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Week 15 - Sunday 18th December 2005 |
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Aaah, what a difference a year makes. This time last season the 7-6 Seahawks travelled East to face the New York Jets. After a demoralising 37-14 defeat live on Sky we came back 7-7 and play off hopes hanging in the balance.
Fast forward 12 months and this time week 15 sees us going into Tennessee with an 11-2 record and needing a win to guarantee a bye in the first round of the play offs and at least one home game. An Atlanta victory at the Bears and the Seahawks also clinch home field advantage throughout the play offs. Man, it sure felt strange typing that!
This will be the first time the Seahawks have travelled to Tennessee and, naturally enough, our first ever game at the Adelphia Coliseum. I realise that 20 odd years have passed but my knowledge of NFL teams is pretty much stuck in the 1980's and I can never remember what teams went where and who became who. So just to recap they were the Houston Oilers until they moved to Tennessee in 1997 where they were known as the Tennessee Oilers until 1999 when they became the Titans.
The Seahawks have met them just once since their departure from Houston and that was in a 20-18 victory at the Kingdome in 1998 with John Kitna, Ricky Watters and Joey Galloway all having good games.
In 2005 the Titans are 4-9 and in theory are easy pickings for the Seahawks but I always take the view that there is no such thing as an easy road game so who do we need to look out for?
If I know nothing else about the Titans, I do know that they have Steve McNair as quarterback. He's a veteran guy who has been there for years, taken them to a Superbowl and will in no way be as easy to unsettle as the 49ers Alex Smith. In the crazy world of NFL stats they rank one place above the Seahawks in pass offense so do not underestimate them but it's a really strange stat when you consider that they don't really have a standout WR to worry about. McNair has been nursing an ankle injury for a couple of weeks but is still expected to play.
Don't expect the Titans to do too much on the ground as Chris Brown has struggled to make much progress this season, Travis Henry seems to be going backwards after his move from the Bills and Jarrett 'son of Walter' Payton has not made much of an impact despite a much publicised TD early in the season. All 3 players might be more effective as receivers rather than runners.
At his Wednesday press conference Mike Holmgren made special mention of Seahawks RT Sean Locklear and pointed out that it is a hard position to come in and play. To all intents and purposes Locklear is a rookie and he has played against some great DE's this season and as Holmgren said in his understated way 'he's held his own'. We'll be looking for more of the same as he takes on Kyle Vanden Bosch who currently has 12.5 sacks to his name.
In the secondary the Titans have this years 6th overall draft pick Adam 'pacman' Jones who has proved to be more hype than substance with zero interceptions on the season so far and a questionable attitude. However, he is a dangerous kick returner so the Seahawks special teams will have to be on their toes.
The other thing to watch out for is that despite their record the Titans tend to fill their stadium every week so this will not be Arizona or a lacklustre 49ers crowd.
As far as the Seahawks go It's a tale of more of the same please after a combined points record of 83-3 over the last 2 weeks. The only thing that concerns me slightly is the return of Darrell Jackson.
That sounds strange right? The thing is when he was injured the Seahawks were 2-2 and since he's been away we are 9-0. Superstition is one thing but there are questions over whether DJack buys into the new 'team first - self last' ethic that seems to be responsible for so much of our success.
To be fair to Darrell though if you took his stats through the first 4 games and calculate how he would have done if he'd have played in all of those games he'd probably be one of the top 3 WR's in the NFL this season.
The word I like most about the way the Seahawks have played recently is 'balanced' with a great offense and really a pretty good defense. To my mind that makes the likelihood of an upset even more remote and I can't see anything other than a comfortable Seahawks victory.
Of course the game has a 6pm UK time kick off and that's the first time we've had am early kick off since we beat the Rams on the road in week 5. Isn't the Seahawks world just full of good omens at the moment!
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Andrew Robinson (HawksHead)
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