Commentary: Seahawks’ once-magical season takes another turn for the worse
Remember the warm glow of unexpected overachievement by the Seahawks?
Remember the stirring revival of a once-porous defense that at midseason turned itself into something at least resembling a formidable unit?
Remember when the Seahawks seemed to be teeming with magic and good karma, headed on an inexorable path to a playoff berth no one could have imagined at the start of the season?
Well, the Seahawks’ story line, once filled with feel-good redemption plotlines, has taken an abrupt turn for the worse, or even the perverse. The rags-to-riches, underdog-rising tale that captivated the NFL for a long stretch is becoming a distant memory. Heartwarming has turned into heartburn.
And now that once-probable playoff berth is hanging by a thin thread after Sunday’s 30-24 loss to the Carolina Panthers, the latest in a line of seemingly underwhelming opponents that have systematically exploited every Seahawks weakness.
It’s not really a mystery what they are, either. The Seahawks can’t stop the run, and they can’t run the ball, especially with their top three running backs injured. The Panthers, who came in with a 4-8 record, rushed for 223 yards, following the game plan that also fueled losses to Tampa Bay and Las Vegas.
The Seahawks, on the other hand, managed a mere 46 rushing yards. It should be no surprise which team on Sunday came across as the more physical and able to impose its will. And remember, this was supposed to be the easy portion of the Seahawks schedule, four winnable games of which the only victory was a last-second pull against a depleted Rams squad. Now the Seahawks have fallen out of their playoff spot with the division-leading 49ers looming in four days, followed by the formidable Chiefs on the road.
“Yeah, to be honest, those games you’re supposed to win, you gotta win,” defensive lineman Quinton Jefferson said. “Especially at home. I’m not saying they’re a gimme team, but we’re supposed to win this game. Come on now. Just keeping it 100, and we’re making it a lot harder on ourselves. Especially in December, you’re supposed to be playing your best ball, getting ready for the playoffs. That’s the ultimate goal, getting into the party, and be playing good ball. We gotta get this [expletive] together, because we’re supposed to be playing better, not playing regressive.”
With that backdrop, every mistake is exacerbated, such as the two interceptions thrown by quarterback Geno Smith – one on the Seahawks’ first offensive play of the game that set them on a desperate, scrambling path from which they never fully escaped. Smith, who has bailed the Seahawks out of so many jams this season, threw three touchdown passes (one with under a minute to play) but was under 60% completions for the first time all season. Twice in the second half the Seahawks had a possession in which they could have taken the lead after battling back from 17-0 down, but both resulted in punts.
“I have a standard, and I don’t feel I played up to that standard today,” Smith said.
When Smith came to the podium for his postgame interview, he was wearing a pink sweater upon which was printed the words, “Altered reality.” The Seahawks have to make sure that phrase doesn’t sum up their season after their earlier surge of four consecutive victories threatened to alter the reality that this was a rebuilding season at best.
The Seahawks still have a path to the playoffs, but most of all it will require a serious and immediate solution to their porous rushing defense, which allowed the Panthers to seize back control of the game in the fourth quarter. The Seahawks thought they had done just that earlier this season, but that was before the Bucs ran roughshod over them in Germany, and then the Raiders, Rams and Panthers followed suit.
“We’ve got to fix it,” a visibly frustrated safety Ryan Neal said. “You’ve seen what happened. It’s been the same thing the past few weeks. Teams see it, and they’re going to attack it.”
Asked whether the problem was scheme or missed tackling, Neal replied, “It seems to be a combination of all of it. And that’s never a good thing. Things just keep popping out of places where they shouldn’t be popping out. And guys got to make the hits. Gotta get the ball carrier on the ground. When it comes to the back end of the season, it turns into, ‘All right, we’re just going to out-physical you, and if you’re not going to stop it we’re just going to keep doing that.’
“You see it across the league with teams that keep pounding the football, guys turning stuff down, or missed fits are happening because it’s late in the season. At the end of the day, we have to fix this, and we’ve got to bring it, and we know that, and everybody knows that. We got a team coming in here Thursday who likes to play like that, and we know that, so it’s got to get fixed. Point blank, period.”
If not, the Seahawks aren’t the team we thought they were. Or maybe they actually are the team we thought they were at the beginning, and we were temporarily fooled into thinking they could be something more. These final four weeks will provide the definitive answer.
“This game didn’t go at all like we planned,” coach Pete Carroll said to began his postgame news conference.
The best-laid plans often go astray, and for the Seahawks they have diverged wildly off the path. Asked if he felt they were a playoff team, Smith replied, “We have to prove it. Nothing I can say up here is going to make us a playoff team. We have to go out there and play.”
Point blank, period.