Week 9 - Monday 6th November 2006

For UK fans Seneca Wallace was quite literally the Tuesday Morning Quarterback as the clock slipped to 1:40am before Josh Brown booted the ball into the rainy night sky to get proceedings under way.

It wasn't long before the Seahawks had the ball as on the Raiders opening series Julian Peterson sacked Andrew Walter for JP's 8th sack of the season and joint 3rd overall in the NFL in sacks. It was Peterson's last sack of the night but it wouldn't be Walter's.

On the Seahawks first possession it was clear that the game plan was to run the ball to set up the pass, something we just haven't done since Shaun Alexander went out. It was building into a nice drive when Mo Morris scampered into an inviting gap to break a 17 yarder to the Oakland 22.

With disastrous timing the TV feed went down and we were denied the chance of seeing Seneca, pump fake before laying up a perfect pass into the corner of the endzone for the green gloved Deion Branch (pictured) to open the scoring. Branch was listed as a quality receiver when he came to Seattle and so far he is doing exactly what it said on the tin.

The Raiders went 3 and out again and Walter was sacked again leaving the Seahawks in excellent position in midfield. After Mo had run again and Seneca had scrambled for a 1st down, an 18 yard catch by Branch put the Seahawks at the 8. Mo went for 1 and then there was a designed run by Wallace but I don't think he did a good enough job of selling it and he was chased out of bounds on the 3. His pass to Stevens on 3rd down never really had a chance and it was left to Josh Brown to chip us into a 10-0 lead.

If Walter hadn't been having a good day already, things were about to get a whole lot worse. He had actually completed a couple of 1st downs, sandwiched between a fumble, and had made it into Seahawks territory so things were looking up or so he thought. I used to have Madden '93 on the Sega Megadrive and every time you got to the quarterback, you'd get Madden going "Boom, he's on his back". Sadly on Sunday we had to settle for the, frankly rubbish ESPN commentary team but in my mind at least I had Madden's Boom... as Walter was sacked not once, not twice but thrice on the same series!

Again with good position the Seahawks opened up with Morris trotting all the way to the Oakland 13. Jerramy Stevens then endeared himself to Mike Holmgren by getting a 15 yard taunting penalty for deliberately clashing heads with Raider safety Stuart Schweigert. Thankfully as the Seahawks lined up for a field goal the Raiders returned the compliment by Terdell Sands simulating the snap on defence and earning a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and a first down.

Given a chance for redemption Stevens then dropped a ball on his numbers in the endzone. It really should have been another TD but as it was Josh Brown had to settle for a field goal and 13-0 with 11 minutes left in the 2nd quarter. It could and probably should have been 21-0 but as it happened it was a lead big enough to keep the Raiders at arms length so I'm not really going to say too much about the rest of the game as, to be honest, there isn't a lot to say.

It did start raining harder, which didn't help and we'd do well to remember that 12 months earlier in the rain the Seahawks number 1 ranked offense with Hass, Alexander and Hutchinson had scored 3 points with less than a minute remaining against the Cowboys.

Rain games are typically low scoring and it was plain that the only way the Raiders were going to score was as they'd done the previous week and that was on turnovers. So although it didn't make for great viewing I didn't much mind the Seahawks fiddling about near midfield with conservative play calling whilst the Raiders huffed and puffed on the opposite side.

A few years back I went to Lytham St Annes for the day to walk down the front with my young family. Lytham is sort of like 'Blackpool Extra Light' and genteel would sum it up nicely. Anyway as we got to the far end there were a group of at least 30 people who were typically sat in folding chairs next to stationery miniature steam engines. Now I'm all for being quirky but it was obvious that a lot of them had travelled some distance to sit on the front at Lytham with a little steam engine going round at their feet and I don't mind admitting that I thought they were weird.

I know that it takes all sorts but I couldn't for the life of me see how on earth they got any enjoyment out of what they were doing. However I'm relatively pleased that they couldn't see yours truly sat alone in his living room at 4:30am watching some abnormal physical specimens from across the Atlantic swop 20 yards of real estate every few minutes. Worse still would have been the admission that the best thing to have happened in the last 2 hours was when Raiders DE Tyler Brayton kneed Jerramy Stevens in the nuts.

Brayton was thrown out of the game for that and shortly after it happened Josh Brown kicked the final score of the game to make it 16-0 at the end.

Walter ended up being sacked 9 times to boost the Seahawks up to second in the overall sacks ranking. It's fair to say that he didn't enjoy his visit to Seattle.

The key thing was the win although it was nice to go a second night of Monday Night Football without conceding a single point. In other good news Pork Chop Womack came through unscathed at LG and the line did look more stable with him in there. Seneca also has another game under his belt where he made some nice plays passing and rushing which can only be good for more testing games to come. Morris also ended up with 138 yards on the ground after Mike Holmgren finally gave him some carries so there are plenty of positives to take out of the performance.

HawksHead (7/11/06)

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