Seahawks lose

This is a tough loss to swallow. There are some positives to take from the game, but I'll get to those later. Let's talk about the bad parts.

First and foremost, this game should have been won. The Seahawks had a beautiful comeback, and then blew it in a Cardinal-like fashion. The official word on what happened is that Alexander thought Hasselbeck audibled to a run, but Hasselbeck hadn't, thus they ran into each other. Where does the blame go? Both Hasselbeck and Alexander share blame for not getting their signals straight. Hasselbeck gets extra blame for not recognizing the play was broken and just standing there while the pass rush came at him. That single play quite literally blew the game. This game was following the standard script of driving to the opponent's 30 yard line and Josh Brown hitting a game-winning field goal with no time left.

So, instead of being 2-0 and on top of the NFC West, the Seahawks are 0-1 in division and are going to have to play a little harder. Losses like this are what prevent teams from having 'special' seasons. Good teams will get maybe four or five games like this each year. The great teams win all of them and get 12 or 13 wins. Average teams win one and don't make the playoffs.

What really bothers me is that this kind of late-game execution problem has happened before - the Chicago game had a botched QB-Center exchange that killed a drive. Once a year is understandable, though this is twice in three games. It had better not become a repeat occurrence.

I'll finish up with the negatives. The pass rush was horrible - no sacks and few disruptions. Leinart never felt pressure from the rush. I'm not sure if not having Leroy Hill affected that, but it was a poor showing regardless. Too many big plays were given up early. That's how the Seahawks got down 17-0 and had to spend all of their energy getting back in the game, rather than building a lead. Shaun Alexander had another poor first half, as did the Seahawks offense. When the Seahawks play better teams, especially on the road like today, they won't be able to come back. In a sense, the difference between this week and last week was that the Seahawks got down too much this week.

Now for some positives. Deion Branch had a monster game. All of the receivers got involved, even Courtney Taylor caught a pass. The bright side of the slow start was that once the offense picked up, only a botched hand-off/miscommunication could stop them. Lofa Tatupu had another big play. His interception was what really turned the momentum of the game. The offense did will in short yardage situations, which they've had problems with since Hutchinson left.

Overall, it hurts that the game was lost. However, I've come away from it with a better feeling than if they had played poorly and somehow won. The Seahawks showed they can be inconsistently good. To be a Super Bowl contender, they need to be consistently good.