Seahawk Sailor
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- Mar 3, 2007
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Okay, so I usually hate watching games I know who won, but this week it was inevitable. By the time I found the game and was able to watch it, I'd already seen the headlines, like it or not. So the way I watched this game was probably very different from how everyone else here watched it. But I only knew who won. I didn't know a thing about the game other than win/loss. And I watched it accordingly.
Watching the game with an eye on which plays would ultimately cost us the game, without knowing how any of it would unfold was an interesting exercise. I expected to see a Seahawks team that came out flat, that couldn't get a thing done on offense. A defense that gave up play after play like a sieve. I didn't expect Murphy to come along for the ride.
Yeah, we made some bad plays. Yeah, there were some bad coaching decisions. But my oh my was Murphy along for the ride. Bad plays happen, and often they're costly. But seldom do they line up in such a way that they add three scores, one per play, to a game almost instantly.
One bad punt return coverage - touchdown. Okay, so that was a bad break. It happens. Still a lot of game to be played.
One bad fumble - touchdown. Okay, so we lose fumbles. Occasionally they even get picked up and taken to the house. But that's a whole lot of bad luck all of the sudden.
One penalty - touchdown a few plays later on what would have otherwise been a missed field goal and Seahawks' ball. Okay, now it's starting to go badly. Really badly. We've spotted them three touchdowns on three weird plays.
And we're not playing badly. Wilson's throwing the ball really well. He's not being sacked. He doesn't even have very many incomplete passes at this point in the game. Our running game doesn't look great, but aside from Chris Carson out there wearing ice skates and oven mitts, it's not terrible. We're just down big on a few fluke plays.
And then we suddenly can't convert on 4th down. Multiple times. We do well otherwise. When it doesn't matter, we're racking up yardage and plays. But it's the little things that matter. A missed opportunity for a field goal before the half because we didn't take a time out. A turnover on downs when we could have gotten another field goal. That's six points right there, and in spite of everything that went wrong, we only lost by six points. In spite of the fumble, the penalty on their field goal attempt, the three missed 4th and 1 opportunities, the repeated misses in the end zone, we only lost by two field goals that we could have made had we played it right.
We came close to doubling the Saints in plays, first downs, yardage... we beat them in every stat but the one that counted, and even that was two field goal attempts we could have taken from being a totally different game. Everything that could have gone wrong did. Everything that could have gone right for them did. Say what you will, but had even one of those huge plays gone differently, the outcome of the game could have gone very differently.
And in the end, were very many of us expecting anything but 2-1 at this point. I know many of us would probably have predicted wins in weeks one and three and a loss in week two. I'm not too dissatisfied with this, because it's a) where I expected we'd be at this point in the season, and b) only the result of some terribly fluky plays, a few bad decisions, and a whole lotta bad luck.
Watching the game with an eye on which plays would ultimately cost us the game, without knowing how any of it would unfold was an interesting exercise. I expected to see a Seahawks team that came out flat, that couldn't get a thing done on offense. A defense that gave up play after play like a sieve. I didn't expect Murphy to come along for the ride.
Yeah, we made some bad plays. Yeah, there were some bad coaching decisions. But my oh my was Murphy along for the ride. Bad plays happen, and often they're costly. But seldom do they line up in such a way that they add three scores, one per play, to a game almost instantly.
One bad punt return coverage - touchdown. Okay, so that was a bad break. It happens. Still a lot of game to be played.
One bad fumble - touchdown. Okay, so we lose fumbles. Occasionally they even get picked up and taken to the house. But that's a whole lot of bad luck all of the sudden.
One penalty - touchdown a few plays later on what would have otherwise been a missed field goal and Seahawks' ball. Okay, now it's starting to go badly. Really badly. We've spotted them three touchdowns on three weird plays.
And we're not playing badly. Wilson's throwing the ball really well. He's not being sacked. He doesn't even have very many incomplete passes at this point in the game. Our running game doesn't look great, but aside from Chris Carson out there wearing ice skates and oven mitts, it's not terrible. We're just down big on a few fluke plays.
And then we suddenly can't convert on 4th down. Multiple times. We do well otherwise. When it doesn't matter, we're racking up yardage and plays. But it's the little things that matter. A missed opportunity for a field goal before the half because we didn't take a time out. A turnover on downs when we could have gotten another field goal. That's six points right there, and in spite of everything that went wrong, we only lost by six points. In spite of the fumble, the penalty on their field goal attempt, the three missed 4th and 1 opportunities, the repeated misses in the end zone, we only lost by two field goals that we could have made had we played it right.
We came close to doubling the Saints in plays, first downs, yardage... we beat them in every stat but the one that counted, and even that was two field goal attempts we could have taken from being a totally different game. Everything that could have gone wrong did. Everything that could have gone right for them did. Say what you will, but had even one of those huge plays gone differently, the outcome of the game could have gone very differently.
And in the end, were very many of us expecting anything but 2-1 at this point. I know many of us would probably have predicted wins in weeks one and three and a loss in week two. I'm not too dissatisfied with this, because it's a) where I expected we'd be at this point in the season, and b) only the result of some terribly fluky plays, a few bad decisions, and a whole lotta bad luck.
