GAMETIME BABY!

Injuries: Marshawn Lynch will sit. Russell Okung (ankle), SS Kam Chancellor (foot), DE Pierre Allen (hamstring), DE Dexter Davis (hip) and TE John Carlson (shoulder) will not play either. TE Cameron Morrah, WR Deon Butler, DB Roy Lewis, and DT Colin Cole are still on the PUP and won't even be ready by Week 1.

Gametime!

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First game for Sidney Rice as a Seahawk. First game for Atari Bigby as a Seahawk. First home game of the season. First ever Seahawks game in "the CLink." Brandon Mebane is back. Red Bryant is back. 

Confirmation from Curtis Crabtree: WR Deon Butler, CB Kelly Jennings, CB Walter Thurmond, CB Roy Lewis, DE A.J. Schable, DT Jay Alford, LT Russell Okung, WR Ben Obomanu, TE Cameron Morrah, TE John Carlson, DT Colin Cole, DE Chris Clemons and DE Pierre Allen will not play.

Let's talk it out. What are you drankin? I'm all about the courvoisier. 

What's that?

Football?

Hell yeah!

With a shortened off-season, this should be a messy, unattractive game. We should see a ton of snaps from our 2nd and 3rd stringers who are fighting to survive the 75-man and 53-man cuts on August 30th and September 3rd, or earlier cuts as Pete does his regular cycling talent in and out.

Read Danny's piece on Seahawks to watch here. Not expected to play are WRs Deon Butler, Mike Williams, Sidney Rice, Kris Durham, Ben Obomanu CBs Walter Thurmond, Roy Lewis, DEs Dexter Davis, Jay Alford, Red Bryant, Chris Clemons, OT Chaz Piurowski, TE Cameron Morrah, DT Colin Cole, Kentwan Balmer and Ryan Sims.

If you're like me, you didn't sleep very well last night. Today's game is not about validating the 2010 season. It's about beating the Chicago Bears. It's about taking one more big step towards making and winning the Super Bowl. It's about hosting the NFC Championship Game. I feel optimistic, maybe more than I should. It's a hell of a thing to feel optimistic in large part because you do not respect your opponent, and maybe that will bite me in the ass. Maybe the Bears are the better team. Maybe the Bears are about to crush the Seahawks.

All this went through my head two weeks ago leading up to Saints-Seahawks. It reverberated after the Seahawks fell behind by ten points not once but twice. It felt for a little while like not only was I about to watch the Seahawks get blown out, but that I was foolish for thinking anything else was possible. Yet here I am thinking it all over again.

Whether the Bears are beatable or not, the Seahawks must be a good team to win today. The Seahawks must be able to build on something they have shown in the past two games. They smothered and shutdown the Rams anemic offense. They exploded for 415 yards and 41 points against the Saints. In both games, Seattle was able to run the ball. In both games, Seattle flashed an adequate run defense.

We are sure to hear that the Bears are more committed to running the ball. I am still struggling to believe that. In yesterday's game thread, bdf128 mentioned that Football Outsiders stated that the Bears had run on 35% of first half attempts before the bye and 44% of first half attempts after the bye. That sounds meaningful, but consider that we're working from 414 total rushing attempts, that we are then removing the entire second half and thus likely half or more of all rushing attempts, and then splitting the season between pre-bye (seven games) and post-bye (nine games). We are left with two buckets containing about 100 rush attempts apiece. The difference between 35% and 44% could be nine attempts. It could easily be fewer, if more than half of Chicago's rushes were attempted in the second half. So let's not  throw what we know about Mike Martz out the window on account of some miracle transformation. Maybe the Bears will rush the ball. Maybe a few early stuffs, or incomplete passes, or a strong Northwesterly wind inspires Martz into his whacky ways and the Bears go passing nuts.

Chicago's commitment to running the football falls into a larger argument that the Bears have transformed since their week six loss to Seattle. I believe that even less. Chicago is still as dependent on Julius Peppers as it was then, and if Russell Okung can stonewall Peppers, it will take a significant bite out of the Bears defense. The Bears still win through defense and special teams, and if the Seahawks can establish a lead like they did in week six, the Bears still have one of the worst offenses in football. That means comeback attempts can boomerang. The Bears still start two of the worst offensive tackles in the NFL, and the Seahawks specialize in edge rush. Seattle may not be a better team, and Seattle is not overall a better team, but the Bears present winnable matchups at critical positions.

Seattle needs to protect Matt Hasselbeck. Hasselbeck needs to be able to negotiate tighter coverage after feasting on the Saints blitzes. The Seahawks must be prudent with their blitzes and not overmatch their corners. Marcus Trufant needs be a lot better against Johnny Knox than he was in week six. The Seahawks need to play from ahead and not attempt a comeback against one the league's best defenses. The run and pass need to work right away, through the first fifteen plays, and help Seattle get on the board early. The Seahawks need to do whatever it takes to push Martz towards his preferred game plan, be it stop the run early on, build an early lead, force unfavorable down and distance or just hold on and wait. And if and when Martz does unleash the pig, Chris Clemons and Raheem Brock must dominate Frank Omiyale and J'Marcus Webb, Gus and Pete and Dan must deploy creative blitz packages from Bandit, and Earl Thomas must be there to double patterns down the sidelines and defend the deep middle.

It's not as easy as being better. The Seahawks are underdogs for a reason. It is as easy as being better -- better coached, better schemed, better today -- in the matchups the Seahawks need to be better. Not everyday, but today. Not on paper, but on the playing field. Not in the Sunday edition, but in the Monday edition. The Seahawks are not a better team than the Bears, but if the Seahawks can be the better team today, this bunch of rejects, late bloomers, long shots, cast offs and has-beens will be hosting the NFC Championship Game.

SEA!

This is a game thread for those that are rooting for the Seahawks to win. If you want the Seahawks to lose, use this thread. I respect both perspectives, but in my heart I just can not root against the Seahawks on game day.

Here's how I see tonight's game:

If the Seahawks make the playoffs, there will be a huge opportunity cost. Wherever your loyalty lies, whatever you think is best for the franchise, that cost can not be ignored. Seattle needs to make the playoffs and then shape into a playoff team, because the worst possible outcome is that the Seahawks squeak by the Rams and are then blown out by the Saints.

There is more at stake than just winning or losing. The Seahawks must play like a good team. The Seahawks must begin playing like a playoff team if they want a playoff berth to be anything more than a symbolic (Pyrrhic) victory.

The best possible outcome is that Seattle plays like and in fact becomes a good team. That is hugely dependent on Charlie Whitehurst. If Whitehurst has a breakout game, the Seahawks win and Whitehurst is able to continue that breakout into and through the playoffs, Seattle can use its first round pick on one of its other glaring needs and see if Whitehurst can develop into a true franchise quarterback. He's no guarantee, but no one is.

The rub is that Whitehurst may not start.

What then can be accomplished? That's hard to say. Someone out there must think it's still possible that Hasselbeck rebounds, and maybe a playoff run would win Matt Hasselbeck a contract extension. So, take that however you will.

Apart from the basic playoff-draft pick dichotomy, other things are at stake for Seattle. Young talent like Russell Okung, Earl Thomas, Walter Thurmond, Aaron Curry and slightly more seasoned talent like Brandon Mebane, David Hawthorne, Kentwan Balmer, Marshawn Lynch, Chris Spencer, Mike Williams, Ben Obomanu, John Carlson and Justin Forsett can play like the foundation of an emerging contender, or a backlog of bad contracts soon to be liquidated. High draft pick or no, any hope of contention in 2011 or 2012 is found on this roster, and not in the next two draft classes.

Pete Carroll, Gus Bradley and Dan Quinn can field a talent poor defense that is well coached, hard working and expertly utilized, or the Seahawks defensive braintrust can field the same sloppy, slow, poor tackling, unaware and underutilized defense that has taken the field for most of the season.

Jeremy Bates, brother, we believe in you, but it's time for you to give us something to believe in. Youth, a strong reputation, success in Denver and a maniacal commitment to improvement is an exciting profile, but we're nearly a season in and I am racking my brain trying to remember a moment I felt proud you were the Seahawks coordinator. Potential buys you time, but you're being paid to script smart game plans. Show us something.

If Sam Bradford is worth a damn, this could be an important moment in NFC West history. The Rams are clearly on the rise. The Rams are two steps ahead of the Seahawks toward a full rebuild. Seattle can look like the losers that made this bed, that created this showdown of two of the NFL's worst for the least prestigious division title in NFL history; Seattle can get blown by a bad team in front of world, at home, for the division, against an ascending rookie, on an ascending team, or the Seahawks can fight for every damn inch of gridiron and say, if only for one Sunday, the NFC West is ours. The NFC West title runs through Seattle.

SEA!

One of two guaranteed games left. Time to show us this season was worth a damn, Seahawks.

Seattle has won six games this season. Six games! Six Sundays it felt good to be a Seahawks fan. If Seattle could win today, it would be seven. A sweet, sweet seven. And that's as far as I am willing to set my goals. The playoffs should be had through winning, not unprecedented failure by others.

A win doesn't seem very likely, of course. The Falcons are 11-2. The Seahawks are 6-7 and crumbling. It took a full five days for the loss to the 49ers to fully set in, but seeing San Diego walk them off the field confirmed my worst suspicion. Since week one, the 49ers have not become drastically better, but the Seahawks have become drastically worse.

Seattle has lost seven games this season. Seven games that were not tough fought but fruitless. Seven weekends in which it wasn't just hard to be a Seahawks fan, it was downright discouraging.

Win probability is an advanced stat that benefits from intuitive recognition. We don't necessarily need to know Seattle's win probability at any point within a game to know the Seahawks are likely to lose (or win!), but as a football fan, as a Seahawks fan, we know the descent all too well. Much of Seattle's season has looked like this:

And this:

And this:

And that, a whole half of desperate, meaningless football, has been a regular part of Seattle's seven losses.

Maybe a win is a long shot if not impossible, but competitive football should be in reach. Play your guts out, Seahawks, and give Qwest something to cheer about.

Please.

Things are busy/bad at the Morgan household so I probably won't be around much today.

... and this is the defining game of the Seahawks season.

SEA!

The Panthers are pretty talented -- probably more talented than the Seahawks. The offensive line still run blocks very well. I am not wild about Jonathan Stewart or Mike Goodson, but Goodson is pretty good between the tackles and Stewart is dangerous in space. The defense plays hard and is talented. The back seven covers pretty well and Charles Johnson is an emerging star at defensive end.

The Panther are pretty talented and probably more talented than the Seahawks, but the quarterback situation has been a mess. Watching Jimmy Clausen against the Bucs and the Browns, he still displays plenty of the qualities that impressed me. He has a quick, compact release. Healthy, he has good short and mid-range zip and can fit it into a tight window. He has nice accuracy on the deep pass. Clausen always, always, always looks down field, and unless he's faking it, he looks like he reads coverage pretty well for a rookie.

That hasn't helped him so far. Clausen doesn't seem to get the offense. He doesn't lock onto one receiver like some quarterbacks, or not as much, but he does take way too long to make a decision. Routes go dead, pressure arrives, Clausen doesn't negotiate pressure very well, and though his arm isn't bad, he's pretty short and pretty slight and he doesn't generate a lot of zip when he can't step up, or is falling backward, or is under duress. He doesn't make smart decisions under pressure. That combination of slow read, eyes always down field, limited arm strength and poor decision making leads to some ugly attempts consummated with terrible throws.

So, the Panthers overall are a bad team, and with Seattle's use of zones and edge rush, it wouldn't surprise if Seattle turned this into a turnover fueled blowout.

But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the parallel situation the 2009 Seahawks found themselves in week 15 of last season. The 1-12 Tampa Bay Buccaneers traveled to Qwest to face the 5-8 Seahawks. No one thought the Seahawks were good, but surely they could beat Tampa at home. Instead, Josh Freeman had a respectable showing and the Bucs soundly beat the Seahawks.

Tampa is 7-4 this season. A young team on the rise beat an old team collapsing down the stretch.

I don't think that will happen today, but I no longer know what to expect from the Seahawks. This should be a walk. If you're like me and you can't help but feel ambivalent about Seattle being in the thick of a playoff run but playing like one of the worst teams in the NFL, there are still five games for this team to improve. More than the playoffs, that's what I really want: The Seahawks to be good again.