Week 3 - Sunday 24th September 2006

On 27th November 2005 the Seattle Seahawks were 8-2 as they took the home field against the 7-3 New York Giants. It was a Week 12 battle for supremacy at the top of the NFC rankings and what followed has gone down in the annals of Seahawks history.

It was an astonishing 4 hour game of fluctuating fortunes, controversial refereeing decisions, and ultimately 3 missed goals by Giants kicker Jay Feely before Josh Brown sealed the game more than 12 minutes into overtime. This is how it was reported on this site at the time The Great Escape

Central to the story of that game was the crowd noise at Qwest Field which saw the Giants flagged for a remarkable 11 false start penalties and a game ball being awarded to the 12th Man.

With the news breaking Wednesday that NFL officials would be in the stadium to follow up complaints of piped noise at Qwest Field it also became a part of the build up this time around.

The story is clearly mischievous and it will be interesting to see if news is released as to whoever initiated it. If it was the Giants then the move will almost certainly back fire as the Seahawks fans will feel honour bound to make even more noise than last time. Coach Mike Holmgren even fanned the flames a little by saying "If I was a fan I'd take that personally". The latest news is the Giants are practising at their facility with speakers blasting out crowd noise so they can get used to it!

On the field the Giants should really be 0-2. They lost their home opener 26-21 to the Indianapolis Colts and were trailing on the road to the Eagles 24-7 into the 4th quarter last week. Eli Manning was having a hell of a time even staying on his feet as he'd been sacked 8 times and hurried countless others.

With less than 14 minutes remaining Plaxico Burress fumbled the ball on the Eagles 5 yard line and all Eagles safety Michael Lewis had to do was fall on the ball but of course he tried to scoop it up and only succeeded in knocking it into the endzone where the Giants recovered for a TD. A further Giants TD followed and with seconds remaining they set up what would have been another very nervy 50 yard kick for Jay Feeley. However the Eagles continued to self destruct but committing a 15 yard personal foul on the play leaving Feely with a 35 yard chip. After that only one team was going to win in OT and Manning after looking hopeless for so long connected with Burress for the winning TD.

With the teams having played one another so recently I'm not going to go through the match ups in any detail. However if the Fox commentators mention Giants DE Osi Umenyiora beating Walter Jones last season once they will doubtless mention it 20 times so don't say you haven't been warned. As an aside I thought I heard on commentary last week that Umenyiora had missed parts of both Giants games so far with illness/exhaustion but I've not been able to find a word of that in print.

Possibly the most interesting area for the Seahawks will be the Wide Receivers with Deion Branch making his debut. In fact with Darrell Jackson and Nate Burleseon the Seahawks will be fielding 3 top drawer WR's who did not play the last time the 2 teams met, Jackson was injured you may recall. It is likely that Burleson and Branch will split playing time but on the 4 WR sets add in Bobby Engram and they're going to be a challenge to cover

At TE the Seahawks are so thin that Will Heller is expected to start in place of the injured Stevens and Mili. For the Giants Jeremy Shockey who played such a central part in last years game is also injured (ankle) but expected to play. Shaun Alexander has been held out of practice with a foot injury but will play in the game. Chris Spencer will take over at Left Guard for the injured Floyd Womack which may be seen by some as a strengthening of the position.

The Seahawks have started slowly and may be thankful for being up against relatively weak opponents so far but the Giants will bring a genuine NFC test as we wait to see how good the Seahawks really are. Hopefully with some of the rust knocked off the Seahawks can open at 3-0 for only the 5th time in franchise history.

As ever, the game will be followed live in our exclusive Seahawkers UK chat room (no jeans or trainers please) where the properly attired are more than welcome.

Whilst there we like to listen to the radio coverage from the States www.thegamelive.com in the past the top link has been reliable.

There is also now a live streaming option for UK based fans with broadband via http://sports.yahoo.com/nflgamepass with a word of caution that last week the service failed so if you are thinking of going down this route maybe check out the chat room first to see if there is any information.

In addition this week the Game will be showed on Sky as their second game on the red button if you subscribe to Sky Digital but this option is not available by cable.

HawkHead 21/9/06

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