Seahawks’ troubles snowball
Throttling adds insult to injury
Lousy offense, lousy special teams, perhaps another key injury.
The Seattle Seahawks flew 2,100 miles to start their season like this?
“We got kicked around pretty good today,” coach Mike Holmgren acknowledged after his team absorbed its 34-10 pounding in Ralph Wilson Stadium. “Give the Bills credit. They did a great job. Clearly our inexperience in certain areas showed.”
It was an inglorious opening for a unit that’s won four straight NFC West titles. In fact, it was Seattle’s worst loss in an opener since it was throttled by the New York Jets, 41-3, in 1997.
“That was not a good one,” understated quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, whose 17-for-41 day was just one of the offense’s problems.
Already entering the game without key receivers Deion Branch and Bobby Engram, the Seahawks lost Nate Burleson to an undisclosed knee injury with 6:47 left in the third quarter. He grabbed a 20-yard TD pass in the second quarter for Seattle’s only touchdown but will be reevaluated today.
“That’s football, but being on the sideline you’re saying, ‘What else can happen?’ ” Holmgren said. “You can’t dwell on it.”
After Burleson left, Courtney Taylor was the only receiver on the roster with a catch prior to Sunday.
Taylor finished with two catches for 19 yards, but also had numerous drops. Burleson led the team with five catches for 60 yards. Rookie tight John Carlson added four catches for 52 yards.
“We’ve got to take it in stride,” Taylor said, referring to the injuries. “Our other receivers need to step up and make a big play. We didn’t today.”
Seattle never led and Roscoe Parrish’s 63-yard punt return touchdown in the second quarter put the Seahawks into a 14-0 hole that was hard to climb out of, especially with their struggles on offense.
The Seahawks were only 3 for 16 on third down. Thirteen of their attempts were on third-and- 8 or longer.
“We just had too many three-and-outs, we had too many incompletions and we had too many third-and-forevers,” Hasselbeck said. “You just make it really hard on yourself that way.”
Hasselbeck, who played only two series in the preseason, threw for just 190 yards. He spent a good chunk of his postgame remarks with the media dismissing an ESPN report earlier in the day that he has a bulging disk in his back and needed an injection to be able to play this week.
“That’s not really what was hurting my back this year,” he said. “From what I was told, 85 percent of the world would look the same if they MRI’d it and [this injury] is probably years old.”
So what’s wrong?
Hasselbeck said what he was told was the problem was too many syllables for him to quote properly.
Whatever the situation, he clearly was not at 100 percent. And he had to be when the Bills were pulling off the kind of trick plays on special teams that are game-changers. Holmgren was particularly irked by punter Brian Moorman’s touchdown pass to Ryan Denney out of field goal formation, a play that saw Denney left alone to the left of the formation.
“Clearly it was someone who was not concentrating on that particular play at that particular time because Denney’s not a little guy,” Holmgren said. “He’s a big guy. It’s not like we shouldn’t have seen him.
It’s embarrassing to us when a play like that works but give them credit on it.”
