http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/05/AR2008010502618_pf.html
A Missed Opportunity
[SIZE=-1]By Michael Wilbon
Sunday, January 6, 2008; D01[/SIZE]
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SEATTLE
It was all set up so perfectly. In 2 1/2 minutes, the Commanders had gone from shut out to looking like a team of playoff destiny. A touchdown to start the fourth quarter, an interception that led to another touchdown and a balloon kickoff in the wind recovered at the Seattle 14 set them up to continue their inspired run into the postseason.
They were 14 yards from an eight-point lead, or at the very least a four-point lead. They had Seattle where the Seahawks had been too many times the past two seasons, scratching their heads and wondering what in the world had gone wrong.
It was all set up so perfectly. The Commanders suspected it, and the Seahawks weren't oblivious to what seemed to be happening either.
"A little bit bigger lead," Seattle's
Patrick Kerney said, "would have had them believing all that much more."
It was all set up so perfectly. The Commanders, after doing nothing for an entire half of a playoff game, were on the verge of taking control. They were finally going no-huddle (which should have happened earlier) and on quick counts to keep Kerney off
Todd Collins. They were gradually finding running lanes and soft spots in Seattle's defense.
The defense was pressuring
Matt Hasselbeck into big mistakes and making
Shaun Alexander look awfully ordinary.
It was reasonable to think three minutes into the fourth quarter Saturday that the
Washington Commanders had at least one more inspired episode in them.
The Commanders felt it.
"In the cards," was the phrase Collins used to describe how they felt about both the four-game winning streak that put them in the playoffs and their chance of winning here, especially once they had the lead, the ball and great field position.
One more score after that recovered kickoff and the Commanders would have been on the way to Dallas to play a team that wanted no part of them. Even next week's story lines already were developing. Do you know where
Tony Romo was all weekend?
Cancún.
With
Jessica Simpson.
Yeah, you read me right. Cancún.
With Jessica Simpson.
You can't convince me that it gets juicier than that. The coach who built a Hall of Fame career by sleeping on the office pullout vs. the QB Romeo who obviously doesn't sleep on a pullout in the office.
They watch the
NFL in Cancún, so Romo must have seen at least part of the game, right? Even if he and Jessica Simpson were canoodling in the penthouse all afternoon, that fourth-quarter score with the Commanders up one must have reached him somehow. Maybe somebody delivering room service or picking up laundry said something, that the Washington Commanders were on the verge of making another trip to Dallas.
Yeah, doggie.
And just like that, as quickly as the game flip-flopped the first time, it flip-flopped again.
With a chance to keep the momentum going, to keep the magical season rolling boldly into the front gate of
Texas Stadium, the Commanders more or less blew it. When
Shaun Suisham pulled that must-have 30-yard field goal attempt after the recovered balloon kickoff, the Commanders were no longer in control of the game.
Seattle's a very tough out at home, in the loudest playpen in the NFL. The Commanders were having trouble hearing their snap count, of which Kerney and the Seahawks took full advantage. But it's not like Seattle is
Tiger Woods when it comes to closing; they've been known to let an opponent off the hook now and then.
But the missed Suisham field goal changed everything. Coaches and players like to talk about "all three phases" of the game and how no one play should be identified as determining the outcome of a game. But even Collins called coming away without points "pivotal. We've got to convert that into points, especially in the playoffs. That was a big missed opportunity. We'd have been up 21-13."
Kerney called it "the key momentum change" in the game: "I think that miss really fed us a great deal or energy and a great deal of emotion. From that point on, things went well and we just took control of the game."
Seattle drove for one score, Collins started to play like a backup coaches would rather leave in mothballs for 10 years, Romo was off the hook and
Destiny's Team was headed for the longest imaginable flight east.
It's hard not to review the sequence and come to any conclusion other than the Commanders blew a wonderful chance at stealing a playoff game on the road.
Don't get me wrong: Seattle is a worthy postseason team, a division champ, a team only two seasons removed from the Super Bowl. They've got a great coach in
Mike Holmgren, a big-time experienced quarterback in Hasselbeck and an exceptionally fast defense that, combined with the world's loudest crowd, confounded the Commanders most of the day.
Still, Seattle's one of those teams you never feel fully confident can play well a second straight week. And the Commanders seemed to have them solved at 14-13, even with the narrowest of leads and even with most of a quarter remaining. A chip-shot field goal would have kept the Commanders rolling. A stop, a few first downs.
It was all set up so perfectly until the blown field goal and the Collins interceptions. The sigh of relief you could hear. It's coming from Dallas, where the
Cowboys, their coaches, a QB and his celebrity girlfriend all exhaled, knowing they don't have to fight off a blood rival with underdog status and absolutely zero pressure in a playoff game.
But the Commanders, for the first time since the Buffalo game at the end of November in the days following the death of
Sean Taylor, made the kind of mistakes a team simply cannot overcome in the playoffs.
The Cowboys now get
Tampa Bay or the Giants while Seattle goes to
Green Bay and the Commanders empty their lockers, surely feeling they had just as good a team, perhaps a better one, a team on the verge of continuing a season, a team on the verge of one more improbable week and a playoff game that would have generated an absurd amount of interest.
Romo, whether he's in Cancún or back
Texas, can roll over now, hit the snooze alarm and fall back to sleep.
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