Week 8 - Sunday 29th October 2006

This was a weird game for me. I made a last minute decision to purchase NFL Game Pass for the game and as the minutes unfolded it turned into a very strange beast. A Seahawks defeat that I actually enjoyed watching. I don't mean that I enjoyed the defeat in itself but it was just a great game of football with 8 scores and a pile of incidents.

It feels even stranger when I cast my eye over the stats and realise that we only had the ball in our possession for 17 minutes 45 seconds and in the remainder of that time allowed the Chiefs to run up 499 yards. Both stats are astonishing but perhaps even the most astonishing thing is that with only 5 minutes remaining the Seahawks were actually winning!

I'm not going to describe every Chiefs possession in detail but all you need to know is that we just flat out could not stop the run and they ran it at us 49 times. Part of that can be attributed to the absence of Marcus Tubbs but c'mon. I also know that Larry Johnson is a tough RB to bring down but the sheer number of missed tackles was shocking.

Lofa Tatupu will no doubt appear in the headlines as having missed most but I'm putting it down as another chapter in his education. He was still around the ball an awful lot as was Julian Peterson and LeRoy Hill who also missed a couple. I think more of an accusing glance needs directing at the Defensive Line who generated little pressure and had LJ sized holes punched in them with alarming frequency. It was as bad as we've played against the run since the Jets debacle in 2004.

OK, fair enough I hear you say, but Damon Huard threw for 312 yards in 17 successful attempts. One would have to concede that allowing 18.5 yards per completion does not make for a successful evening. Huard's groin received a lot of attention before the match, so to speak, but I find myself very much in the Mike Holmgren school of suspicious minds on that one. He chuckled on Friday and was in no doubt that he would play, he was right.

What tended to happen was that with little pass rush he was given all the time in the world to find either Gonzalez or Kennison. On most of the plays the coverage didn't seem that bad but Huard was throwing the ball on the money and they were catching the ball. That is probably to play things down a little they were catching the ball 30, 40 and 50 yards away from where it was starting out. Just one interception on anyone of the big passing plays and the Seahawks probably win the game but the secondary hasn't made many plays all season and Sunday was not to be an exception.

So what about that quarter of an hour when the Seahawks had the ball? Playing for the first time in 91 games without either Matt Hasselbeck or Shaun Alexander or both of them on the field was always going to be tough.

First the bad news. The Seahawks just did not use Mo Morris. The only time he's been used in any sort of a consistent fashion was in the second half of the Rams game which coincidentally was the only time he's done any damage. Mike Holmgren just doesn't seem to trust him and only turned to him against the Rams when backed into a corner. I can't see him on the roster next year, what's the point?

So we had Seneca Wallace making his first start, at Arrowhead, with a malfunctioning Offensive line and no run support. Yikes!

He actually had a very good game on the whole, especially when one considers the circumstances he was operating under. There were occasional mistakes but they were the exception rather than rule and you might also add into the mix the fact that he had at least 5 catchable balls dropped.

His first drive was going fine until a couple of penalties backed us up and forced a punt. It was then that the D made their only play of the game with Peterson forcing a fumble on a sack and Russell Davis recovering at the KC 7 yard line. Seneca laid up a very nice pass to DJ Hackett in the back of the end zone to tie the early score at 7-7.

His next scoring drive went 71 yards and featured a beautiful pass and reception by Deion Branch who pulled in a one handed catch that Seahawks receivers just have not made in recent years. It was pure class and the picture above shows him just failing to hit the pylon after controlling it. Branch deserved the TD but that went to Stevens who pulled in a delicate touch pass from Wallace in the corner. The Seahawks were down 20-14 at the half.

The Chiefs added another 7 and then lined up for a Field Goal to make it 30-14 and very likely game over but the Seahawks caught a break for once. A botched snap saw holder Colquitt desperately try to get rid of it and only ended up fumbling to Kelly Herndon who took it back 61 yards for a TD and a one score game as we went into the 4th quarter.

Tynes missed a 49 yard Field Goal and gave the Seahawks decent field position and a holding penalty brought us to midfield. The next move was all Seneca though as he put Tye Law on his backside with a pump fake then found DJack down the side line for 49 yards and a TD. The Seahawks amazingly led 28-27 with 6:25 remaining.

In my Boys Own annual the Seahawks and Seneca would hang on for a heroic victory but it wasn't to be as a killer 51 yard pass to Kennison put the Chiefs inside the 10 and LJ blasted in through another missed tackle.

It was not the end of the excitement though as Seneca had a pass tipped then intercepted by huge DE Jared Allen. Rather than taking a knee he tried to run it back only for Deion Branch to make his second class play of the game as he stripped the ball from him as he went out of bounds even though it took the replay to sort it all out.

It wasn't to be though as after getting the ball up near midfield the drive stalled and Seneca ended the match in bizarre fashion by dumping a pass into the flat on 4th and 15 rather than taking a shot downfield.

For his first start though in difficult circumstances he had looked very good with a calmness and a poise in the pocket that I thing Hasselbeck would have struggled to match. He used his speed to get himself out of a couple of sticky situations and make plays downfield but I was disappointed that there wasn't even one play designed to use his running ability especially as Morris had been tossed into the bin in the first quarter.

If nothing else Seneca's performance should give optimism for the upcoming Hass-less weeks and that will be vital if we are to keep this season on track.

HawksHead 30/10/06

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