Postgame: Seahawks 3 - Rams 20

At what point do you think Charlie gets a shot?

The first drive that resulted in a FG exemplifies Hasselbeck at his best. 6.5 minutes, 14 plays 81 yards. A good mix of running game and passing game. The net effect was still poor execution in the Red Zone and only 3 points. Dink and dunk, with a bit of run game.

Whitehurst may look bad at times, throw picks, incompletions, get sacked, fumble, but he can move the offense in large chunks. We’re not dependent on the perfect 5 yard run to set up the perfect 6 yard pass because we’re afraid of having to test Matt’s arm and decision making ability at 10 yards +. I don’t know how many ways you can say it, but Whitehurst can bring back the big play, making growing pains and mistakes negligible if you can score 7’s in little time.

• Forsett appears to only do well if he can find a cutback lane. I don’t know if that’s a design of our running game but it almost seems like we are only succeeding at the run if we get the defense to overpursue. Very few runs up the middle.

• Earl Thomas is a complete badass and I am thrilled to watch him play for the next 6-8 years in a Hawks uniform.

• I am also thrilled with the consistency of the run defense. A quarter of the season down and it appears to be vastly improved.

• I have the utmost respect for Matt and believe he could still succeed in a different situation. The Titans, for one, seem like the kind of situation he could step into and game manage that team to quite a bit of success. However, as we don’t have a Chris Johnson in our backfield we need our QB to bring big play ability. This is, in my opinion, the main argument for Whitehurst. This team is in a situation where it needs to sacrifice some “move the chains” ability for the ability to throw downfield. I believe we have a WR corps than can accomplish this. But you can see Bates has no belief in Matt’s ability to get them the ball downfield. I counted one, ONE pass into the end zone in this game. That’s not an accident.

• As a Mariners/Seahawks fan it would be really nice if I could root for a team that made me want to stab my eyes out on offense.

• I don’t understand why we’ve only seen one instance all year of throwing a deep jump ball to BMW. He seems like the most likely receiver to be able to mitigate Matt’s below average arm by simply out jumping the defense. With as much trouble as we’re having in the red zone I keep hoping for a fade to big #17.

• USC. Ha.

One dimension on the team seemingly gets the job done and produces good enough to win, while the other side repeatedly embraces futility and chokes; then we trott out the same crap and continue to bang head against wall.

It’s just a shame that the team is piloted by a brain with no arm.

One okay game (SF), one shitty game (Den), one way below average game (SD), and one just bad game (StL). We can’t bench him after one bad game, can we?

Because if the second string QB sucks worse, then there he is with egg
all over his H.C. rep.

And, to paraphrase earlier comments, Charlie could get the Strong Safety out of the box.
Betcha Force would appreciate that.

I have to admit that I have been in the Hasselbeck court from day one this season. But I took the initiative to step back and watch the quarterback play very openly and unbiased. What I saw made me take pause and actually admit that I am now leaning in the camp of the CW starting crowd. Matt was indecisive way too much. He released a second or two late far too many times. He had receivers open but with the combination of lack of arm strength and slow decision making, it was a wonder he wasn’t picked off several more times. I would really support a change to CW if only to see what he looks like in a game situation. He very well might fall on his arse and look the complete imbecile. But at least he will have some zip on his pass. And yes, we need to find out if we need to sell the farm for a franchise quarterback in the coming draft. I only know that Matt today made me a believer in CW.

I couldn’t even make NFL Mobile live work on my damn phone today. I was really irritated until I saw the 3 points we managed to put up before halftime.

Charlie may not be the future of this team, but Matt definately isn’t. Doesn’t anyone remember how bad Matt was at first? He got benched and Dilfer put back in the game. Matt is definately the best QB this franchise has had, but his time is coming to an end. Give Charlie a shot. Then if he fails we can go for a QB in the draft, if he is good, we can go for a top RB, DE, or DT to help improve the team. Sorry Matt but it’s time for you to carry the clip board.

that Hass suffers a massive labia tear during the bye week. I’m starting to wonder if the defense yells “grenade” everytime he winds up to make a throw. Maybe it’s league wide joke, masterminded by Ashton Kutcher, where the refs switch the standard NFL football with a medecine ball? Whatever it is, I’m almost certain that every throw is accompanied by a fart sound. The only question is whether that’s the defense making a joke out of his arm strength, or perhaps Hass is actually shitting his diaper everytime he drops back. to pass.

Just put in Whitehurst and at worst he at least looks good playing bad with his flowing locks. Best case scenario, he plays well and ends up in the next old spice commercial.

is as intimidating as a kitten wrapped in a pink blanket on Easter.

I am new to this board, but old Hawk fan from eastern washington. I could not bear to watch this game in its entirety because our team has this terrible ability to raise our hopes and then crush them brutally, from one week to the next. This team cannot play on the road to save their lives and I don’t understand why.

Personally, I think Hass is done and needs to be relegated to the bench. Its not like he is throwing to the greatest receivers ever, but still, for as much as he did right, years ago now, all he does is hurt the team and needs to give way to somebody else. I really hope the coach makes this change soon.

Why can’t we play better pass defense? I can understand P. Rivers slicing them up, but it makes no sense to let a rookie QB, with a bunch of no name receivers, get almost 300 yards passing. Not sure what the answer is for these troubles. I do enjoy reading John Morgans columns though.

Matt

The goal should be, simply, to win a championship. The alternative that seems to get a lot of airtime around here is to make the playoffs (in 2010). Obviously you can’t do the former without the latter, but you can certainly squeak into the playoffs with no realistic hope in hell of winning a championship. The only reason we’re even talking about this is that the Hawks are in the NFC West. Would we be discussing their playoff chances if we were in the NFC North? How about the NFC South? It’s ridiculously short-sighted to pin our hopes on a 9-7 season, a #4 seed and then watch while some 11-5 #5 seed wildcard blows us out of our own building. Pinning your hopes on the 12th man? Ok. Let’s assume we win a hard-fought affair over, oh, I don’t know, Philadelphia, at Qwest. Then we travel in the divisional round to either the #1 seed or the #2 seed in the conference and get decimated. And then we come to April 2011, with a draft slot in the low 20s and no shot at getting a difference-maker at QB.

That is what we will get by playing Matt, a state of the world where our absolute best hope is to get smoked in the divisionals. We know what we have with Matt, and what we have, god bless him, is a formerly good-to-great QB who no longer worries defenses about the deep ball. Who is limited to dinking and dunking his way down the field. And whose legs can’t carry him to safety when the O-line collapses too quickly.

Charlie might not be the guy to get us a championship either, and from what we’ve seen in the preseason, he probably isn’t. But give him a shot. We’ll learn more than we will with Matt still at the helm, and we’ll probably end up with a better draft slot for 2011 if he’s not a QB we can build a champion around.

How long before the defense grows tired of saving the day. Was that part of last years four game melt-down at the end of the season?

I am unsure whether the commenter of the forum read this blog. It’s clear its not the fault of only the qb. The offensive line looked horrible. Players were dropping balls or passes were not there. The tips and calls favored the Rams. Our special teams got obliterated and humiliated. The rookie but ridiculously well composed Ram qb had a field day with our defense…… consider all the dropped balls by his receivers. This game was just plain ugly.

I said fourth game should show what the seahawks are about. Well i think seahawks do not know who they are themselves as one of the announcers said and as much as I love Matt.

I believe it’s time to throw in our 2qb and see what we have. He’s been in the league long enough we traded away a possible starting lineman for next year to get him. Matt will not be coming back if this team continues to show a lack of identity.

I understand we needed to get Okung back in there but didn’t anybody else notice the linebackers pouring over the right side of the line? The guys I was watching the game with were groaning about Hasselbeck waiting with the ball, which kind of puzzled me. I don’t remember a single pass play where he was able to wait more than two seconds and it seems like we kept everybody in to block except Stokely on most third downs. Any receiver outside the slot was irrelevant because of instant pressure, mostly from linebackers, corners and safeties, I think.

I heard on the radio this morning that St Louis shut down both our pass and rush offense in the cover-2 for most of the game. That seemed like their second half adjustment: go to cover-2 and stay there. The only reason that could work is ineffective run blocking, which points to bad play by the right guard and tackle. It’s hard to tell, though. The line is just as much a unit as any other; one piece missing has as much effect as Trufant did for the defensive backfield.

We’re going to have a lot of trouble in Chicago if we can’t get decent play from the line. There’s no scheme that compensates for pressure from a four-man rush and that’s exactly what Chicago and Julius Peppers are going to bring… but then who can tell? I would have told you last week that our o-line would be the strongest part of the team against the Rams with Okung back and Polumbus moving over to right tackle.

A competent QB also has to know the offense, where the receivers will be, instinctively. Neither Matt or Charlie has been with this offense very long (Matt slightly longer than Charlie). A guy who looks indecisive or throws balls to the wrong spot could be also struggling with a new offense (as Matt admits).

Maybe Charlie just hasn’t shown the coaches he has a better grasp of the offense yet. If he and Matt had mastered it the same amount, then the argument to star him (talent over experience) is much easier to make.

Given the state of the OL, it may also be that Pete isn’t willing to throw Charlie in the backfield yet. He may feel like it’s a bad idea to do this until he can throw the same 5 OL out there on 2 consecutive weeks. Think about it, screwed up OL, new offense being learned by all the players, no running game. Is this where you want to throw your new QB?

The Arizona situation is an interesting analog. Same offense, mostly same OL, mosty WRs and RBs that know the offense, new QB, bad result.

Our situation: new offense, 3-4 out of 5 new OL, RBs and WRs don’t know the offense (except now for Stokely).

I expect that me, and Pete Carrol, and any of you would all have different thresholds for when we would be willing to stop waiting for Matt to come around based on these other things. Given that Pete’s a new coach and doesn’t have a long history of playing the crappier of 2 QBs, I think we have to give him a break here.

Matt has historically played poorly his first year running an offense (2009, 2010, 2001). That was certainly what I thought last year, that he looked an awful lot like the same guy who had us calling for Dilfer in Husky stadium in 2001. Will we hear calls for Whitehurst in 2010 at Qwest?

I guess my point is that while I’m about ready for Charlie to come in, I understand if Pete wants to hold off until his OL gets straightened out and his team knows the offense better. In any event, even if Charlie sucks, I’m glad we forced Arizona to take Anderson!

I say we play matt till his engine turn over like shaun alexander!