The 7-7 Seahawks and the Hot Team Narrative

I don’t necessarily agree with bringing in T-Jack in lieu of resigning Hass, but who could have expected any different for the first half? They had (and still have) a lot of holes, and they were expected to lose @SF, @PIT, ATL, @NYG, and DAL.

Why is it so difficult for people to buy into a ‘long-term over short-term’ mindset? Sure, I’d love for the Seahawks to try to win now at all costs, but I’d much rather they lay a foundation upon which a competitive team could be built and, more importantly, sustained.

Robert Gallery’s run blocking has been a at least as big a part of Marshawn Lynch’s late season success as Okung’s run blocking. Even with Okung in the lineup, I’m not sure we get that many more yards against the Bears.

It actually is a much different team than the first four weeks. Gone are Trufant, Thurmond, and Curry, all starters. In are Browner, Wright, and Sherman who have all gone from backups to impact players before our very eyes. Vince Young may not be very good, but he “managed” 400 yards against the Patriots without his “best receiver” the week before the Seattle game.

Thanks. Good to know.

We are on our way to being a good team. More importantly we are building up a very young core who will help us to compete for a long time, not just a year or so window.
With the D and the run game we should be able to continue to improve and win while adding a top end QB. We might not truely compete until that is done in a couple of years, but it will be fun and not painful like some rebuilds.

Browner took about 6 weeks to get up to NFL speed. He’ll still get burned by speedsters but he’s not the same player that suited up week one. Neither is KJ. He still makes rookie mistakes, but he’s picked up the game quickly and has replaced the heartburn from Curry with promising play.

And Sherman has turned out to be an upgrade over an aging Trufant. So the corners have progressed immensely.

But with the emergence of Kam Bam as an enforcer has actually changed the way other teams play the Seahawks. What started out the season as a weakness is now something teams fear.

They are going to be monsters next season.

is an archaic approach that can pay dividends but ultimately, intrinsically allows the most effective component to winning (passing) to continue making an impact.

What I see in Brian Burke’s research that definitively demonstrates the superior value of the pass to the run, is the state of things in the league right now. Change the balance of run to pass from the current roughly 1.25:1 ratio to more than 1.5:1 and both offenses & defenses will respond. It wouldn’t be the same game anymore and the value of each play type relative to each other would shift.

Great defenses built for the battle of attrition, this Steelers model that we’re emulating, has knocked out elite passing offenses many, many times. They’ve also been cut open by elite passing offenses. I dunno what the mix of winners & losers looks like in those battles, but I’ve often seen Steeler-like teams overcome & beat great passing teams despite their not being able to stop the pass much.

And to boot, when elite passing offenses — historically elite passing offenses — that we’ve seen recently, when they shred an elite defense, it’s really not a matter of scheme. A pass defense-oriented team (of which I honestly can’t think of a single example; I know Mike Leach used nickel as the base package to respond to the spread, and Mike Nolan tried the same, but with awful results) still often does not stop an elite passing attack. It’s a matter of talent, the rules, and the nature of the game, not scheme. Scheme should acknowledge the nature of the game and respond in kind, but if I ever see a great pass defense forsake the run and still remain effective, I’ll reconsider.

The factor that’s lost in measuring the value of each play type is the response to physicality. This style definitely forces opponents to play your game. It’s a strange thing, how much seeds of truth can lie in what I used to think were empty platitudes. I can empirically see the difference the “punch you in the mouth” effect has in a game. This is the effect.

It is good as a fan to be reminded that this team still has significant weaknesses and holes that will (hopefully) be filled over the off-season/draft. I also think that the point about not becoming the 2011 Buccaneers is important, while they definitely weren’t as good as their record would seem to indicate last year, losing most of an off-season’s worth of coaching truly stunted their growth.

The Seahawks are not an elite team yet, nor are we a bottom-feeder and Beekers, you are correct in your statement that we are not fundamentally different from the team that went 2-6.

I would respectfully argue, however, that we are a better team for having won in fairly convincing fashion over the last month+ of games. Momentum and the mentality that goes with it is a very real thing. We might try to dismiss it being fans, but the players themselves are human too and the effect of winning and knowing you’re winning in dominant fashion generally acts to bring out the best in your performance.

While the pieces are not that different in the Seahawks of the 2nd half of the season, I would argue that our players are performing at a higher level because of the experience they have gained, and the confidence that they now have in themselves and in their coaching. I do not believe that you can discount this in the grand scheme of the game, and that we would have different results were we to replay many of the games against the better teams that you mentioned.

I echo the Lord Humongous in saying that, while I don’t necessarily agree with a lot of what you wrote, I do understand and appreciate the effort and thought you put into expressing a viewpoint you knew likely wouldn’t be very popular. From the comments, it looks like a lot of people are reading this as a big raincloud, but honestly, after reading so much of your work, I can say pretty emphatically that this is definitely positive Beekers. ;)

That being said, I think that just as the majority of fans overestimate the abilities of the Seahawks and inject a decent amount of hyperbole into their descriptions and expectations of the team, your naturally objective, down-to-earth, “glass half empty” perspective on things tends to sell the Seahawks short. Nine times out of ten your observations are spot-on, because the rest of us tend to suffer from a much more (unrealistic) sanguine outlook. But in this case, I do believe you’re selling ’em too short.

This team may have spent the second half of the season feasting on some favorable matchups and taking advantage of the weaknesses and injuries of its opponents, but I don’t think one can really argue with the numbers they’ve produced, especially over the last six games. Over that period, this defense has allowed nine touchdowns, and scored three. I don’t care what level of competition you’re facing, giving up an average of 1.5 touchdowns per game is just about as bloody close to elite as I can comprehend.

I wholeheartedly agree that this defense really really needs another elite pass-rushing talent, and could use some better depth at linebacker, and perhaps also at defensive tackle. But when you’re upgrading from performances like the above, you’re not going from flawed and average to really good — you’re going from really good to legendarily dominant.

This system — the combination of this offense with this defense — is not an elite system (yet). However, it is a winning system. And really, can we ask for or expect anything else at this point? We can’t expect this team to shut down an elite passing attack, true. But to judge this current defense against that sort of a standard seems rather silly, since an elite passing attack is an elite passing attack for just that reason, and there aren’t many of them. So building your defense upon the precept that “we will shut down elite passing attacks” is commendable, but more of a “shoot for the moon and land in the stars” sort of approach. And considering a defense flawed because it can’t be expected to shut down an elite passing attack is tantamount to judging that defense for not being one of a small handful in NFL history.

This defense will discourage the run and give your passing game a run for its money. It may surrender a lot of yardage, but it will trade that for turnovers and big hits that discourage an offense. The best passing performances they’ve given up this season (coincidentally (or not) coming at the hands of the best QBs they’ve faced) were when they were starting Aaron Curry and a less NFL-mature Brandon Browner and Richard Sherman (and did include some unlucky and flukey plays, like the tip drill to Victor Cruz). To say even this pass defense is fundamentally the same as the one that surrendered those performances just really reads like shallow analysis, in my opinion (and I know such a thing doesn’t exist with you). I sincerely do not believe Eli Manning, Tony Romo, Ben Roethlisberger, or Matt Ryan would have the same performances against this current D.

In conclusion, I think this current defense is definitely top 10 material, and with some added parts, we’re looking at a consistently top 5 — or dare I hope? — a top 3 squad. However, I understand your position, and I sincerely appreciate your analysis and the voice you bring to the site. Field Gulls is far and away the most intelligent all-around SB Nation NFL site, without question, and it’s due in large part to contributions like this article, Beeks.

For example, when Trufant and subsequently Thurmond went down, I thought our season was over from a defensive standpoint. I thought those were guys we couldn’t lose. But we still had Sherman, who stepped in beautifully. When Carlson was announced as out for the year, sure we still had Miller, but he was unproven in the context of our team and had no one to play in a second TE set. If I recall, he even missed a game or two. Point being, we’ve had important guys go out throughout the year, and have discovered that they weren’t as important as we thought they were.

We don’t really have a Matt Forte or Jay Cutler to lose. We don’t have that kind of established talent on this roster outside of Sidney Rice (gone) and MAYBE Marshawn Lynch (missed a few games). So when we lose SEVERAL starters to injury, that’s got to be considered a loss. I mean, you look at what the projected lineup was going into abb. training camp, we’re missing six starters on offense (Carlson, Okung, Moffitt, Carpenter, Williams, Rice) and three on defense (Curry, Trufant, Thurmond). I mean, that’s nine projected starters on a team without the Vicks and Maclins of the world to help hide some of those losses.

We’ve become much more talented under the reign of Carroll and Schneider, but even without their stars, many of the teams we have played (and beat) still have more ability than we do. We’re still winning.

So I had the energy to make a more thorough argument. I don’t. I think this team in equal to or greater than the ‘04 or ’06 Hawks teams, and closing in the ’07 Hawks. he things I would point to would be explosive plays – specifically against the ’Hawks by average or terrible competition – road record and overall road viability – even in the ’Hawks ’heyday’ of ‘03-’07 Seattle was a dubious road team – the team’s performance against poor competition – you can win a division by beating up on wussies – and the team’s ability to close out games. This ‘Hawks team is so superior to the 2010 iteration it doesn’t even really warrant this sentence.

And the cherry? This team is far younger and had every reason to think it will be improved in 2012.

I HATE the injuries argument.

“If X hadn’t gotten hurt than Y would have happened.”

Injuries are as part of football as special teams and teams that neglect the fact that they are do so at their own peril (kinda like the 2010 Chargers with special teams). First off there’s no way to know what Y is or was or might have been, but you can always pretty much count on some X getting hurt. The ‘Hawks knocked off a Cutler-Forte-Hester Bears team in Chi-town in 2010; were the Bears not as good then as they were a month ago? Okay. Who’s to say a Cutler-Forte-Hester Bears team would’ve been as good two days ago as they were a month ago? No one, because there’s no way to know. Talking about what could’ve been makes about as much sense as me spending copious amounts of time wondering where I would take Kristen Bell for dinner – if she were, and if I knew, and if, and if, and if.

Everyone deals with injuries which makes for unpredictable results, which pundits hate because the veil of expertise falls until you see how the healthy youngsters play when they’re plugged in (this is the same with losing a lot of ‘valuable’ free agents). And yet there are several teams that seem to always overcome those injuries because they’ve planned ahead with depth that is only made possible through good scouting, team management, and coaching.

Injuries are part of the game, and because our back-up talent turned out the be better than their back-up talent doesn’t make us fortunate, it makes us better.

because Hanie and Young played. The Bears have been competitive in all their other games with Hanie as the starter and the Eagles beat the Giants with VY as the starter. In the their other loss the Eagles were blown out, of course that game was against New England. I don’t think the Hawks are elite by any means, I’m hesitant to say were good. I do think we are above average though. Say what you will about the hot streak coming against inferior and injury plagued teams. Good teams make bad teams look bad, plain and simple and that’s what the Seahawks have been doing in the second half of the season.

Never leave us Writers of Field Gulls.

It was kind of like I’ve drunken a bit to much and beekers came up and took my bottle. It upset me a little, but I’ll be grateful in the morning. This Hawk-Aid tastes great, but I better slow down. Thanks Beekers.
*My first comment on the new Android app. It’s not bad.