RENTON — Based on the significantly-larger-than-usual media throng that converged on the Seattle Seahawks headquarters Wednesday, you’d have thought one of two things was happening. Either the playoffs had already started, or the Seahawks, who have lost two in a row, are in full-fledged crisis mode and the local and national media were there to witness the meltdown.
And since the calendar does indeed confirm that it’s only October, we can deduce that it’s not playoff time yet, so apparently everyone was at the VMAC to see the sky falling on the Seahawks, who not only have lost two in a row, but who also traded away one of their most talented players amidst reports of teammates fighting and a divided locker room.
But here’s the thing, whether you think they should be or not, these Seahawks aren’t particularly worried about the fact that they’ve lost consecutive games for the first time in two years, and have already lost as many games as they did all of last season on their way to a Super Bowl title. The Seahawks aren’t as good as they were last year, both their record and statistics, especially on defense, tell that story, but everyone seems confident that they’re still on the right track, early season hiccups notwithstanding.
“The team is still confident in what we can do, still confident in our abilities,” said cornerback Richard Sherman. “If three losses were to ruin the season, then it would have ruined last year’s season too, because we lost three then too. I think our team is fine and understands what we need to do to turn it around and we’re confident in our ability to do that.”
Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, more than anyone, knows his team has room to grow. The pass rush isn’t what it was last year, and as a result, turnovers are down, opponent scoring is up, and what a year ago was the league’s most feared defense has been downright mediocre.
But Carroll, ever the optimist, also sees a team that was a third-and-20 stop against Dallas and a few special teams blunders in St. Louis from being a 5-1 team. Then again, what ifs hardly matter in the long run, and a coach who preaches that “it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish” knows that his team’s inability to close out those tight games is indeed significant. But Carroll also sees an offense that looked very good in the second half last week, a defense that despite its struggles still has plenty of talent, and most importantly, he knows there are a lot of games left.
“The margin of where we are versus where we could be is so slight,” Carroll said. “The hope is very strong. To see the big improvement on offense this week was really encouraging and exciting, so we’re going to keep punching … It’s a long season with a lot of stuff that has to be determined, a lot of games in division, all kinds of activity that can happen, and we’ve got to see if we can turn those finishes and continue to improve.”
While nobody in the Seahawks’ locker room feels good about what happened in their past two games, there is a sense, especially on the offensive side of the ball, that a corner was turned in St. Louis. After producing only a pair of field goal in the first half, one of which was the result of a short field, quarterback Russell Wilson and his offense caught fire in the second half, scoring touchdowns on each of its last three possessions, all of which covered 80 or more yards.
“If you look at the way Marshawn (Lynch) was running the rock, if we didn’t get a couple of his runs called back, he would have over 100 yards rushing, and I felt like that’s the identity of our offense, getting him the ball, allowing him to go over 100 yards, then setting everything up in the passing game,” said receiver Doug Baldwin, who had seven catches for 123 yards and a touchdown. “Even though he got those yards called back, that still helped us set up everything in the passing game. So yes, I felt like we did turn a corner in the second half.”
And if you want to connect the dots between Harvin’s departure and an offense getting back to what it does best, well, nobody is going to really argue with you, even if they won’t say as much.
Asked if he believed there was such a thing as addition by subtraction for an NFL team, Baldwin paused, smiled a bit, then said, “That’s a good question. I don’t have an answer for you.” It was a non-answer that spoke volumes.
But even if Harvin didn’t fit in with everyone, even if some on the team feel like they’re better off without him, despite his considerable talents, and even if, as Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman reported Wednesday, there was a growing rift between Harvin and Wilson, that doesn’t mean the Seahawks locker room was some sort of toxic environment that wasn’t conducive to winning.
The fact is that when you put 53 men young men from different backgrounds into a high-pressure environment, not everyone is going to be best friends. Some of them will even dislike each other; that was true on last year’s Super Bowl-winning team, and it’s true now, but as Baldwin puts it, “when you lose everything is magnified, and when you win everything is covered up.”
“We’re in a locker room where you spend 12 to 14 hours with these guys every day,” Baldwin said. “So of course there’s going to be issues, you’re not going to all get along, you’re not going to agree about everything, so you’re going to have issues … To us in this locker room, we know what needs to be corrected and we know what positives come out of everything, and we’re just going to move forward with that.”
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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