Bevell is at it again... bad plays against a weak Defense

[Sarlacc83]

Yeah! How dare Seattle not score 35 points!

2 punts. That's how many the D forced. 2. Get one more and remove the Harvin kickoff fumble and the offense has more to work with. Likely seven more points as they scored TDs on 3 of their 7 drives.

There are a number of teams that score a lot while their defense sucks. (Cowboys and Bears last year?) Yeah, our defense let us down. That's why I don't like our lack of ferocity on offense in games. We don't play offense to win games, we play offense to not lose, in simplistic/general terms. We play offense like our defense will NEVER surrender more than 14 points to anyone, ever.

Sarlacc, please justify the lack of attempting to utilize Lynch & Harvin today. Serious request.

I have no idea why they wouldn't feed those two nor did I during the game Injury concerns? I don't know. That's on Pete to explain.

My point is that the offense had a small sample size today and they still managed to play efficiently. At the same time, small sampling makes otherwise insignificant issues that are part of a game's natural flow much larger in hindsight. Would you have guessed the D would play like crap at the beginning of the game? I didn't and it appears Bevell didn't either. Trust unrewarded. Just like the 4th and 2 punt (that I was against).

 

[redeye81]

Sucks i think we are in trouble if we lose next week to the Broncos.. The cardinals are already 2-0 ... 49ers look to win tonight.. this sucks..

 

[Anthony!]

If Russell made that fist down we score on that drive.. That is frustrating.. he was a 1 and 1/2 short...

so your blaming Wilson? Really. Wow

 

[ClumsyLurk]

Yeah! How dare Seattle not score 35 points!

2 punts. That's how many the D forced. 2. Get one more and remove the Harvin kickoff fumble and the offense has more to work with. Likely seven more points as they scored TDs on 3 of their 7 drives.

There are a number of teams that score a lot while their defense sucks. (Cowboys and Bears last year?) Yeah, our defense let us down. That's why I don't like our lack of ferocity on offense in games. We don't play offense to win games, we play offense to not lose, in simplistic/general terms. We play offense like our defense will NEVER surrender more than 14 points to anyone, ever.

Sarlacc, please justify the lack of attempting to utilize Lynch & Harvin today. Serious request.

25 pass plays
13 run plays (2 russell scambles)

Not a lot of plays total though - Bev's didn't get too many oportunities. I am surprised at the run/pass totals though.

 

[redeye81]

No Anthony.. Wilson made a great attempt to get the 1st down.. He wasn't given chance to go for it on 4th down.. that is the point..

 

[Anthony!]

If Russell made that fist down we score on that drive.. That is frustrating.. he was a 1 and 1/2 short...

so your blaming Wilson? Really. Wow

 

[oldhawkfan]

The offense did not lose this game. Bevell did not lose this game. The inability of the defense to stop the chargers offense lost this game. You people are it ting this loss on the failure to go for it on 4th and 2? Seriously?! There was still 6 minutes left in the game and we were on their side of the field. Down by 6 with 6 minutes to go does not mean that you panic and go for it. They held them on the next possession and got the ball back with plenty of time to win the game. I am seeing way too many places on the internet with people blaming the offense. The offense played pretty well. But when you only have the ball for a little over 17 minutes vs almost 43 and are only out gained by about 90 yards you need to hold your head high. This loss is completely on the defense. Period. End of story.

 

[redeye81]

Anthony why repeat posts? Russell obviously didn't get the chance on the 4th down that is the point everyone is making..

 

[RolandDeschain]

Would you have guessed the D would play like crap at the beginning of the game? I didn't and it appears Bevell didn't either. Trust unrewarded. Just like the 4th and 2 punt (that I was against).

No, I wouldn't have guessed it either, but I have also stated quite a few times over the past two years that I strongly dislike our "play offense to not lose the game" philosophy - and that's on Pete, ultimately. I hate our reliance on amazing defense. It's unfair to the defense.

 

[hawksfansinceday1]

There are a number of teams that score a lot while their defense sucks. (Cowboys and Bears last year?) Yeah, our defense let us down. That's why I don't like our lack of ferocity on offense in games. We don't play offense to win games, we play offense to not lose, in simplistic/general terms. We play offense like our defense will NEVER surrender more than 14 points to anyone, ever.

I think we're going to see the end of this type of thinking Roland, and I think we've begun to see evidence of it already. Here's what I mean.....Our defense had a season for the ages last year, a season that will be hard to duplicate if not impossible. This year we are seeing a lot more of RW throwing on first down, 4 wides on like 2nd and 5, etc. I think with the new rules, Pete and Bevell know we will need to score more points to win like we did last year.

Considering the maturity of Russ and the things I just mentioned, not a bad strategy. The problem with it today was threefold.....number one we didn't run enough to keep their defense honest. That leads me to point number two, the o-line didn't protect well enough to make this approach successful and not running enough to keep their D honest was a large contributer to this. We ran well last week and the pass pro was better. Simple? Yes, but still the truth. And lastly, if you're going to open things up, you simply must utilize one of the best weapons in the game in Percy. That was a real mistake. You are spot on IMO asking these questions.

While Pete might not say these things in public, I think he'll know they failed when it comes to running Marshawn only 6 times and not using Percy enough. Coaches will loikely learn from their mistakes this week too. At least I sure hope they do.

 

[Seahawk Sailor]

What is says is the staff believes in the Defense more than us fans do.. I think that is fair.. We saw them getting beat play after play... We don't see everything the coaches see.. In the end we did stop them but went from 4th and 1 on on th 40 to getting the ball back with much less time in our own side of the field.

Did we have better chance going for it on 4th (given the way the defense was playing??).. No one knows but a lot of casual observers say yes.. but in the end we'll never know..

Sucks but we had no chance after that decision..

The above post does not compute with the post below.

Yeah! How dare Seattle not score 35 points!

2 punts. That's how many the D forced. 2. Get one more and remove the Harvin kickoff fumble and the offense has more to work with. Likely seven more points as they scored TDs on 3 of their 7 drives.

The staff may have believed in the defense to get the job done, but clearly they were not getting it done. And sure, we don't see everything the coaches see, but if they couldn't see the defense out there almost the entire game getting their asses handed to them, unable to get off the field and rest, or stop the Chargers from converting first down after first down, they certainly shouldn't have trusted them to get the job done after that punt. At least not as much as they should have trusted the offense to convert two yards to keep the drive alive.

 

[redeye81]

Sailor, Reality is when the rubber hits the road.. They couldn't stop the chargers all game. I think the coaches had more faith then we did.. Maybe they should have but i wasn't seeing it.. They needed to help the defense out and go for it when they had the threat to score late in the game.. oh well it's over with now..

 

[Hawks46]

The only problems I have with the play calling is:

we under utilized Lynch. He was effective, and yes we were playing from behind a lot, but it seemed to me that the Hawks were completely ambivalent concerning time of possession. Even if we chew up some clock and get a FG instead of one of those punts, it gives the defense a rest and lets them recoup.

We over utlized the jet sweep. When we busted it out in the 2nd half, the Chargers were ready for it.

Wilson was a yard and a half short from picking up that first down. The reason we had a 3rd and 15 was Sweezy got a false start. We were driving and probably would've gotten a FG that drive.

Irvin also shoved Rivers out of bounds. If he doesn't do that, the Chargers kick a FG. Take away 4 points.

Both plays were completely avoidable. Both costs us points. That was the game right there....if we played smart just those two times, we weather everything else and get the win by 1 point.

If you play stupid, you end up with a stupid loss.

 

[MontanaHawk05]

Our 3rd drive of the game it's 1st and 10 and we go for a short pass to the left for BRYAN WALTERS for no gain... why did we go to Walters on 1st and 10 throwing to him in the backfield??? We would have been MUCH better off going to Harvin, Baldwin, Lynch, Turbin, Coleman...

Sometimes you just throw it to whatever guy is open.

 

[HawkWow]

Odds were against us converting the 4th and 2. Statistically, we are near the bottom of the league in such situations and that's why we didn't go for it. Risk management.

Not converting would have definitely sealed our fate so punting was the correct call as we regained possession with an adequate number of TOs and time remaining on the clock. Not going for it on 4th and 2 didn't lose us this game and the math says it actually positioned us to win this game.

Our inability to convert in such situations falls more on Cable than it does Pete or Bevell, imo, ...unless you want to hold Pete totally accountable because it was he that hired Cable. I'd rather just write this game off and move onto the next. Everyday is a school day and today we got schooled.

 

[hawk45]

Our 3rd drive of the game it's 1st and 10 and we go for a short pass to the left for BRYAN WALTERS for no gain... why did we go to Walters on 1st and 10 throwing to him in the backfield??? We would have been MUCH better off going to Harvin, Baldwin, Lynch, Turbin, Coleman...

Sometimes you just throw it to whatever guy is open.

I could be wrong Montana but I think in that case it was one of those planned quick throws like a bubble screen behind the LOS. That's why the criticism; he'd rather see that type of play go to Harvin (me too).

 

[RolandDeschain]

I think we're going to see the end of this type of thinking Roland,

Relying on your whole team winning via offense? I absolutely agree. Guess what, though? We have the same exact philosophy...On the other side of the spectrum. We rely on our defense, lol. I'd love to see BOTH units go balls to the wall every week.

 

[Tokadub]

Odds were against us converting the 4th and 2. Statistically, we are near the bottom of the league in such situations and that's why we didn't go for it. Risk management.

Not converting would have definitely sealed our fate so punting was the correct call as we regained possession with an adequate number of TOs and time remaining on the clock. Not going for it on 4th and 2 didn't lose us this game and the math says it actually positioned us to win this game.

Our inability to convert in such situations falls more on Cable than it does Pete or Bevell, imo, ...unless you want to hold Pete totally accountable because it was he that hired Cable. I'd rather just write this game off and move onto the next. Everyday is a school day and today we got schooled.

While normally I would agree with your general statement there I think in this case you'd be ignoring the way this game unfolded.

Normally the Seahawks Defense isn't awful, and normally our Offense isn't averaging 7.2 yards per play.

Last season Denver and Philedelphia led the league in this category with 6.2 Yards Per Play.

Last season Seattle was ranked 12th with 5.6 Yards Per Play.

Tonight the Seahawks averaged 7.2 yards per play WHICH IS A FULL YARD MORE THAN THE HISTORICALLY GREAT DENVER BRONCOS LAST SEASON!

While 1 Yard Per Play might not sound like a lot the difference between the Bronco's 6.2 if you go a yard lower to 5.2 you are now the Tennesse Titans who were ranked #21.

http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/yards-per-play

So when I look at this game from a statistical sense it makes no sense to punt the ball from both our defensive and offensive perspectives. It would have been a MUCH HIGHER CHANCE TO WIN THIS PARTICULAR GAME GOING FOR IT ON 4th AND 2.

Our coaches straight up failed with this choice

I think when evaluating our win % with going for it on 4th and 2 compared to punting you have to consider several things specific to this game and not our past history:

- Chargers ended the game with 26 first downs (almost equal to Denver's historically great offense last season which averaged 27). It was very fortunate that we even got the ball back after our punt, any game that the opposing team has over 25 first downs you should not expect to stop them period.

- To secure the win all the Chargers needed to do was score a Field Goal, they would of been up 9 points.

- The Chargers had totally dominated the time of possession, that combined with their First Down totals made it very unlikely that we would have time to score without some kind of Hail Mary assuming they didn't score the Field Goal.

- Statistically when a team has 26 First Downs they are probably likely to score at least a field goal on well over 50% of their drives. In this game the Chargers scored on 60% of their drives going 6/10.

So basically punting it in that situation was giving them a +50% chance to win the game straight up.

- Last Season the Seahawks were 54.5% on 4th down conversions going 6/11.

http://www.sportingcharts.com/nfl/stats/4th-down-efficiency/2013/

That was without Harvin and WITHOUT A GAME WHERE WE ARE ON PACE FOR ABOUT 500 YARDS WITH 30 MINUTES OF POSSESION.

So we were ranked 13th in 4th down conversion rate last season. Even the rank 20 Jaguars converted 43.3% of 4th downs.

- Denver converted 88.9% of their 4th down conversions last season going 8/9. So for a good offense it's pretty much a sure thing. We have Harvin, Lynch, and Wilson I simply cannot believe we would fail, nor do I think it's statistically wrong for us to go for it on 4th and 2.

With those 3 players we should never expect that we can't get 2 yards... that's just pathetic and should be nearly impossible with a good play call against such a terrible Defense like the Chargers.

 

[RolandDeschain]

I just counted. Total number of pass attempts, passes, and runs for Lynch and Harvin combined?

13.

PATHETIC. Lynch should have about double that number HIMSELF in a game. Plus, several of those Lynch passes were unplanned dump passes from a severely under pressure DangeRuss Wilson.

Ugh, the more I think about this, the more angry I am about ignoring those two for today's game plan. Why not send Percy on some go routes, too? Even not planning to throw to him, he'll pull coverage away from the middle. JESUS.

 

[HawkWow]

Odds were against us converting the 4th and 2. Statistically, we are near the bottom of the league in such situations and that's why we didn't go for it. Risk management.

Not converting would have definitely sealed our fate so punting was the correct call as we regained possession with an adequate number of TOs and time remaining on the clock. Not going for it on 4th and 2 didn't lose us this game and the math says it actually positioned us to win this game.

Our inability to convert in such situations falls more on Cable than it does Pete or Bevell, imo, ...unless you want to hold Pete totally accountable because it was he that hired Cable. I'd rather just write this game off and move onto the next. Everyday is a school day and today we got schooled.

While normally I would agree with your general statement there I think in this case you'd be ignoring the way this game unfolded.

Normally the Seahawks Defense isn't awful, and normally our Offense isn't averaging 7.2 yards per play.

Last season Denver and Philedelphia led the league in this category with 6.2 Yards Per Play.

Last season Seattle was ranked 12th with 5.6 Yards Per Play.

Tonight the Seahawks averaged 7.2 yards per play WHICH IS A FULL YARD MORE THAN THE HISTORICALLY GREAT DENVER BRONCOS LAST SEASON!

While 1 Yard Per Play might not sound like a lot the difference between the Bronco's 6.2 if you go a yard lower to 5.2 you are now the Tennesse Titans who were ranked #21.

http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/yards-per-play

So when I look at this game from a statistical sense it makes no sense to punt the ball from both our defensive and offensive perspectives. It would have been a MUCH HIGHER CHANCE TO WIN THIS PARTICULAR GAME GOING FOR IT ON 4th AND 2.

Our coaches straight up failed with this choice

I think when evaluating our win % with going for it on 4th and 2 compared to punting you have to consider several things specific to this game and not our past history:

- Chargers ended the game with 26 first downs (almost equal to Denver's historically great offense last season which averaged 27). It was very fortunate that we even got the ball back after our punt, any game that the opposing team has over 25 first downs you should not expect to stop them period.

- To secure the win all the Chargers needed to do was score a Field Goal, they would of been up 9 points.

- The Chargers had totally dominated the time of possession, that combined with their First Down totals made it very unlikely that we would have time to score without some kind of Hail Mary assuming they didn't score the Field Goal.

- Statistically when a team has 26 First Downs they are probably likely to score at least a field goal on well over 50% of their drives. In this game the Chargers scored on 60% of their drives going 6/10.

So basically punting it in that situation was giving them a +50% chance to win the game straight up.

- Last Season the Seahawks were 54.5% on 4th down conversions going 6/11.

http://www.sportingcharts.com/nfl/stats/4th-down-efficiency/2013/

That was without Harvin and WITHOUT A GAME WHERE WE ARE ON PACE FOR ABOUT 500 YARDS WITH 30 MINUTES OF POSSESION.

So we were ranked 13th in 4th down conversion rate last season. Even the rank 20 Jaguars converted 43.3% of 4th downs.

- Denver converted 88.9% of their 4th down conversions last season going 8/9. So for a good offense it's pretty much a sure thing. We have Harvin, Lynch, and Wilson I simply cannot believe nor do I think it's statistically wrong for us to go for it on 4th and 2.

With those 3 players we should never expect that we can't get 2 yards... that's just pathetic and should be nearly impossible with a good play call against such a terrible Defense like the Chargers.

Excellent points and all deserving of careful consideration by the staff. I think they did so...but I could be wrong. But in my case, I'm a math guy. It took me (too) many years to overcome my urge to bet with my emotions and to let math dictate my play. I think Pete did that today.

To me, much worse than not going for it on 4th and 2 is the belief that we cannot convert a 4th and 2 while seeing ourselves as a "power football" team. Not suggesting the run is our sole option in such an instance, but I am suggesting every team, including our own, knows we suck at 3rd / 4th and shorts. They know even with Lynch we are not likely going to pick up a 4th and 2 so there is a carry over that also hurts our chances of converting via pass. Like a few others in here, I've been screaming for O-line since before the Irvin mystery pick and today, the picks of Irvin, Michael and Richardson didn't do squat in allowing us to go for a 4th and 2. All eyes are on us, we are the team to beat and everyone is keeping and comparing notes.

btw, I am not condemning the Richardson pick. I just feel he, like Michael, was a luxury we couldn't afford.