When I first told people that this was going to be my first offseason study, I was met with mixed reactions.

I am one of the more gregarious, sanguine people you'll meet, and details haven't always really been my thing. I am generally a very pleasant and charismatic soul. But... well, we'll put it this way: when I was younger my grandpa had two pet sayings for me- "If common sense was gold, you'd be about a plug nickel" and "If silence was golden, you'd be dirty copper." You would never have described me with words like "thorough", "detail-oriented", "hard-working", or "reliable." So most of my family raised a collective eyebrow when I happened upon an accounting major after a year and half spent in college trying to pin down what I "want to be when I grow up."

You see, despite my personality's prevailing inclinations, I have a deeply suspicious and analytical side, and I have spent/wasted many days in my life searching for the underlying thread linking various phenomena. I always want to know Why??", to find patterns or coincidences that might give deeper insight into any particular reality. This is what made advanced statistics -- in both the NFL and the MLB -- so incredibly appealing to me.

Well, I quickly learned that accounting is super interesting and a lot of fun- until you get about a year and a half into accounting classes. Then it starts really sucking. Consolidation of financial statements, translation of foreign currency financial statements, income taxation, and all that sort of lovely stuff. So I came to my senses and switched to international business, which is just a lot better (read: easier). However, I'm a glutton for punishment and I didn't want to let myself off easy. So I picked an insipid self-flagellation of a project to take up the next two months of my life, because, you know, apparently my life wasn't boring enough yet.

So what does this have to do with you guys? Well, pretty much, I understand that most of the nitty-gritty of each of these articles isn't going to be all that interesting. And the parts that do catch the eye are typically going to be of the ire-raising sort. It's never especially fulfilling to read in graphic detail all the myriad of ways your favorite team cocked up its own season.

But I'm not really going through this whole process purely for the process itself. If at any point I begin to derive pleasure from the process of wading through this tripe, please recommend me for institutionalization. No, my goal is to be able to truly and accurately analyze this "penalty problem" as it relates to this team going forward, and the only way to establish a basis for that discussion is to remove the noise from the equation. A number of factors cloud the picture right now- no offseason coupled with high turnover and a lot of rookies, veterans who won't be around next year, and referee bias, among other things.

So bear with me, despite the bland and aggravating nature of the project- in the end, our discussion will be more informed for having survived the journey.

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Let's jump right in and get this first one over with. I'm not sure there's another game I'd rather see less than this one. Eww Niners.

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1-10-SF 42 (11:48) (Shotgun) T.Jackson pass incomplete short left to M.Lynch. PENALTY on SEA-A.McCoy, Offensive Pass Interference, 10 yards, enforced at SF 42 - No Play.

Who, you might wonder, began this veritable spree of unruliness? Why the young Master Anthony McCoy, indeed. Yes, Mr. McCoy, you can't do this.

The NFL rulebook states, "Actions that constitute offensive pass interference include but are not limited to: (a) Blocking downfield by an offensive player prior to the ball being touched. (b) Initiating contact with a defender by shoving or pushing off thus creating a separation in an attempt to catch a pass. (c) Driving through a defender who has established a position on the field."

At first I thought to attribute this to a young kid getting excited about the first game of the season, but there's Zach Miller out there too, gettin' down and dirty too early.

2-8-SF 40 (11:00) L.Washington left tackle to SF 33 for 7 yards (P.Willis). Penalty on SEA-R.Okung, Offensive Holding, offsetting, enforced at SF 40 - No Play. Penalty on SF-A.Brooks, Defensive Offside, offsetting.

Pretty simple here. Seattle is lined up in I-formation with Michael Robinson and Leon Washington in the backfield. Mike Williams is split out wide right, and Golden Tate and Zach Miller are out wide left. Miller motions in just before the snap, Brooks jumps offsides, and Unger snaps the ball. It's a designed run off left tackle, with Carlson blocking out Aldon Smith and Russell Okung tasked with eliminating Justin Smith. MikeRob lead blocks and chips at Aldon as he runs by. Leon speeds thru the gap created between Russell and Carlson and passes Robinson. If Mike had headed straight through the gap and hit the waiting Donte Whitner, who knows how this might have broken out.

But in the end, it doesn't matter, because as Russell steamrolls Justin Smith, he has two big handfuls of that spiteful red jersey. He keeps his hands between the pads and just runs Smith backwards, but as the big Niner begins to surrender ground as Washington whisks by, the sudden lack of resistance throws Big Russ off his groove and he stumbles forward/is thrown down and doesn't let go of the jersey before the grab is obvious. And of course, Smith throws a little tantrum to satisfy his inner diva.

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The Seahawks commit penalties. Lots of them. This was a common narrative in game threads this year, and many articles were written questioning Pete Carroll's coaching style and ability to instill discipline in the troops, etc.

Around these here parts, we've gotten used to disciplined, soft, composed Mike Holmgren teams, so seeing this aggressive, tough and sometimes too intense squad of behemoths has been, in some cases, a breath of fresh air. Starting fullback Mike Robinson pointed out that the Seahawks have been overcoming the perception that they were "soft" and unwilling to "hit for 60 minutes."

However, their youthful mistakes have spawned an epidemic of baldness in the Pacific Northwest as the Twelfth Man has exasperatedly torn handfuls of hair from its collective head, wondering when the team will finally tone down on the penalties.

Our esteemed compatriot Hawkblogger did some good work researching Pete Carroll's past teams to discern a pattern -- are Pete Carroll's teams like Dennis Erickson's? Just notoriously sloppy and undisciplined? Or is something else in play? I would recommend reading both of the above linked pieces before continuing.

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I nearly entitled this article: "Man, that third quarter sucked ass."

The Seahawks had themselves in a good position coming out of the Half with a 10-3 lead. They had an 18:10 to 11:15 time of possession advantage, had outgained the Niners 195-122, had won the field position game by forcing San Francisco to start, on average, from their own 16 yard line through four first half drives.

Some say that the momentum shift came on that botched 3rd and goal situation late in the 2nd quarter and some say it was the 49ers converted fourth down with 12:41 in the 3rd at Seattle's 40 yard line to keep their initial 2nd half drive alive that turned the tide. Either way, the Seahawks played an awful third quarter and ultimately it may have cost them the game, from a momentum standpoint and a 'finish them' mentality. Instead, they entered the fourth quarter trailing and reeling.

Several things contributed to the Seahawks yielding ten unanswered points in the third to squander their lead. Offensively, they didn't do themselves any favors by gaining exactly THIRTEEN YARDS, SIX NET YARDS IF YOU'RE COUNTING PENALTIES. Much has been made this season of the Seahawks as a second half team and I think that's largely been true and well-deserved. It, however, wasn't the case in this one. Advantage, extremely San Francisco.

The special teams units played poorly as well. Maybe I should have noted this before I included the offensive output numbers for the Seahawks in the third quarter, because it surely didn't help their efforts to be starting their first drive from their 15 (on a kickoff) and their second drive from their own 14 (on another kickoff). Starting from the 14, 15 yard line is understandable when you're talking about punts because generally speaking it's more common to get stuck in your own end by another teams' punt units. Kickoffs are another story, and it's fairly inexcusable for Leon to not even make it to the 20-yard line twice in a row on crucial drives.

Maybe (ok, probably) it's because of the new kickoff rules, but in prior years it was rare for a player to bring kickoffs out of the endzone when catching it 8, 9 yards deep. It's now become commonplace.

I'm not blaming Leon, necessarily, and Pete Carroll mentioned in his presser that Leon has a license to kill more or less when it comes to bringing it out every time because of his big play potential. The big play is powerful. Leon is one of the best. That said, for whatever reason, the return teams were not at their best on Sunday, and were borderline awful in that third quarter.

Obviously, the point has to be made that San Francisco's special teams coverage is excellent, as is their return unit, and they proved that once again against the Seahawks when they returned a long, low trajectory Jon Ryan punt 36 yards to the Seahawks' 48 yard line to start their second drive after a Seahawks' quick three-and-out. Special teams advantage, very San Francisco.

The Seahawks' defense fared no better in the third. They gave up over 100 yards, were frequently gashed by the Niners rushing attack, and could not or would not guard Vernon Davis, who had two huge receptions for first downs, including that godawful fourth down situation.

Here was one sequence of plays that had me pulling my hair out.

2-14-SF 48 (8:24) (Shotgun) K.Hunter left tackle to SEA 46 for 6 yards (K.Chancellor).
3-8-SEA 46 (7:41) (Shotgun) Alex Smith scrambles left end to SEA 34 for 12 yards (L.Hill).
1-10-SEA 34 (6:55) F.Gore up the middle to SEA 23 for 11 yards (K.Chancellor, L.Hill).
R15 1-10-SEA 23 (6:15) F.Gore right end to SEA 17 for 6 yards (R.Sherman).
 - PENALTY on SEA-R.Sherman, Horse Collar Tackle, 9 yards, enforced at SEA 17.

This led, thankfully, to only a field goal, but can kind of give you a snapshot of what went wrong in the third quarter as things spiraled out of control.

Now, the good news. As we've seen this season, and what represents a marked improvement from last, the Seahawks didn't bow out despite, for lack of a better way of putting it, looking like sh*t in the third quarter. That, and despite doing absolutely nothing on offense and surrendering 10 points, they still only trailed by three going into the fourth. They fought, scraped, and persevered into the fourth quarter, even recapturing the lead until the 3:01 mark. Even after going down again late, they put themselves in a position to win the game on their final two drives before coming up short. Now, obviously they couldn't execute that comeback, but it is encouraging to see them hang with a tough team in the fourth quarter.

Anyway, a lot of good things to take away from that game and I detailed some of those things here, talking about the Seahawks finely executed opening drive and here, talking about the Seahawks success running the football.

But.

Man, that third quarter sucked ass.

So I know I'm not the X's and O's guy. Not even close. Danny, Thomas, and Charlie do plenty of that and to be honest, they know the intricacies of the game better than I do. I'm still hoping that they do some more posts where they teach people about the terminology and schemes, so that I don't have to straight up ask and look dumb, I can just read it and say "Oh yeah, DUH! What kind of a moron doesn't know that!" with such faux confidence.

I'm trying to learn more about the game so that I am more prepared and so that I look even smarter when I'm watching football with my friends. Though, they're impressed that I know who the starting quarterback of the Falcons is, and that's not very impressive.

No, I'm more of a "fan writer." I DO know a lot about football, about players, about the history of the NFL, about statistics. I've spent my whole life watching, reading about, and researching football. I want to make people laugh with my writing while also educating when possible. If my teachers could see me now... educating people. Let's just say I wasn't voted "Most Likely to Succeed" or "Most Likely to Ever Even Kind of Have Some Semblance of Success in His Long, Drab Life." Though it was very close to something like that.

Or it might have been "Most Likely to Not Get a Most Likely Award."

I'm trying to better myself though. I'm trying to learn and try, or at least try to try, and be Mr. Smarty Pants. So I watched the Cardinals-49ers game from two weeks ago that Arizona won 21-19. I wanted to see how the Cards were able to beat them. What worked and what didn't. What can the Seahawks exploit? What will the Niners exploit?

Let me just tell you that the 49ers really blew this game. Just to give a brief summation before I get into screenshots and breaking down moments of the game, that the Niners played really well and should have won this game by three touchdowns. It's the same story as most of their week one game against Seattle. They failed to score in the red zone and settled for field goals. They played solid defense for 95% of the game and then all of a sudden have a complete breakdown and allow a long touchdown.

At one point, the Niners tried a fake field goal and it actually worked! But it was negated because Arizona threw a challenge flag on the previous play so the fake FG "never really happened." The funniest part is that the ref had to come out and say "The equipment isn't working. There is no challenge." David Akers missed the next field goal attempt and the Cards scored on the next play.

In the end, San Francisco couldn't put together a game-winning drive, though Ted Ginn, Jr. gave them a short field when they only needed a FG, but the Cards proved that their defense isn't too bad. The Cards also have explosive players that are able to keep them close in games that they might have no business winning. Something to remember for week 17.

Here are some very important moments and screenshots from the game that we will want to know about. Here goes nothing!

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The Seahawks' depth at wide receiver has been something to behold this season. Part of this, specifically the incredible performance by Doug Baldwin, can only be attributed to "luck". But it would be a mistake to miss the fact that the front office properly identified the high value of the WR position (unlike me, before this season), and they invested heavily in depth: extending both Ben Obomanu and Mike Williams, signing Sidney Rice and drafting Golden Tate and Kris Durham. The two UDFAs, Doug Baldwin and Ricardo Lockette, are additional if smaller investments. That's a lot to put into one group at this stage of the rebuild, but it's proven to be both totally worth it, with very impressive results.

Our depth has been a bit of a topic of discussion, following my patented Debby Downer writeup, specifically on how impressive it's been, reminiscent of the 2010 Buccaneers. When you go from it group to group, our depth has not been challenged with our safeties (good thing too, because I feel the entire defense falls or stands with Earl Thomas and - to a slightly lesser extent - Kam Chancellor), and not been challenged extensively for the defensive line, quarterback or running back positions. We lost Alan Branch for one game and it looked ugly, so you could consider that a test and a fail, but that would be too short-hand for me. The same is true for missing Marshawn Lynch one game, it's too little to draw conclusions on. In the preseason I thought the quarterback depth looked ok, and Charlie Whitehurst held up to close out the end of the Giants game, but then bombed hard against the Browns.

The offensive line depth is being tested and is not holding up well, though Lemuel Jeanpierre might be a find. Linebacker depth has been tested at the nickelbacker position, which has mostly just been causing our starting linebackers to play too many snaps. The two groups that have been tested and held up really well are cornerback and wide receiver. Cornerback saw the loss of a veteran have surprisingly little impact with the ascendance of a rookie, and the blow of losing Walter Thurmond has mostly been caught by the return of Roy Lewis from PUP.

As impressive as Richard Sherman, K.J. Wright et al have been, I've been even more impressed by the wide receiver group, and the way young guys are stepping up. Sidney Rice and Mike Williams were our starters to begin the season. Rice, in my opinion, has looked every bit the franchise wide receiver we were hoping he'd be, though we have plenty to worry about health-wise. Williams is struggling but that is more a reflection on his situation than any changes to his skillset. Over the season, they are 2nd and 5th in receiving yardage for this team, interspersing Doug Baldwin, Golden Tate and Ben Obomanu.

Tate and Baldwin have been alternating being leading receiver over the past four weeks, and over those four weeks Baldwin's put up 14 catches for 187 yards and a touchdown, Tate has put up 12 receptions for 162 yards and two touchdowns, and Obomanu rounds it up with 7 catches for 110 yards. That's nicely spread, and while the numbers don't immediately wow, they do when you realize the passing game has been subdued as a whole, yet is producing key first downs at the right moments. Not to mention this group is made up of an UDFA, a sophomore noted for his rawness coming out of college, and a 7th round pick.

I've heard no word on it, but I'd expect Tate and Obomanu to start with Baldwin free to continue his shifty ways out of the slot. He's a machine, but I don't know if starting him out of the flanker or split spot would be maximizing his value, while Obomanu's skillset (his game being mostly about creating separation) matches up really well with Tarvaris' skillset. Tate (admittedly a personal favorite of mine, for which I did catch some flak this offseason) is still a ways off from his potential, but considering his upside (not saying he'll reach it, but the potential is there) is Carolina's Steve Smith, he's been playing damn well, and playing such a large amount of snaps is huge for his development.

Rounding up the group are Deon Butler, Kris Durham and Ricardo Lockette. I'm not a huge fan of Butler's (for reasons described here) and he hasn't impressed so far this year, but considering his injury situation that's hardly surprising, and he's tallying more snaps and targets as the year progresses, so we'll see where it goes. Durham and Lockette are essentially unknowns. Overall, though, when measuring potential, this group matches up with any in the NFL, in my opinion, though whether such potential will be fulfilled to an adequate amount is always hard to say, especially when they don't have a high-end quarterback throwing to them.

A few highlights from the Bears game after the break...

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To set up this story, first read Charlie's story on the Beast Mode on the road and/or Danny's piece on the same subject, both on the Beast Mode in particular. I hate to cite Greg Cosell again but he's just so right so many times, as he said earlier in the season that he does not understand why Marshawn Lynch is not being used more as a foundational player for the Seahawks offense.

The easiest answer for us who knew the Seahawks indepth would be "because our offensive line is in flux". And here we were, weeks later, and both notions have proven true: once our offensive line "gelled" (with apologies for the trite terminology), Marshawn Lynch became the foundation of this offense, the motor that keeps drives running. Since the Bengals game, he has 706 rushing yards (117.6 a game) on 151 carries (4.65 YPC) with seven rushing TDs. And that's just contextless stats, anyone who watched his 3.4 YPC performance against Baltimore knows it was a very important 3.4 YPC performance, which you wouldn't normally assume a 3.4 YPC performance is. Tarvaris has 159 attempts, 26.5 attempts per game, so the balance is as atypical as it gets.

But where is the story at now? I've always kind of struggled to peg down a narrative for Marshawn Lynch, I didn't agree that he was "the worst starting running back in the NFL" as Evan Silva was prone to say in the first few weeks of this season, but I don't think he's a fundamentally different back now than he was before, even when he's performing well above a level where I expected him to perform this year. This feels really odd to write, but I think one of the defining factors on Marshawn Lynch is that he does not create big plays by himself. He creates a handful of yards, up to four, by simply beasting, but he can't overcome bad first-level blocking. And that is about as useless a criticism as I can offer, since there are almost no running backs that can operate with a bad offensive line (Adrian Peterson, Steven Jackson, some of that ilk), but I think it was the biggest factor in Silva et al underestimating Lynch before the season.

But! It's also a factor in overestimating him now. He's really really good, but he hasn't suddenly grown transcendent of his blockers. It certainly seems that way, as he put up 115 yards and a skittle-laden touchdown on the Rams after losing Okung on top of Moffitt and Carpenter. So was this wrong? No. Because I say so. Or rather, because the Rams are just that bad against the run. By Football Outsiders' DVOA, the Rams have been 30th in run defense so far this season, with only the Panthers and Raiders worse than them at stopping running backs. They're followed by the 3rd ranked Chicago run D, the 1st ranked San Francisco run D and finally a 24th ranked Arizona defense that has looked much improved in recent weeks.

I feel fairly confident in saying Lynch's performance is about to drop heavily through no fault of his own, which really shouldn't change our estimation of his abilities, since he won't rush against top-3 run defending teams back-to-back with half his offensive line missing that much in his career, I hope. If he does keep it up, even if it's a plodding 30 carries like he had against the Ravens, I'll be very impressed.

The opposing defense is a big part of context sensitive analysis regarding Lynch, but really Okung is as big a factor. Our blocking concepts changed so much with Okung out, I frequently noted a TE or RB in to help the left tackle, and inside protection was more of a problem with Gallery not as free to focus solely on the inside. The Rams are a very good pass-rushing team, but the pressure could be taken off through the run or by attacking the weak secondary. No such caveats apply to the Chicago or San Francisco defenses. That means asking more from Tarvaris, who has looked unsteady at best over the past few weeks, good one week, bad another, which is pretty much as expected.

But again, context, the issue with asking more of Tarvaris is that he's not being offered more to work with. Okung and Rice were his two pillars, and they're both gone. Can I then fault him specifically for a declining performance, in a vacuum? Eh. The front office know what his limitations are, which I hope is the reason we're as run-focused as we are (I have no reason to think PC has any delusions that you can run a reliable year-to-year contender with this kind of offense in the NFL). The quickest way to analyze the quality of a QB is to look at how little he's asked to do. Sanchez is the biggest example of that, completely protected by his offensive setup and bailed out by the defense. Tim Tebow is another. These two are not good quarterbacks, and neither is Tarvaris, but if Lynch's performance drops, we go right back to relying on Tarvaris by default. Not a pleasant scenario.

Here's a handful of notes on painful plays, consider it a lowlight reel from the first half as the offensive line did have better moments, three consecutive pass plays, two consecutive run plays. While the rush held up even with uneven blocking, the pass protection definitely did not. Consider those problems a warning shot across the bows.

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