, Seattle convincingly beat the Rams in St. Louis.

Our victory came despite two Tarvaris Jackson interceptions on his first two pass attempts and despite a continued plague of pointless penalties. Both factors--poor quarterback play and boneheaded behavior--will catch up to us soon and start costing us games.

I like T-Jack. He plays with grit. He seems to play best when he looks pissed off. However, I would prefer that he achieve that level of anger without making errors on the field that hurt the team's competitive prospects. (Jackson might consider the pregame ritual of Oakland defensive tackle John Henderson, who asks a coach to slap him in the face--several times, if necessary--before he leaves the locker room, thus to help him achieve the appropriate state of fury with which to face his opponents.)

Jackson has shown toughness in gutting it out through a nagging injury. However, I continue to doubt that he is a better quarterback than Charlie Whitehurst, even when healthy. Since Jackson's injury limits his reps in practice, he comes out rusty on game day. I am certain that a healthy Whitehurst would outperform a wounded and rusty T-Jack.Thus, I question whether Jackson's admirable self-sacrifice is necessary.

If I had been Coach Carroll, I would have benched Jackson after his second interception last week, and I would invoke his torn labrum as a pretext to keep him on the bench for the next few weeks, giving him time to rest and heal, while I evaluate whether Jesus of Clemson is the true savior of the Seahawks offense.

We generated fewer than 300 yards of offense last week. That's a losing formula in most NFL contests.

As new offensive line configuration gels, the false start and holding penalties should start to subside. The O-Line has provided good run blocking and fair pass protection for several weeks running. A good ground game is our only hope until we get better play from the quarterback position.

Presumably, heavy fines will eventually persuade Kam Chancellor to stop spearing opponents. At this point, he has surrendered almost a fifth of his salary to the league in the form of fines. After taxes, the bite must be quite large. Larger, perhaps, than the adverse impact the penalties have on our defense. Chancellor would make more of an impact playing within the rules than he has made thus far, coloring outside the lines.

The defense's domination of St. Louis was inspiring. Choosing not to challenge our stout run defense, the Rams ran a spread offense for most of the game, even lining up Pro Bowl running back Stephen Jackson as a slot receiver.

This was sound strategy for the Rams. It represented a logical effort to exploit the youth and inexperience of Seattle's defenders, and to attack the size and presumed slowness of our large defensive linemen. However, the defense rose to the occasion admirably, adjusting expertly to the novel challenges that St. Louis threw at us. Kudos both to our athletes and to our defensive coaches.

Today offers a different challenge in the form of Rex Grossman, who still veers wildly between brilliant accuracy and pick-prone idiocy. He played well last week against Dallas. The Skins rarely run the ball effectively, so their offense rests largely on Grossman's uncertain shoulders.

Hopefully, a 12th Man-fueled defense will punish him accordingly.

Go, Seahawks!