This Loss Proves We Aren't Elite (Yet)

[MontanaHawk05]

We can beat the 49ers. We are going to have to.

But we have gotten lucky. Some of that luck we refused to take advantage of - but it was there for the taking.

That Rams game could have easily been a loss.

We have faced 4 teams without their starting QB. (One of which, the Saints, we lost to anyway.)

We faced the 49ers without Kittle, who is one of their best players and most important players on offense.

For the most part, we took advantage of the breaks we were given.

But the 49ers have proven themselves on the road, against a team we couldn't beat at home...even though the Saints were not even playing their starting QB against us. More importantly, the 49ers came back from behind on the road with 50 seconds remaining in the game. They earned their spot. We will have to knock them off it - or we are what we expected, a wildcard team in a very tough division.

The bright side is no Rams to worry about. So this isn't even bad news.

But to overlook the role that luck played in some of our success would require willful ignorance. We are still a very good team but trying to say this team is elite would be stretching the definition mightily.

Willful ignorance?? Fine, I can easily use that logic:

We lost Dissly, who was on pace for a top 3 TE season.

Ed Dickson, who is a solid TE, is still injured

We lost Britt, who’s the main communicator on our O-line

We just lost Penny

Lockett has been injured since the Niners game. If we had a healthy Lockett during that interception drive, we likely don’t even need the Niners kicker to miss the field goal.

Meyers struggled with missing kicks

Carson and Metcalf have fumbled


I can go on and on. But it is absolute willful ignorance to focus ONLY on the other team’s mistakes and injuries, and not ours.

Actually I will go on. Clowney is injured. Diggs didn’t play the first 9 games of the season. Tedric Thompson is no longer on the field to get burned and giving up flukey plays. Ansah had to regain weight. Reed was missing for the first 6 games.

So sure, if you buy into the anti-Seahawks narrative of us being “lucky” great. But the fact that we won despite injuries and all those mistakes says a lot about this team. Please, for the love of God stop pretending as if our opponents haven’t gotten PLENTY of breaks too.

If we lose to the Niners, literally no 49ers fan will go “Well you lost your second best receiver and blocker(Dissly), you lost your best Center (Britt), and you lost your explosive home run RB (Penny). They will laugh and declare themselves the better team. And people like yourself will eat it up instead of looking at it from both sides

Except for the fact that the 49ers are getting all their injured players back, and we're not.

 

[Largent80]

Many of us including me thought they would carry the play from previous weeks into this game.

We were exposed as weak on both sides of the ball on our lines. Especially O-Line.

What a CRAP assed performance. 3 games left, I now have a so what attitude after that effort.

Some say we needed to get our asses kicked. I don't get that narrative. I want to BE the ass kickers. It's not happening this year compadres.

 

[AubHawk71]

Until I see otherwise, my feeling going forward is that Pete will not deviate from The Plan. Hard stop. It worked enough for the last 8 or so seasons for success, until it doesn't. Teams can run the same plays over and over and Pete will hope Russ saves his bacon once again. Hey! It works! For the most part. It also makes him insanely predictable. And that's his achiles heel. But, whatever.

THE PLAN.

PETEY BALL

The End

 

[scutterhawk]

Okay semantics aside, I basically assume when you are 10-2 in early December that gives you the elite title by default, no?

In other words, how many other teams coming into this game today out of 32 were 10-2?

4?

Elite.

This is only be true if you ignore everything and only look at wins. If you look at every other metric, we don’t really compare to other elite teams. That doesn’t mean we are bad, it just means we are fortunate to be 10-3 and we certainly haven’t been elite.

No team LUCKS their way to 10 & 3...…. 10 & 3 is indeed a respectably EARNED position, and IS amongst THE "elite"
The Seahawks had a bad game, they lost HALF of their Run Game when Penny went down, and THAT is huge in an AWAY GAME to a really hungry to win team.
If the Rams were a shitty team, I could understand feeling bummed about this loss, but there is a LOT of talent on that team, and the Seahawks were playing FLAT.
We beat the Rams in our first meeting this season because they played FLAT.

 

[Largent80]

McVay outcoached Pete last night and so did Phillips. It boils down to OUR coaches not raising their level. Looking at YOU Schotty and Norton.....You both STUNK.

 

[MontanaHawk05]

Many of us including me thought they would carry the play from previous weeks into this game.
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We were exposed as weak on both sides of the ball on our lines. Especially O-Line.

What a CRAP assed performance. 3 games left, I now have a so what attitude after that effort.

Some say we needed to get our asses kicked. I don't get that narrative. I want to BE the ass kickers. It's not happening this year compadres.

So, three games against very tough competition is meaningless and 1 loss against another very good team outweighs the last three?

Nah. It was a coaching failure during a short week, one that might not necessarily get repeated.

The bigger concern is injury.

 

[HawkGA]

Montana - only Seahawk opponents have to worry about injuries. Devastating injuries that explain why the Seahawks are able to win. Or at least that's what the announcers and pundits tell me.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

so much this ^^^^^^

 

[OrangeGravy]

Interesting concept. So Elite teams never stumble and have a bad game??

Wrong!! :roll:

Elite by most standards is at or near top 5....and we still are.

I don't think their is a real good definition of Elite. Kind of like prawn, "I may not know how to define it but I know it when I see it".
I don't think we've looked Elite all year. We have an elite record but that took some very fortunate end game heroics and misses to happen. To me Elite teams will dominate at least several games a season. We've have been dominated more than we've dominated other teams.

As I've said many times this year, the 2019 Seahawks are plucky overachievers who hang around most games and pull out improbable wins. This is not the 2012-2015 Seaahwks that were bigger, stronger and faster than everyone else.

That being said, many a plucky overachiever has won a Superbowl. 2005 Steelers come immediately to mind. The first Patriots SB winning squad in 2001 was far from an elite force. The Giants under Eli Manning were never an Elite team but just got hot at the right time for 2 SB wins. Joe Flacco's Baltimore SB team was hardly Elite.

So basically, I'm saying there's a chance. We don't look like the elite squads of NO, BAL or SF but if we can take care of business these next two weeks and squeak out a victory in week 17, we'll have HFA through the playoffs and that's not bad for our plucky group.

I wish people would stop using "Elite". What happened to good, very good, great? Did we really need to add elite? And if elite is really that much better than great, wouldn't you save that moniker for undefeated teams only? It also makes people sound like the old guy trying to sound cool.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

The team is damn good, with room for improvement.

I call them 10-3

 

[Seymour]

So it's FACT that they can't win it all because you said so? That's all I'm trying to point out.
Why bother even playing the games if they can't win? The playoffs are a brand new season. Just get to the Tourney and anything can happen. We can agree to disagree, and I'm not saying they are winning the Super Bowl. But, they CAN win it.

They still have to collect the $$ from ticket sales plus fantasy football needs the players numbers. :mrgreen: :lol:

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Boom