Championship football- didn't play it in first half last yr

[lukerguy]

I'm not sure this needs it's own thread, but I couldn't find another to add my thought to it. The easiest memories to recall when thinking of last season start and end with the NFCC and SB for obvious reasons, but I think many of us (me included) forget that we weren't a "Great" team all year. Sometimes we were merely and average team depending on various points of the season.

As PC said, "the story is not yet written" on this season. I see a very real possibility that the Seahawks get healthy and start making a run and "peaking" at the right time.

Let's take a quick look back on last year's "bad/average" games.

Week 1 @ Carolina: Seahawks easily could have lost that game, and the offense was inept, perhaps should have lost that game.
Week 4 @ Houston: Keep in mind- Houston was the "worst" team in the league last year. The Oline was absolutely demolished, and the offense was once again very inept. We should have lost that game.
Week 5 @ Indi: The offense finally clicked, but the D had no pass rush, and let Hilton gain over 100 yards.
Week 6 vs. Tenn: Tenn was terrible last year, and while we outplayed them, we weren't sharp and almost lost. The FG muff and TD at the end of the half hurt due to injuries...sound like any recent game (OAK)?
Week 8: The Rams being the Rams again. I actually throught we played much worse than we did this year against the Rams. We found a way to hold on, but probably should have lost. The Oline and Dline got dominated.
Week 9: Hawks are 7-1 Buccs are 0-8...we are down roughly 20 points at the half...The Buccs played a heck of a game and had nothing to lose.

Week 10, Oline starts to get a bit healthier and the team turns the corner...We didn't have any poor game for the rest of the year other than tough divisional games versus 49ers and Cards.

If we can get healthy, there's a good chance the team could start peaking towards the end of the season. The biggest question will be whether they can win the division and get a home game. I truthfully don't think the Cardinals are that good, it should be fun!

 

[ZagHawk]

We had injury issues in the first half of last year as well. BUT i think we managed to win like 3/4 of those close games last year. Where this year we won 2/5 of those close games. The difference is as PC stated in his presser, we're going into the second half of the season with 3 losses vs 1. So it feels different. Niners last year went on a huge run in the second half but it was not enough to catch up to us. I am afraid it could be the same for us, even with a big run, it'll get us into the playoffs, but will not be enough to win the division and HFA which is so important (especially for us) if we want to make it far into the playoffs.

 

[lukerguy]

I'm not saying it doesn't feel different, I'm saying, I don't think we are worse necessarily than last year and we have a chance to compete at the same high level come play-offs.

 

[byau]

This is the first time we've seen Russell lose his confidence or play this poorly or however you want to state it. Sure it's been debated so we'll leave it at that. (though quantitatively, Russell Wilson had a career-high 12 off-target passes against the Raiders).

That being said, the rest of our schedule is rough so let's hope the Seahawks ramp up circa 2012 because this will pretty much make or break our season, decide the NFC West, and likely some of the NFC spots as a whole as well.


Week 10: New York Giants
Week 11: Kansas City Chiefs
Week 12: Arizona (NFC West)
Week 13: San Francisco (NFC West)
Week 14: Philadelphia (NFC East)
Week 15: San Francisco (NFC West)
Week 16: Arizona (NFC West)
Week 17: St Louis (NFC West)

 

[lukerguy]

This is the first time we've seen Russell lose his confidence or play this poorly or however you want to state it. Sure it's been debated so we'll leave it at that. (though quantitatively, Russell Wilson had a career-high 12 off-target passes against the Raiders).

RW is 2.5 weeks removed from his greatest game statistically as a Seahawk (first ever to have 300 yards passing and 100 yards rushing).

If you don't think you've ever seen RW play poorly, please see the following games:
2012
Week 1 @ AZ 62.5 rating
Week 4 @ STL 45.8 rating
Week 7 @ SF 38.7 rating

2013
Week 4 @ Houston 49.7 rating
week 16 vs AZ 49.6 rating

2014
Week 6 vs Dallas 47.6 rating
week 9 vs OAK 63.9 rating (He didn't play well, but he didn't take sacks or turn the ball over).

Once we get Okung, and unger back, we'll be efficient again.

 

[oldhawkfan]

I'm not sure this needs it's own thread, but I couldn't find another to add my thought to it. The easiest memories to recall when thinking of last season start and end with the NFCC and SB for obvious reasons, but I think many of us (me included) forget that we weren't a "Great" team all year. Sometimes we were merely and average team depending on various points of the season.

As PC said, "the story is not yet written" on this season. I see a very real possibility that the Seahawks get healthy and start making a run and "peaking" at the right time.

Let's take a quick look back on last year's "bad/average" games.

Week 1 @ Carolina: Seahawks easily could have lost that game, and the offense was inept, perhaps should have lost that game.
Week 4 @ Houston: Keep in mind- Houston was the "worst" team in the league last year. The Oline was absolutely demolished, and the offense was once again very inept. We should have lost that game.
Week 5 @ Indi: The offense finally clicked, but the D had no pass rush, and let Hilton gain over 100 yards.
Week 6 vs. Tenn: Tenn was terrible last year, and while we outplayed them, we weren't sharp and almost lost. The FG muff and TD at the end of the half hurt due to injuries...sound like any recent game (OAK)?
Week 8: The Rams being the Rams again. I actually throught we played much worse than we did this year against the Rams. We found a way to hold on, but probably should have lost. The Oline and Dline got dominated.
Week 9: Hawks are 7-1 Buccs are 0-8...we are down roughly 20 points at the half...The Buccs played a heck of a game and had nothing to lose.

Week 10, Oline starts to get a bit healthier and the team turns the corner...We didn't have any poor game for the rest of the year other than tough divisional games versus 49ers and Cards.

If we can get healthy, there's a good chance the team could start peaking towards the end of the season. The biggest question will be whether they can win the division and get a home game. I truthfully don't think the Cardinals are that good, it should be fun!

Nice analysis. I was thinking this too but I'm too lazy to look it up. I think we could also look at 2012 and see some similar type of growth/progress towards the end of the season. One could also argue that 2011 had a similar type of trajectory. For whatever reason, it seems that PC has a tendency to get his teams peaking at the right time.

 

[HawkWow]

Definitely needed it's own thread, Lurker. Good stuff.

Reminded of the games you reference, there was definitely a week or so that I sure wasn't thinking we'd be destroying another team in the SB.

What's funny, but I suppose explainable (?) is that last year we ran Lynch like we were trying to kill him. Like we were getting everything out of him before saying aloha. This year, we likely are saying aloha but running him like we're trying to preserve him for the future.

Certainly you'd like to think that's only to get Turbin and Michael more reps, but our back-ups don't appear (to me) to be getting that many more reps.

I've not compared our avg number of possessions from this year to last and our take aways are way down...I suppose that's part of it, but more likely....too many fricken 3 and outs because we're not running Lynch enough! A vicious yet avoidable cycle of madness. Thinks me.

 

[lobohawk]

Good write up and something most casual fans/observers have ignored.

The only difference I could point out is that some issues this year seem to be self-inflicted (the Harvin square-peg-round-hole dysfunction) and special team failures.