What Storylines Remain for the 3-11 Seattle Seahawks
by John Morgan on Dec 19, 2008 1:08 PM PST
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PrintI plan an extensive post-mortem spread over many weeks following the season. Losing makes for great conversation. I'm pushing the extended look at Sean Locklear, left tackle, until the offseason because I just don't have the time to do it as well as I'd like. It's a hugely important story and, sadly, one of the last compelling stories left.
Seattle's offense is in tatters. The state of the offensive line makes meaningful evaluation of Maurice Morris, Julius Jones and the pigeonholed TJ Duckett all but impossible. Seneca will once again start, but no matter his numbers, I've seen little evidence this Seneca is that much different than the Seneca of previous seasons. After six seasons in the same offense, he's made some rudimentary strides. He's still only completing 56.9% of his passes. Much of Wallace's perceived value is receiver run after catch (including ~200 yards from four plays by Koren Robinson, Leonard Weaver (twice) and Deion Branch) and an unsustainably low interception rate. Quarterbacks who complete only 56.9% of their pass attempts don't maintain .6% interception rates. If anything, Wallace's success is indication Seattle's passing offense isn't as bad as it looked under Matt Hasselbeck.
The defense is in need of a massive schematic overhaul. There's a ton of talent on this unit, but someone needs to spend the greater part of the offseason studying it, scrutinizing it and devising a defense that fits that talent, because the person who taught Kelly Jennings to attempt picks (I'm looking at you Jim Mora) has played against his team's strengths virtually all season. Which defensive roster would you rather, Seattle or Tampa Bay? And yet...
But there's got to be something left. I mean, sure, virtually nothing about this team will resemble next season's team. Seattle's starting Kyle Williams at left tackle for crying out loud. And the chance Seattle is blown out on Sunday looms large. But there's got to be something left to care about:
Floyd Womack is a free agent in 2009 and not likely to return to Seattle. The injury plagued and effort poor Womack is having his best season. That doesn't mean much. He's had some good moments and more than a few failures. How much is he paid, who ends up with him and how badly will they regret it? To answer my own questions: Not a ton, don't know and only as much as they depend on him.
Do any of the kids see action? Is it so much to ask Justin Forsett see a few snaps? Courtney Taylor a few plays designed his way? Or Someone other than Brian Russell playing deep? I'd settle for Jordan Babineaux. How about this: Why not give Herring or Heater a shot at DD Lewis's job? Lewis has been limited in practice. The team is facing a hole at linebacker with Leroy Hill's potential departure, and between Heater and Herring you have a hard hitter, with good range, and a head for angles of pursuit and someone who might have a clue in coverage. Lewis has played well, but youth and the future must be served.
Speaking of Babs, he's likely out at least this week. That means Kevin Hobbs will get some looks. My not so fearless prediction: we won't notice him.
Brandon Mebane lines up against Alan Faneca and Nick Mangold this weekend. The Jets spent 40 kajillion dollars and a first round pick assembling the two. This might be Mebane's first chance to introduce himself to football America. Hello, I'm Brandon Mebane, the best young defensive tackle in the NFL.
Does Bobby Engram prove himself worthy of being re-signed? His free agent price has surely plummeted, but, conveniently enough, I've seen little evidence his actual abilities have changed. It was reasonable to predict Engram might get injured. It was not reasonable to think Engram might break his right shoulder. Seattle should do its best to reduce its team needs. That could mean re-signing Engram.
Does Baraka Atkins build on his gains? He played well against New England, and has shown flashes, but one game is one game and Atkins needs at least another string of impressive plays before Seattle should count on him.
Who catches on first, Josh Wilson or the NFL? Wilson has some skills to build on, but he's flashing some weaknesses and eventually those weaknesses will be targeted without mercy. Wilson has started 10 games in 26 total games played. He's a ballhawk in both the good and bad sense. He forces fumbles and jumps routes, but also slips tackles and drops coverage. Players like Wilson develop into exciting, sometimes game changing players, or are run right out of the league. Don't forget, it wasn't long ago we were ascribing Michael Boulware many of the same qualities.
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"If anything, Wallace's success is indication Seattle's passing offense isn't as bad as it looked under Matt Hasselbeck."
Thats not something you want to hear.
I’ve gone the other way on Engram. His production has nearly been matched by Koren and Branch, one off the street and the other playing half as many games. I agree it’s not a talent issue in that he’s the same player he was last year, but as if it wasn’t clear to begin with it’s pretty obvious he was feeding off his connection with Hasselbeck. If the plan is to start transitioning away from Matt and into a QB of the future I see no reason to commit to Engram, there are plenty of young recievers on the team and at least one should be able to match what Bobby would bring to the team next year.
This is clearly an extremely pivotal offseason
both in evaluating Ruskell and the immediate future of the team. I can’t remember an offseason with so many subtleties.
I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!! I DRINK IT UP!!
Mebane, as good as he is..
Is he forever our RDT or does he have the ability to become that all-important disruptive 3-tech?
Depends who Seattle drafts/signs
Mebane already plays like an awesome 3, but unless Bryant can stay healthy, there’s no one to fill in at the 1.
by John Morgan on Dec 19, 2008 10:25 PM PST up reply actions
Two questions I've been asking myself
“Is it so much to ask Justin Forsett see a few snaps?”
“Or Someone other than Brian Russell playing deep?”
…and I’m afraid we know the answer.
Seriously.
Or is the Seahawks FO the only people on the planet who don’t see how terrible Russell is? Or how slow Morris is?
It's great to be a Florida Gator!
by Wayward Llama on Dec 19, 2008 5:42 PM PST up reply actions
I guarantee you
that with real game film where you can actually see all his play, compared to TV film where you can see about 10% of it, and knowing all his assignments, the Seahawks front office knows way, way, way more about Russell’s play than anyone else.
Why would you think, unlike every other player in football, Russell would excel when he's not on the camera but play like one of the worst safeties in football when he was?
by John Morgan on Dec 19, 2008 10:28 PM PST up reply actions
Well, has he quit beating his wife?
I don’t think you can tell he’s not excelling from the small percentage of time he’s on camera. First of all the plays you see on camera are not a random sample, they are selected very specifically where the ball is coming his way. Most of the plays where the ball is not coming his way are the plays where he is doing his job well because the player is covered and the QB sends the ball somewhere else.
Safeties and cornerbacks all fit this same pattern. The best ones are hardly seen on camera at all, unless they have interceptions or rarely don’t cover their man well.
Now I don’t know how good or bad Russell is. I do know that he couldn’t have been that bad the previous season or he would have been replaced. We’ll see what happens this offseason.
This is flatly untrue
Troy Polamalu, Ed Reed and Laron Landry are all over the place. That’s the very nature of the position. There’s no such thing as a shutdown safety, they’re supposed to be involved in plays. Reed has as many pass defenses this season as Russell has in three seasons and as many picks as Russell has in four seasons. Most plays Russell is involved include Russell doing something poorly. It’s irrational to think that him not making plays implies he’s good. By your definition, a player who simply loitered in the deep zone, never getting anywhere close to a receiver and thus never being seen, should be assumed to be great. Teams are clearly passing deep against Seattle, so where’s Russell? What is it he’s doing? The best corners are not targeted, because when they are, they do something special. Deion Sanders, the quintessential shutdown corner, had 52 career interceptions and a 25.1(!) return average on those interceptions. No one fears Russell.
It’s further irrational to think that the team not replacing Russell is a vote of confidence. Perhaps they simply lacked the opportunity. Or maybe they didn’t see it as a priority. Bad players stay on the same roster sometimes for many seasons. It’s the nature of competitive sports, there’s a finite number of talented players at any given position, so players like Russell hold onto jobs by being perceived as better than replacement level. But they’re probably not. And that’s an inefficiency a smart team can exploit. As much as I respect Tim Ruskell, I’m not sure he fully understands that. Or maybe Holmgren doesn’t understand that. The point is, there’s lots of good evidence that Russell is a very poor free safety. There’s nearly no evidence that he’s a good free safety.
Address what I'm saying, not a strawman
“Most plays Russell is involved include Russell doing something poorly. It’s irrational to think that him not making plays implies he’s good.”
My contention is that poor DB play makes it on to camera much more than good DB play. I am not contending that him not making plays makes him good, simply that most of his good play is off camera so it is difficult for us to evaluate him and any other DB. Also, do you know what his specific role is in the defense? It’s no good comparing his role to every generic safety role. I do not contend he is good, rather that we have insufficient evidence for his quality of play.
Also it’s not just that they didn’t replace Russell, they didn’t even seem to try. No even mid-level draft pick or low priced free agent acquired to see if they could outplay him. Defense loving Russell is really going to do absolutely nothing to improve the weakest link in his defense? That doesn’t make any sense therefore there is some evidence that Russells play last season wasn’t as horrible as you make out.
Ahem
Most of the plays where the ball is not coming his way are the plays where he is doing his job well because the player is covered and the QB sends the ball somewhere else.
Safeties and cornerbacks all fit this same pattern. The best ones are hardly seen on camera at all, unless they have interceptions or rarely don’t cover their man well.
That’s your argument. Essentially, that Russell is playing well when he’s not on camera, not making plays. A safety could not be targeted for many reasons: He’s not near a receiver, another receiver is more open, another receiver is open who is better, he’s covering a late read, pressure forces a checkdown, etc. Good safeties cover their assignment and make plays. Russell, at the minimum, doesn’t make plays. I’ve seen him time and again not cover his man, either. He’s rarely ever involved in deep coverage, his major assignment, and Seattle has been burned deep more than any other team in the NFL. Nothing I said is a strawman. You said good corners and safeties aren’t seen. I refuted that by offering the best safeties—as you cannot conflate the two—are known for making plays.
Your scheme argument is facile. I’d say I have a pretty good idea of Seattle’s scheme, and it’s not don’t cover deep, don’t cover shallow, don’t defend passes, don’t intercept, don’t tackle the running back, take horrible angles and miss on blitzes.
Your arguments are essentially:
1. We don’t know everything so we can’t know anything. That’s a call to perfection fallacy.
2. The organization hasn’t replaced him, so he must be good. That’s an appeal to authority fallacy. Maybe Seattle made a mistake. Or maybe they tried to replace him and couldn’t find a player worth drafting/signing.
And then nothing else. You have no counter argument. Nothing to add, no information, no conversation—you’re here to pick fights and bicker.
Looks like
you can’t handle it when someone disagrees with you effectively. Time and time again you censor or ban people who don’t cave when you argue with them. Meanwhile anything goes for you and anyone who agrees with you.
You haven't agreed with a single thing posted on FG since you showed up.
All you’ve done is gone trolling for reactions from John and frankly, as a reader of the work and comments of this blog it has gotten rather annoying.
The only person who has been banned lately is a person who has got into trouble here at FG months ago and has created multiple user login accounts to try and get around that ban. If users got banned simply for disagreeing with John, you would have been banned weeks ago. If you don’t like the work presented by John and Doug here at FG, I suggest you to ignore it and not comment at all.
Finally, you’ve been warned before, but you still seem to be treading on thin ice. Don’t be mean to John, Doug, or any other posters.
I've noticed that too.
I haven’t read every post on FG, but every time I see VBJohnson, he’s disagreeing with someone, usually with the help of his butt-buddy Right. And comments like this:
Looks like you can’t handle it when someone disagrees with you effectively. Time and time again you censor or ban people who don’t cave when you argue with them. Meanwhile anything goes for you and anyone who agrees with you.
seem to pop up in every discussion he takes part in. Take it easy
by SeaTownBlueDevil on Dec 20, 2008 8:11 PM PST up reply actions
What
is wrong with disagreeing? What is the value of “Me too” and “I agree” all the time? Knowledge grows through conjecture and refutation, in other words valid criticism of existing ideas. If it is done politely as I do, it is of value and should not be censured.
It's a catch 22
If I keep arguing, even nicely, I’ll get banned.
Just bring something to the table
Every time you disagree your argument is “You’re wrong, Holmgren said yada yada yada”. If you think Russell is good, tell us why. Don’t tell us that he must be good because the team puts him out there. The team keeps two kickers on the roster, the team can’t properly manage a running back committee, the team has issues with tampa 2’s and blitzs up the middle, the team will blitz 7 and 8 when it’s shown to be ineffective. Your argument is wrong, we’ve shown you it’s wrong, and if you can’t or won’t accept that Holmgren or Ruskell are fallible then stick to the press conferences.
Baloney
The only time I’ve said that is when someone is trying to stop me from merely politely disagreeing..
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