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Seahawks quietly rampaging into the playoffs
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By Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) - If a team can quietly rampage into the playoffs, that's what the Seahawks are doing.
You know, the SEATTLE Seahawks. The team tucked into the upper, outer corner of the country that last registered on the national scale two Super Bowls ago.
The New England Patriots are pursuing perfection. The Dallas Cowboys are pursuing a rematch with those Patriots, the only team that has beaten them, in the Super Bowl. The two-loss Green Bay Packers are pursuing a storybook finish to Brett Favre's career.
And the Seahawks are pursuing more anonymity.
NFL fans from Maine to Maui know the wardrobe of Tom Brady better than they know this: Seattle is the only team besides the Patriots to have just clinched its fourth consecutive division title.
"We are kind of far away. Heck, we're in Alaska almost," said coach Mike Holmgren, who arrived at the league's most far-flung outpost in 1999. "There's a lot of stuff going on."
Including in Seattle. Really.
While few outside this city have been paying attention, the league's hottest team not in New England or Dallas has won five consecutive games. It's a perfectly timed charge into another postseason during this, the golden era of Seattle football.
The Seahawks will play their eighth postseason game since 2004 next month, probably as the No. 3 seed in the NFC at home in the first round against whoever secures the last wild-card berth.
Seattle appeared in just eight playoff games in its first 28 years, from 1976-2003.
If they were in New York or Chicago, these perennially contending Seahawks would be hosting "Saturday Night Live" or hanging out with Oprah.
In Seattle, Patrick Kerney, the NFL's sacks leader with 13½, walked out of a sushi restaurant and down a crowded sidewalk with friends on a Friday night in the city's chic Belltown section - and not one person noticed the 6-foot-5, 272-pound star of a big-play defense.
"It was fantastic," Kerney said.
In Atlanta, where he played from 1999 through last season, he couldn't take four steps without getting stopped.
You are either more Seattle than "Grey's Anatomy" or a fantasy league nerd who needs if you knew that Bobby Engram leads the Seahawks by far with 76 catches, fifth most in the NFC. Or that Nate Burleson leads them with six touchdown receptions from Matt Hasselbeck, who is having the best season of his career.
These five straight wins have come since the refreshingly candid Holmgren boldly announced to the league's defenses that he would no longer really try to run the ball because Shaun Alexander was hurt and going nowhere, anyway. Holmgren declared he was placing the weight of the season upon Hasselbeck's throwing arm.
"Really, looking back on it, I was trying to ram a square peg in a round hole," he said.
It's Holmgren's best move since he was leading Green Bay and put in some raw kid named Brett Favre for injured starter Don Majkowski on Sept. 27, 1992 - and never took him out. That turned out OK.
Even though defenses have known what's coming, Hasselbeck has completed 63 percent of his throws during Seattle's winning streak, with 11 touchdowns and just three interceptions. He's been better than in that 2005 season, which ended with him starting both the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl.
This Seahawks team is better than those '05 NFC champions in one key aspect: defense. This one attacks more and makes more plays in the secondary. Cornerback Marcus Trufant has seven interceptions and has defended many more passes, having fixed his problem of getting to passes in flight. He should make his first Pro Bowl but probably won't - he does play in Seattle, after all.
Deon Grant and Brian Russell, imported from the AFC before this season, are limiting deep plays by providing veteran common sense as new safeties. No more of Michael Boulware getting fooled by run fakes and Ken Hamlin roaming out of place in the secondary.
But even though they are better overall than in 2005, they won't return to the Super Bowl. They are too reliant on Hasselbeck. They've been getting away with it so far because he's been so productive.
Yet he has already played through sore ribs, a strained oblique and a strained quadriceps this season. His iffy offensive line is alternating Floyd Womack, who has failed to win two starting jobs the last two seasons, at right guard with inconsistent Rob Sims.
Where's Steve Hutchinson when you need him? Oh, yeah, in Minnesota.
At times, opponents have overwhelmed Seattle's blockers and made the Seahawks look like the University of Washington. Pittsburgh, New Orleans and St. Louis - for the first half, in a game three weeks ago - sacked Hasselbeck 11 times combined in 10 quarters. Seattle was outscored 68-24 in that span and lost big to the Steelers and Saints.
They only beat the Rams with a 17-point rally after Holmgren demanded simpler blocking assignments at halftime to save the battered Hasselbeck.
Think Minnesota, Green Bay and other potential playoff foes won't order those game films?
Plus, the Seahawks might need at least a respectable running game if they get to the second round of the playoffs on the frozen mud, or worse, of Lambeau Field. That would have to come from either Alexander, who appears to be fading into irrelevance two years after becoming the league's MVP, or Maurice Morris. Morris is more versatile and dynamic, but if Holmgren won't trust him to a lead role in the regular season, he's not going to in the playoffs.
When he was coaching in Green Bay, Holmgren made sure he had running backs he could rely on when weather turned nasty. Now, knowing he has no such runner in Seattle, Holmgren is singing the virtues of passing almost exclusively to win in the postseason.
"I think New England is proving the point. While they run the ball very well, (they) throw the ball 33 times in a row and still have these big wins and all that," Holmgren said. "No one's saying they have to run the ball in the playoffs. I haven't heard that."
Or maybe that word hasn't made it all the way out here to him yet.
__________________
for more updates visit http://gryphononcowboys.blogspot.com/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) - If a team can quietly rampage into the playoffs, that's what the Seahawks are doing.
You know, the SEATTLE Seahawks. The team tucked into the upper, outer corner of the country that last registered on the national scale two Super Bowls ago.
The New England Patriots are pursuing perfection. The Dallas Cowboys are pursuing a rematch with those Patriots, the only team that has beaten them, in the Super Bowl. The two-loss Green Bay Packers are pursuing a storybook finish to Brett Favre's career.
And the Seahawks are pursuing more anonymity.
NFL fans from Maine to Maui know the wardrobe of Tom Brady better than they know this: Seattle is the only team besides the Patriots to have just clinched its fourth consecutive division title.
"We are kind of far away. Heck, we're in Alaska almost," said coach Mike Holmgren, who arrived at the league's most far-flung outpost in 1999. "There's a lot of stuff going on."
Including in Seattle. Really.
While few outside this city have been paying attention, the league's hottest team not in New England or Dallas has won five consecutive games. It's a perfectly timed charge into another postseason during this, the golden era of Seattle football.
The Seahawks will play their eighth postseason game since 2004 next month, probably as the No. 3 seed in the NFC at home in the first round against whoever secures the last wild-card berth.
Seattle appeared in just eight playoff games in its first 28 years, from 1976-2003.
If they were in New York or Chicago, these perennially contending Seahawks would be hosting "Saturday Night Live" or hanging out with Oprah.
In Seattle, Patrick Kerney, the NFL's sacks leader with 13½, walked out of a sushi restaurant and down a crowded sidewalk with friends on a Friday night in the city's chic Belltown section - and not one person noticed the 6-foot-5, 272-pound star of a big-play defense.
"It was fantastic," Kerney said.
In Atlanta, where he played from 1999 through last season, he couldn't take four steps without getting stopped.
You are either more Seattle than "Grey's Anatomy" or a fantasy league nerd who needs if you knew that Bobby Engram leads the Seahawks by far with 76 catches, fifth most in the NFC. Or that Nate Burleson leads them with six touchdown receptions from Matt Hasselbeck, who is having the best season of his career.
These five straight wins have come since the refreshingly candid Holmgren boldly announced to the league's defenses that he would no longer really try to run the ball because Shaun Alexander was hurt and going nowhere, anyway. Holmgren declared he was placing the weight of the season upon Hasselbeck's throwing arm.
"Really, looking back on it, I was trying to ram a square peg in a round hole," he said.
It's Holmgren's best move since he was leading Green Bay and put in some raw kid named Brett Favre for injured starter Don Majkowski on Sept. 27, 1992 - and never took him out. That turned out OK.
Even though defenses have known what's coming, Hasselbeck has completed 63 percent of his throws during Seattle's winning streak, with 11 touchdowns and just three interceptions. He's been better than in that 2005 season, which ended with him starting both the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl.
This Seahawks team is better than those '05 NFC champions in one key aspect: defense. This one attacks more and makes more plays in the secondary. Cornerback Marcus Trufant has seven interceptions and has defended many more passes, having fixed his problem of getting to passes in flight. He should make his first Pro Bowl but probably won't - he does play in Seattle, after all.
Deon Grant and Brian Russell, imported from the AFC before this season, are limiting deep plays by providing veteran common sense as new safeties. No more of Michael Boulware getting fooled by run fakes and Ken Hamlin roaming out of place in the secondary.
But even though they are better overall than in 2005, they won't return to the Super Bowl. They are too reliant on Hasselbeck. They've been getting away with it so far because he's been so productive.
Yet he has already played through sore ribs, a strained oblique and a strained quadriceps this season. His iffy offensive line is alternating Floyd Womack, who has failed to win two starting jobs the last two seasons, at right guard with inconsistent Rob Sims.
Where's Steve Hutchinson when you need him? Oh, yeah, in Minnesota.
At times, opponents have overwhelmed Seattle's blockers and made the Seahawks look like the University of Washington. Pittsburgh, New Orleans and St. Louis - for the first half, in a game three weeks ago - sacked Hasselbeck 11 times combined in 10 quarters. Seattle was outscored 68-24 in that span and lost big to the Steelers and Saints.
They only beat the Rams with a 17-point rally after Holmgren demanded simpler blocking assignments at halftime to save the battered Hasselbeck.
Think Minnesota, Green Bay and other potential playoff foes won't order those game films?
Plus, the Seahawks might need at least a respectable running game if they get to the second round of the playoffs on the frozen mud, or worse, of Lambeau Field. That would have to come from either Alexander, who appears to be fading into irrelevance two years after becoming the league's MVP, or Maurice Morris. Morris is more versatile and dynamic, but if Holmgren won't trust him to a lead role in the regular season, he's not going to in the playoffs.
When he was coaching in Green Bay, Holmgren made sure he had running backs he could rely on when weather turned nasty. Now, knowing he has no such runner in Seattle, Holmgren is singing the virtues of passing almost exclusively to win in the postseason.
"I think New England is proving the point. While they run the ball very well, (they) throw the ball 33 times in a row and still have these big wins and all that," Holmgren said. "No one's saying they have to run the ball in the playoffs. I haven't heard that."
Or maybe that word hasn't made it all the way out here to him yet.
__________________
for more updates visit http://gryphononcowboys.blogspot.com/
