MontanaHawk05
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As we struggle through a mild sophomore slump for this offense*, it's kinda not surprising that our level of play (if not our record) has taken a step back from 2012, in which we repeatedly dominated lesser opponents and saved our "winning ugly" for Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. However, I'm more and more unpleasantly reminded of something every week we play.
The following is a table of the quarterbacks Seattle's defense faced in 2007, including playoffs.
[tdo=11]Opposing QBs, 2007[/tdo]*pre-Arizona-Oline-getting-its-act-together
If you examine it carefully, it's an eye-catching dichotomy. With a few exceptions, the 2007 Seahawks faced an unusually friendly series of opposing QBs - backups, game managers, busts in the imminent making - mixed in with only two true franchise quarterbacks in eighteen games. Naturally, Seattle handed the bottom-dwellers just fine. And yet, Seattle not only lost against both elite QB's it faced, if you remember, they proved unable to do much of anything at all against those two (Brees and Roethlisberger) in a dramatic swing from their usual performances. It also struggled to stop a couple of the younger experiments, like Anderson (who had a red-hot 2007 before he got exposed).
Seattle rode into the playoffs with the reputation of a powerful pass-rush and ballhawking defense. Playing against Todd Collins in the Wild Card game was never going to damage that reputation. However, once they took the field against Brett Favre, the defense pulled a Jekyll-and-Hyde, from elite to powerless so suddenly that it gave me whiplash. THIS was the defense that had been lauded all year? What happened to them?
Now you can blame that on the Lambeau snowstorm if you want. If you can already sense where I'm going with this argument and don't like it, you'll probably do just that. But for the following two years, the defense continued to be exposed horribly against franchise QB after franchise QB. By the end of 2009, every starter but Brandon Mebane had wound up on the fans' "blow it all up and start over" list. Our 2007 schedule had indeed masked a mediocre Tim Ruskell defense. The lesson there is that strength of opposition matters. Every team faces jokers from time to time, but occasionally a team will stumble into a truly pillow-soft schedule that has the power to alter perceptions. And while the QB is far from the entire team, he is the single greatest deciding factor of a team's quality after defense.
Now in 2013, Seattle has strung together a series of difficult, ugly wins against a gang of opposing QBs difficult to distinguish from 2007's in terms of strength.
[tdo=11]Opposing QBs, 2013[/tdo]
The jury is still out on a lot of these guys, of course. Schaub is probably on the decline like 2007 Bulger was. Fitzpatrick shares a skill rung with T-Jack. Newton and Kaep have played some quietly good football lately, and they along with Glennon might turn into franchise QB's like Smith or flatline like Grossman finally did. Too soon to tell. In six years, will this look like the 2007 lineup or something stronger? Who knows.
But at the moment, the lists seem uncomfortably comparable to me, and it won't strength in the next two games. Quite a few timid and inaccurate QBs in there. To argue that Seattle's defense has faced strong QB's this year is unconvincing. They've dominated for the most part, as they should. They even held down Andrew Luck for a half. But if you don't want to cast a skeptical eye on THAT side of the ball, consider that Seattle has still clawed and scratched to win those games because of offensive issues.
The trend of horribly timed penalties, special-teams gaffes, miscommunication, offensive line struggles, lack of WR separation, QB inexperience, and lackadaisical first halves culminated today in Seattle almost losing to a winless team, untested QB, and lame-duck head coach - at home. "It's always an accomplishment to win on the road" falls a little flat today. Nobody can convince me that the Bucs are just so damn talented that a 21-0 home deficit was fully understandable for Seattle. You're arguing against a 0-7 record there. And now the defense is joining in the surprising decline. Our run defense has taken a huge step back in the last two games. The pass rush was gone today. There is only one BS yellow flag that Seattle can really hide behind for an excuse, and it was early in the game. We've had effort and heart for sure. No denying that. And we've undoubtedly got more true talent than the 2007 defense.
But I am not convinced that we can continue pulling miracles each and every week and carry that trend all the way to the George Halas trophy. That is what people are suggesting we can do. That is not a sustainable model against real competition. When we hit the NFC playoffs this year, we will face strong defenses with a good pass rush. We've proven that we can survive that. We will ALSO face elite quarterbacks in either Drew Brees or Aaron Rodgers, who will place much more urgency on our offense to score points. If we reach the Super Bowl, it'll be Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck, or perhaps Tom Brady, whom everyone has unwisely forgotten about. All five of those guys are Super Bowl winners who know how to close out games (well, maybe not Peyton). They take advantage of opportunities and feature better weapons. Can we expect to stumble out of the gates, f*** around for two or three quarters, and expect victory to still be standing around waiting for us in the fourth, against THOSE guys?
For those whose only response is "8-1", I will simply redirect you to the second table above. The ONLY time we have faced an elite QB this year, our model did not deliver us. Our early mistakes and periodic lapses just tilted the scales too much for Russell Wilson to compensate. That to me offers unsettling hints of the 2007 phenomenon. We have some talent on offense, but it's not being used correctly. We have oodles of talent on defense, and it's been our great equalizer thus far. We're now on a 35-game streak of never losing by more than a touchdown. But the other team can also benefit from that. Pete Carroll's philosophy, at least at this stage of development, looks like walking a high wire week in and week out. In my opinion, our lone loss says more about our playoff chances than all eight wins combined. Call me scarred over 2007, call me a troll (Hi, Volsung!), but that's truthfully where I stand. And the Seahawks certainly haven't convinced me otherwise by playing so uneven the last couple games.
I am hoping that all this is the loss of offensive players - Okung, Harvin, Rice, Breno. Three of those we'll get back, and it had better make a difference. Because there's been a lot of talk on this very board about problems that have nothing to do with those guys being out. The item of health is the one thing preserving my Super Bowl prediction If our gimpies weren't coming back, I'd have no hesitation calling the 8-1 record at least a partial mirage and casting doubt on our SB hopes. I'm not there yet. But I do believe that Seattle will need a personnel jolt to get over that extra hump. (The return of Robinson was a huge help today.)
Let's hope that health brings that jolt, because I've never experienced so many wins that feel less like wins and more like excuses. In 2005, we had our share of tough games. But we didn't have our share of soft play and jaw-dropping screwups. We should not, with all this talent, be back in our 2009 habit of getting excited over every single precious first-down completion. Not when our future playoff opponents churn them out as a matter of routine. Forget the records, these Seahawks were better last year. I'd like to see them get back to where we know they can be.
*Changed this from originally saying "a sophomore slump for Russell Wilson". It's not just him, and Wilson's also having to deal with more responsibilities than last year. He's doing fine.
The following is a table of the quarterbacks Seattle's defense faced in 2007, including playoffs.
| Beat | Beaten By |
|---|---|
| Jeff Garcia | Drew Brees |
| Carson Palmer | Matt Leinart |
| Trent Dilfer | Ben Roethlisberger |
| Marc Bulger | Derek Anderson |
| Alex Smith | Matt Moore |
| Rex Grossman | Chris Redman |
| Gus Frerotte | Brett Favre |
| A.J. Feeley | |
| Kurt Warner* | |
| Troy Smith | |
| Todd Collins |
If you examine it carefully, it's an eye-catching dichotomy. With a few exceptions, the 2007 Seahawks faced an unusually friendly series of opposing QBs - backups, game managers, busts in the imminent making - mixed in with only two true franchise quarterbacks in eighteen games. Naturally, Seattle handed the bottom-dwellers just fine. And yet, Seattle not only lost against both elite QB's it faced, if you remember, they proved unable to do much of anything at all against those two (Brees and Roethlisberger) in a dramatic swing from their usual performances. It also struggled to stop a couple of the younger experiments, like Anderson (who had a red-hot 2007 before he got exposed).
Seattle rode into the playoffs with the reputation of a powerful pass-rush and ballhawking defense. Playing against Todd Collins in the Wild Card game was never going to damage that reputation. However, once they took the field against Brett Favre, the defense pulled a Jekyll-and-Hyde, from elite to powerless so suddenly that it gave me whiplash. THIS was the defense that had been lauded all year? What happened to them?
Now you can blame that on the Lambeau snowstorm if you want. If you can already sense where I'm going with this argument and don't like it, you'll probably do just that. But for the following two years, the defense continued to be exposed horribly against franchise QB after franchise QB. By the end of 2009, every starter but Brandon Mebane had wound up on the fans' "blow it all up and start over" list. Our 2007 schedule had indeed masked a mediocre Tim Ruskell defense. The lesson there is that strength of opposition matters. Every team faces jokers from time to time, but occasionally a team will stumble into a truly pillow-soft schedule that has the power to alter perceptions. And while the QB is far from the entire team, he is the single greatest deciding factor of a team's quality after defense.
Now in 2013, Seattle has strung together a series of difficult, ugly wins against a gang of opposing QBs difficult to distinguish from 2007's in terms of strength.
| Beat | Beaten By |
|---|---|
| Cam Newton | Andrew Luck |
| Colin Kaepernick | |
| Chad Henne | |
| Matt Schaub | |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | |
| Carson Palmer | |
| Kellen Clemens | |
| Mike Glennon |
The jury is still out on a lot of these guys, of course. Schaub is probably on the decline like 2007 Bulger was. Fitzpatrick shares a skill rung with T-Jack. Newton and Kaep have played some quietly good football lately, and they along with Glennon might turn into franchise QB's like Smith or flatline like Grossman finally did. Too soon to tell. In six years, will this look like the 2007 lineup or something stronger? Who knows.
But at the moment, the lists seem uncomfortably comparable to me, and it won't strength in the next two games. Quite a few timid and inaccurate QBs in there. To argue that Seattle's defense has faced strong QB's this year is unconvincing. They've dominated for the most part, as they should. They even held down Andrew Luck for a half. But if you don't want to cast a skeptical eye on THAT side of the ball, consider that Seattle has still clawed and scratched to win those games because of offensive issues.
The trend of horribly timed penalties, special-teams gaffes, miscommunication, offensive line struggles, lack of WR separation, QB inexperience, and lackadaisical first halves culminated today in Seattle almost losing to a winless team, untested QB, and lame-duck head coach - at home. "It's always an accomplishment to win on the road" falls a little flat today. Nobody can convince me that the Bucs are just so damn talented that a 21-0 home deficit was fully understandable for Seattle. You're arguing against a 0-7 record there. And now the defense is joining in the surprising decline. Our run defense has taken a huge step back in the last two games. The pass rush was gone today. There is only one BS yellow flag that Seattle can really hide behind for an excuse, and it was early in the game. We've had effort and heart for sure. No denying that. And we've undoubtedly got more true talent than the 2007 defense.
But I am not convinced that we can continue pulling miracles each and every week and carry that trend all the way to the George Halas trophy. That is what people are suggesting we can do. That is not a sustainable model against real competition. When we hit the NFC playoffs this year, we will face strong defenses with a good pass rush. We've proven that we can survive that. We will ALSO face elite quarterbacks in either Drew Brees or Aaron Rodgers, who will place much more urgency on our offense to score points. If we reach the Super Bowl, it'll be Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck, or perhaps Tom Brady, whom everyone has unwisely forgotten about. All five of those guys are Super Bowl winners who know how to close out games (well, maybe not Peyton). They take advantage of opportunities and feature better weapons. Can we expect to stumble out of the gates, f*** around for two or three quarters, and expect victory to still be standing around waiting for us in the fourth, against THOSE guys?
For those whose only response is "8-1", I will simply redirect you to the second table above. The ONLY time we have faced an elite QB this year, our model did not deliver us. Our early mistakes and periodic lapses just tilted the scales too much for Russell Wilson to compensate. That to me offers unsettling hints of the 2007 phenomenon. We have some talent on offense, but it's not being used correctly. We have oodles of talent on defense, and it's been our great equalizer thus far. We're now on a 35-game streak of never losing by more than a touchdown. But the other team can also benefit from that. Pete Carroll's philosophy, at least at this stage of development, looks like walking a high wire week in and week out. In my opinion, our lone loss says more about our playoff chances than all eight wins combined. Call me scarred over 2007, call me a troll (Hi, Volsung!), but that's truthfully where I stand. And the Seahawks certainly haven't convinced me otherwise by playing so uneven the last couple games.
I am hoping that all this is the loss of offensive players - Okung, Harvin, Rice, Breno. Three of those we'll get back, and it had better make a difference. Because there's been a lot of talk on this very board about problems that have nothing to do with those guys being out. The item of health is the one thing preserving my Super Bowl prediction If our gimpies weren't coming back, I'd have no hesitation calling the 8-1 record at least a partial mirage and casting doubt on our SB hopes. I'm not there yet. But I do believe that Seattle will need a personnel jolt to get over that extra hump. (The return of Robinson was a huge help today.)
Let's hope that health brings that jolt, because I've never experienced so many wins that feel less like wins and more like excuses. In 2005, we had our share of tough games. But we didn't have our share of soft play and jaw-dropping screwups. We should not, with all this talent, be back in our 2009 habit of getting excited over every single precious first-down completion. Not when our future playoff opponents churn them out as a matter of routine. Forget the records, these Seahawks were better last year. I'd like to see them get back to where we know they can be.
*Changed this from originally saying "a sophomore slump for Russell Wilson". It's not just him, and Wilson's also having to deal with more responsibilities than last year. He's doing fine.
