I'm honestly not arguing with you as you have made good points. All i'm asking is to see some reasons why things happen. Why did Seattle abandon the run? Could it be because it wasnt working? If it was working, who is at fault for that call? Could that be due to the Rams adjusting their defense due to familiarity of the Hawks offense? Did Russ have a bad day because he was just off or could it have been that the Rams were ready and jumping familiar sets that they just saw a couple weeks before? Why did the defense allow Akers to run for 131 yards at a 4.7 yard per carry rate? Wilson was sacked 5 times. The Rams had the ball for 6 more minutes so the TOP wasnt drastically lopsided. 3rd down efficiency was awful for both teams. Seattle was 2-14 and the Rams were 3-15. Seattle had 9 penalties for 60 yards while the Rams had 2 for 15 yards.
All that being said, it sure seems McVay had his team much more prepared than Pete did.
The question as to why plays weren't run or adjustments made is one of the most difficult issues to parse during Russ's time in Seattle. I've said this before in threads documenting perplexing missed reads by Russ. And the reason is this. If at the time, Schotty is looking at the flow of the game and sends in a play, say a dig by Willson on 1st and 10 with intent of going pass run and hopefully run on a 3rd and short if necessary and that play, which works exactly as it's supposed to, fails because although scheme wise, you called it right, caught the defense off guard and should be in 2nd and short, Russ misses the read , scrambles backwards and takes a sack for negative yards or misses deep, you are then off schedule, the play failed and you don't know whether to go back to it because the DC has now seen it or your qb didn't hit it the first time. Your run play is now gone, you're in 2nd and long, and you give the advantage to the defense. Do this on back to back possessions and the TOP is 2 to 1 in the opponents favor if you give up a 1stbdown or two. Struggle this was for 2 qtrs and your defense is now gassed and if they were already average, they are now squarely less than that and gambling on a big play.
Running more against a no1 defense like the Rams isn't run run run punt. When we did that against Dallas a few years before, everybody went apesh+t. It's trying to get an advantage on a superior opponent by hitting them when they don't expect it and gaining any advantage you can. So often, with Russ, the plays work but aren't successful. Sometimes he'd make something spectacular happen. But he'd also regularly get the offense into situations (and the OC) where you literally can't get into a rhythm. You don't know what will work or what won't, and you lose any semblance of surprise. Go back and watch the game and count hiw many 3rd and shorts, 1st downs and 3rd down conversions we literally left on the field. All we had to do was get thr ball into the receivers hands.
Rushing, we averaged 4 ypc that game not including Russ's numbers. Some say, oh, but we were stuffed on 3rd downs. Well, if you don't have a viable and varied way to attack a defense, (the number 1 unit in the league) has a pretty good chance of beating you in known, straight up situations. And if you consistently fail at passing on running downs, you've become incredibly predictable. How many running plays were changed? Don't know. But it happened for sure. Russ was famous for his alert calls. If in a running set, he saw a matchup he thought he could exploit, he'd audible to it. On known running downs, with a rush called, if we are constantly alerting to a big hitter that doesn't hit when we could run, your run pass balance gets screwed, as does you ability to adjust. Especially when you consistently fail and get behind on the scoreboard.
Folks also have said that in this game and others where Russ performed poorly, that protection was an issue. Or we got ourselves into long down and distance because of sacks and penalties on the O line. It cannot be overstated how difficult it is for a Tackle to constantly be in a speed drop to get set to hold an edge because you know your qb will ONLY ever setup deep. Dropping and setting for a Tackle over and over and over again hands a distinct advantage to the pass rusher because he never has to think about needing to break underneath to get pressure. He just needs to beat the Tackle around the end. And evenumtually, late in games, when the tackles overcommit to the outside rush and either false start or lose leverage, the defender breaks underneath and with an additional defender coming outside, it's a sack. We never ran plays from under center. Seattle and Baltimore were two of the top teams in the league at running shotgun. We never ran 3 step drops. There was no threat of the unexpected. We didn't run screens to offset the rush.
Every snap we ran, it was a pass, a handoff from the gun, an RPO look (that fooled no one), or PA from the gun. When that's your offense, and you've shown an inability to make easy, gimme plays (see Kurt Warners breakdown earlier in this thread) what do you 'adjust' to? In that environment, for the Rams, them knowing what we woukd do and shutting us down wasn't an indictment on Pete or Schotty. If the job requires a vice, a hammer, a Phillips tip, 10mm socket and electrical tape, but all you have is the vice, the Phillips and some electrical tape, how do you finish the job? That might sound like an oversimplication, but it's not. And for years it looked like we were racking up job after job successfully. When in reality, we were building sh+t with unorthodox tools. But the tools we had were VERY good.
The Rams knew what tools we didn't have and all they had to do was neutralize one of our goto's. Game over.
And the defense? The defense wasnt great. It struggled all year. At best, coming into that game, we just had to hold well enough for our offense to control the clock, put up points and force the defense into predictable situations. We never did that in part because we couldn't hold the ball. We gave an offensive genius the opportunity to scheme his team to a win. He kept us off balance enough that fatigue and frustration did the rest.
The LOB would always say they could see when the game was over because the opposition would begin to mentally quit. Works both ways. Offenses get pissed at defenses that don't hold their water and defenses resent offenses for the same reason. Watch the pick six that Russ throws. Look at his demeanor the failed plays prior. He was confused and detached. It wasn't because the plays weren't aggressive enough. It was because he couldn't figure things out. That int was deflating. His confidence took a hit and what was already feeling like an upset turned even more sour.
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