FanPost

The time to bench Hasselbeck isn't now


I know the popular reaction here. I know the idea has everyone doing cartwheels and throwing up their hands with bright neon landing lights waving, telling Pete Carroll that benching Hasselbeck now is the best chance for the future. The problem isn't that Hasselbeck's play demands we take a look at it, but that Pete Carroll doesn't get to say definitively that Matt Hasselbeck has played poorly enough to throw everyone else's work away and then tell the players, "Hey guys, this is about the future."

Once you bench Hasselbeck, no matter how Ryan Leaf, no matter how A.J. Feely no matter if Charlie Whitehurst looks like Charlie Batch. You have to stick with him and ride whatever play he's able to give you or not give you. It's too early to be that drastic. Mathew Hasselbeck is a know quantity, for us fans we have seen his last two seasons and as the article calling for his benching said "Matt is dead and buried". Or at least doomed to repeat himself, trapped in the final days of athlete purgatory, caught between good enough and terrible.

The question isn't if we should move on from Hasselbeck now, that answer clearly is no from a Carroll perspective and it's an absolutely fair and logical answer. Hasselbeck hasn't been bad for Carroll the last two or three years. We can cry and bang our chests and slam our feet and throw soap at the television but Carroll has more than QB issues in his future. Pete is two games in as a new coach with the need to show players what he wants them to buy into. No Matt isn't the long or even the most immediate term answer here, but this move is a message to the players, a huge one and benching him now is the wrong one, at least two games in. So the question should be, when is the best time to tell Charlie Whitehurst that he has to carry this team to the finish line, no one to bail him out, do or die? What if this team is 2-2 and division leaders after the bye? This is much messier when you have to consider the present and 52 other players.

Hollow as it sounds, as bad as it feels, the only way I believe Matt comes off that field is when an injury sees him unable to play this season. Charlie time comes then and only then and that's the best scenario for everyone.