Seahawks Prepared and Hungry

Looks like a proud Papa gushing over his protégé to his former protégé.

Seahawks Survives the Refs: Beat Raiders 21-3 with heavy D and Running Game.

The Seattle Seahawks did everything they wanted to in preseason and I think they learned a lot about what kind of team they will be this season.  If you ask the coaches, they will tell you that they feel that their team is ready for the regular season, but have a lot more work to be done to get to where they want the team.  But, behind closed doors and away from the media circus, these coaches feel that they need more time to make the important decisions necessary to field the best team they possibly can.  Because of the new collective bargaining agreement, players are no longer required to practice as long or as often.  Shorter organized team activities and minicamps during the off-season and an abbreviated version of the usual training camp throughout the preseason preparation.  “Two-a-days” is a term that most if not all NFL players are happy to see go by the wayside.  Coaches like to utilize part of training camp with a morning session and afternoon session broken up with a short break.  This gave coaches a lot more chance to fluidly work with players and technique and also the chance to view practice film and work with players on things we saw on film while it’s fresh in the minds of the coaches.  Players just simply don’t enjoy being worked that hard as per the CBA requiring coaches to give players more breaks, water breaks, no two-a-days and a shorter practice day.  This all equals less conditioned and less prepared players for the season.  In other words, a relatively poor product in comparison to what it could be if the players were required to be more ready for the regular season.  However, you have to dance with the girl who brung ya’, so it’s important for them to follow the rules of the agreement.  So, what does a 4th and final preseason game look like?  Well, different than it has in past seasons.  Because of the shorter practices and less time  to evaluate players, coaches are forced to play first and 2nd line players in the 4th preseason game to finish the evaluation process and see exactly what he has on the roster and what he hasn’t.  The first cut in camp occurs after the 3rd preseason game from 90 down to 75 personnel.  The 2nd and final cut of the preseason is the Monday after the final preseason game.  At that time, 75 players becomes trimmed to just 53.  So, after tonight’s final preseason game 22 players won’t have jobs Monday morning.  This will be particularly difficult for the Seahawks because they’re loaded with talent from the top to the bottom of the roster.  Many teams are just trying to figure out if they have players who are capable of playing the game.  Pete Carroll and John Schneider, are going to have to scour the game film from practice and the 4 preseason contests to determine which 22 players doesn’t deserve to be on this 53 man roster.  For many of these players, they started when they were just kids and now they are at the elite contest, the best of the best and the prospect of never playing competitive football again in their lives.  Because Seattle is stacked with so much talent, however, there will be a large number of players that won’t make the 53, but NFL rules provide that each team is able to keep a few players on a practice squad.  Problem for the Seahawks is that of the players that don’t make the final 53, the rest will have to clear waivers.  31 other teams will peruse  a list of players that were cut by other teams and they will have the option of signing the player to a contract on their 53 man roster or passing.  If a player doesn’t get picked up by other teams, then a team like Seattle can choose to put that player or players on their practice squad in case they need to utilize that player for injuries or to continue to develop players with raw athletic ability, but without the technique or experience to start immediately.  Apparently, there were dozens of scouts from other NFL teams watching Seattle play the Raiders tonight.  Scouting these players, once they see the final cut list that coach Carroll puts out and pick up the talent that didn’t make the Seattle team.  This is actually quite a compliment to the organization, because players not good enough to make the Seattle squad might be good enough to make another teams roster, that shows Seattle the state of their program right now.  In fact, there were a couple of players who were cut to bring the list down to the 90 players that Seattle is allowed to have and the beginning of training camp, those players were picked up the next day by other NFL teams.  That’s very impressive and it is indicative of the talent level that GM John Schneider and head coach Pete Carroll have done with this team in just 2 years.
Players to watch to me are; LB Mike Morgan, TE Sean McGrath, DB Jeremy Lane, DB Juron Johnson, DB Chris Maragos, Greg Scruggs, Jaye Howard, Ricardo Lockette, Deon Butler, Kregg  Lumpkin and several others. Unfortunately, the coaching staff just didn’t have enough practice or other opportunities to make it clear and fair determination on whether some players should be kept and others not.  Some players who were invited to camp, unfortunately sustained nagging injuries that thwarted their opportunity to show what they had.  They might’ve been magnificent, but coaches can only evaluate what they see on the field and that will unfortunately mean an early demise in the NFL for several talented football players.

Tonight was another night for the officials, as well.  However, there wasn’t much good to say about the replacement officials again this week.  They’re doing their best, but unfortunately with the speed of the NFL and the very specific ruling calls that are inherent to the NFL, the best should be out there protecting the players, fairly moderating the contest and keeping it fluid and rhythmic.  I don’t get down to hardly on the officials for stuttering or losing their thought as they’re making their audible calls over the PA.  I do however believe them for completely blowing calls and seemingly not knowing the actual rulebook for the National Football League.  What is it going to take for the NFL owners to realize that what the officials do during each game is ensure that it is a fair contest and the rules are abided by it as well as interpreted as they should.  You would be surprised how to officials could read the same rulebook and interpret a rule completely different.  This is why officials attend officiating seminars and symposiums intended purely so that NFL officiating crews will be concurrent on the rule, and it’s interpretation on the field in a variety of scenarios.  Their job isn’t easy and at $100,000 per team per year, I think they are bullying and undercutting the officials from a fair wage that takes them far beyond the 17 week season of the NFL.  I don’t quite see how NFL owners that throwaway millions on sometimes lousy players don’t have the money to make sure that the officials that manage the game get paid what they deserve.  Also, these officials should be worked like full-time employees and paid as such.  During the off-season, officials should be learning and teaching what they do during a game so that the integrity of the game does not wither with replacement referees from God only knows where.  It has been said that a number of these replacement officials have worked with the lingerie football league.  That’s insulting to the game and it’s insulting to everyone involved in the contests that happen each week and and Monday night.  Pay these men and let’s get the season on its way.

Matt Flynn had a decent game tonight, the his usual self, accurate, intelligent, throwing the intermediate and short game with relative ease.  He has done literally nothing wrong in this preseason quarterback competition.  As many have described it, Flynn  didn’t lose the job, it’s just that  Russell Wilson snatched the pebbles from Flynn’s  hand, letting him know that he was ready to go.  Sorry about the little “Kung fu” reference, but it was so true.  Wilson just snatched this job right out of Flynn’s hand, even though Flynn did nothing to lose the job.  He was accurate, he threw for a nice amount of yards, he only turned over the ball once and he continued to move the chains.  This is what you hope from your quarterback, particularly if you run a pure West Coast offense that relies heavily on not turning over the football.  It also relies on rhythm and Matt Flynn very much is capable of creating a rhythm of short to intermediate passes and completing them and moving the chains getting first downs, chewing up the clock with short completed passes as well as handing the ball off and running the ball, this allows the offense to keep the ball away from the opponents offense.  If they don’t have the ball, they can’t score.  This is the major mantra of the west coast offense, really developed by legendary coach Bill Walsh of the San Francisco 49ers dynasty.  Now, he has passed and lives in relative fame and notoriety because of his innovative mind in football and his ability to judge over bad and productive players over those that don’t provide enough to win. He also did what I believe Coach Carroll  is doing right now; he is compiling all the right players for his team, not necessarily all the high profile and best players in the NFL.  The players that he has chosen and implemented complement each other in ways that other teams with perhaps more talent cannot seem to press together into an assembled jigsaw puzzle. This jigsaw puzzle is going to be a model for many teams to emulate.  The NFL has been called the copycat league, because when something works, like the 46 defense in Chicago with Buddy Ryan, or the West Coast offense introduced by Bill Walsh.  Pete Carroll might just be the next man to create a trend that works.  The Seahawks have enormous defensive backs who are athletic and versatile.  Most defensive coordinators want speedy, great cover corners and safeties they can keep up with these blazing fast wide receivers and running backs.  Pete Carroll’s philosophy is different; he wants to interrupt the play from the onset.  He doesn’t want to let teams get into a rhythm or even allow them to get into a passing route or Lane without being completely disrupted at the line of scrimmage from bump and run technique from corners the size of linebackers, but with the speed of wide receivers.  The Seahawks starting DB’s are 6’3” Richard Sherman, 6’4” Brandon Browner, 6’3” Kam Chancellor and the shrimpy 6’0” even Earl Thomas, who makes up for his lack of size with speed and closing range of a laserguided missile.  These DB’s will sometimes allow you to run through their zones, but if you happen to concentrate enough to catch a ball over the middle, they will make you pay dearly for trying.  With clean hits, but powerful results, these huge defensive backs are creating an entire league of short arm receivers.  They will be literally running through Seattle’s defensive secondary with little bitty arms, as not to hang themselves out to be physically punished for attempting to catch a football in their house.  However, from the onset, when these corners played man-to-man, they have 5 yards to hit the wide receivers before it becomes a penalty.  By the time these players have their way with the receivers for 5 yards, they’ve already disrupting the timing route or even just the normal progression into their breaks that would be late or nonexistent.  This is a way to adjust to big  defensive backs who don’t have the same kind of rocket speed as players like Ed Reed, Darrelle Revis and Nnamdi Asomugha.  So, coach Carroll has been really bucking the trends of the NFL and perhaps creating a few of his own.

What did we learn in tonight’s game?  Well, I think we learn that we have a very capable backup quarterback in Matt Flynn and that Russell Wilson will make some rookie mistakes, but he just simply adjusts and doesn’t make the same mistakes over again.  I don’t have any less confidence in Wilson, but there are going to be times that he will struggle.  Peyton Manning and Tom Brady struggle sometimes, but Seattle’s swarming defense and the very capable run oriented offense will in some ways hide Wilson’s mistakes from becoming game changing mistakes.  He’s so smart and polished I just don’t believe he’s going to go out onto the field and bomb.  He’s too talented and too intelligent to allow himself to come unfolded and lose games for the Seahawks.  I think he is going to be the offensive rookie of the year and you can forget about Andrew Luck and RGIII becoming rookies of the year, RW 3 is going to get this done and it will never be a surprise to him because he expects to be great and when he’s not, there’s something wrong and he fixes it.  Wilson is by no means great yet, and he may not become great for several seasons but I think he will make constant improvements without swooning like a rookie would at key points and moments during the season or during games.  His entertaining, his inspiring and I think he’s going to be the best leader that the Seattle Seahawks offense has ever had in their history since the inception in 1976.  Matt Hasselbeck was a great person and an adequate quarterback.  He just never dazzled and he never had the physical tools to add to his mental game.  When you get the physical, unteachable attributes and combine the smarts and excellent work ethic, not to mention the intangibles of his leadership skills, I think you get something very special.  He’s a Seattle Seahawks and he’s glad to be… This kid is not driven by money solely and he has a burning desire to be better and to make the team a winner.  If he does his job the way I think you will, he won’t have to go out and get money somehow, the money will find him all by itself and he won’t have to worry about those details.  He just set himself up for life, and if he stays healthy he will sign that first veteran tender for a multi-year contract.  At that point, I don’t think his hunger and fire will go out the way it has with players like Sean Alexander, Chris Johnson and others who got their money, and the rest was just not important.  Anyway, I’m proud that Russell Wilson is wearing a Seahawks uniform.  It’s as if this is where I can’t of his character, manners and confidence belongs.  He doesn’t do touched down dances and he doesn’t try to wind the crowd up with his mouth or his physical skits and preprepared dances.  He just runs and throws for touchdowns and he makes everyone else on the team better.  I thought this about Tim Tebow last year when he was playing with the Broncos.  His presence on the team took the team to a higher calling and for some reason even the defense made a complete transformation into a dominant and stifling defense that kept the Broncos in practically every game, while Tebow would spin his magic in the 4th quarter’s of several games after being quiet for the first three quarters of the contest.  The difference?  Tim Tebow is no Russell Wilson… They might both be Christians and they might both decide that their platform is football and they will not be hushed about their belief in Christ.  But what differentiates these 2 great football players is that Russell Wilson is a bona fide quarterback with the kind of skill set that he needs to win football games and playoff games and even Superbowls with the Seattle Seahawks.  He is somewhat short in stature, but for what he gives up in inches of height, he surely makes up for it with technique, fundamentals, a belief and a sense of leadership that is an intangible off the chart.  People want to follow this kid and they want to be led by him.  He’s a rookie, but Wilson has seen this before… As he was the new kid on the block when he left North Carolina State for the big 12 team of Wisconsin, his teammates voted him their captain in just 2 weeks of practice.  He makes you believe and he inspires the players around him to be better every game, every practice, every scrimmage… Even on the airplane on their way to a road game somewhere in the country.  Be better and keep getting better and keep striving to be better.  That is the mantra of Russell Wilson and it will carry him along we here in Seattle, I believe.  His teammates believe it, also.