I worried that Shaquem might get discouraged after blowing his coverage's a couple of times, but I didn't see that. What I did see was him suck it up, and go out there, and played some pretty good ball the rest of the game. I think if I heard Pete right in the post game interview,Shaquem played 60 plays in his first go as a pro, and messed up on his coverage on less than 10% of those plays. Pete also said that was way more plays than what he had intended for him to play, but that Shaquem was the kind of player that wanted to play every down and didn't want to come out of the game unless he wasn't able to be effective.
Someone else already said it, that all of our defense looked out of sync, that is the one thing that practice can't do, and that live time playing will, is get everyone in sync with each other. Call it ESP or Intuitive, or whatever you like, but when a defensive unit or offensive unit, for that matter, plays together for awhile, they all seem to get in sync with each other and intuitively know what the other is going to do before they do it.
When that happens with this new collection of talent we have on the field now, it will be business as usual for the Seahawks. We didn't necessarily see anyone playing bad yesterday, what we saw was our talent pool being out of sync. Give us a few games and you'll see it all start coming together.
I'll be brief in my summary of officiating yesterday and make my assertion that the Bronco's were handed two free touchdowns, and that we were denied two on the basis of poor officiating. Brandon, and Will, both made touch downs that were denied, and Pete's red flag challenge, being ignored, gave the Bronco's a 1st down and a subsequent touchdown, followed by the worst touchdown call I've seen since the Seahawks vs Steelers Super Bowl Game. Not only was not one foot in bounds, but clearly a second foot, nowhere near touched the ground in bounds, and even in light of a review that Mr. Magoo could have called, and they gifted them another Touch Down.
That doesn't excuse the less than sterling performanes by our offense or defense on Sunday, there is clearly work that needs to be done, tempo, timing and synchronizing themselves as cohesive units. It's easy to argue in spite of all this, that the Seahawks could and should have walked off the field yesterday with a W instead of a L.
All the W's matter from this point on, if they have hopes of doing great things this season. As in recent years, we can't look to the officials to help us in close games, we can't afford to play close game, we need to take the referees out of the equation, like in Boxing, where you knock your opponent out, and thus eliminate the judges from the equation. If I saw one single player that needs to tighten up his game and muy pronto, is the Magic Man, Russell Wilson. I know it goes back to syncronization, but man he looked terrible out there yesterday.
Too many of Russell's passes were impossible for our receivers to catch, accuracy, speed, timing, all contributed to way too many missed opportunities, not to mention standing around in a collapsing pocket, instead of scrambling ahead for yards or rolling out and looking for better passing opportunities down field,
It seems to me that Russell has always been at his best when he's able to quick call his plays at a fast tempo and running plays that are designed for him to scramble out of the pocket and either run it or give his receiver core time to free themselves up for him to pass to. Our offensive line is doing a much better job of pass protecting and opening up creases for our running game, this year, and in all fairness Denver brings one of the best defenses in the NFL. They were going to be tough to handle by any offensive line right now.
As for Shaquem, or Griff, as more and more are referring to him these days, we as fans, need to not get too discouraged over his first game as a full fledged pro, and neither should he. If you look at Shaquem's history, he only gets better, there is no one in the NFL that will work harder to become better, than Shaquem Griffin, he's been showing the world what he's made of, for all of his life, don't think he's going to get discouraged over a bad day, if anything he will only be more determined and committed to being better in his next opportunity.
Keep the Faith Shaquem, "We Got Your Back! "
Go Seahawks!
ukeface:
