RENTON — Remember April when, following the draft, optimism ran high?
Remember August, when the talk in training camp was that the 4-12 record of 2008 was in the past? When then-general manager Tim Ruskell and head coach Jim Mora would have you believe that the previous season was an aberration brought on by injury?
Now fast forward to Sunday afternoon when the Seahawks fell to 5-9 by losing by 17 at home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who came into the game with a 1-12 record.
Suddenly, it seems, the story has changed. Last season the aberration has turned into last season the problem that must be fixed.
“We were a four-(win team) last year,” Mora said following Sunday’s loss. “Let’s not lose track of that, folks. We were a four-(win team) last year… We’re at a stage of trying to build something that was broken, and it’s not easy.”
Wait a minute. Something that was broken? But we were told 2008 was an anomaly, not a broken team that needed to be fixed.
So are we dealing with some revisionist history here, or did the Seahawks front office and coaches just misevaluate what they had to work with? Was the premise that the team didn’t need an overhaul, that Seattle was close to contending again, off base?
“Well, it was to some extent, and it wasn’t to some extent,” Mora said.
Mora noted that this season also started with injuries, including the loss of left tackle Walter Jones and left guard Mike Wahle, neither of whom played a down this year, but that those are things the team should have overcome better. For now the goal is to finish strong, he said, then the team will evaluate what they have once the season ends.
“What we have to do is take these next two weeks and really focus on working hard, sticking together as a team, evaluating where we are from a scheme standpoint, from a coaching standpoint, from a talent standpoint, and then after the season’s over, step back and really take a good, hard look at it and see where we are, and exactly what we need to do to get better,” Mora said.
So when was it that the opinion of last season changed from aberration to sign of trying times to come?
“Early in the season,” Mora said. “Our offensive line struggles, through injury and performance, that kind of made me start thinking that. When you’re in a transitional year, a lot of things have to go right for you early to get it going, to get that momentum that you need to kind of propel you and the things that you’re trying to instill. I felt like in preseason we were getting that, but that’s sometimes inaccurate, because it is preseason. But early in the season, as we were trying to get the program going, losing guys to injury hurt our ability to gather any momentum. And I don’t want that to sound like an excuse for the whole season, but it is a reason that we struggled early to get momentum, and momentum is a big thing in this business. Now, that being said, you have to still figure out a way to each week get better, and we’ve been inconsistent in that regard.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more Seahawks coverage, check out the Seahawks blog at heraldnet.com/seahawksblog
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