You, sir, are no Rusty Tillman
I already wrote about the Huskies’ unconscionable last-second blunder against Arizona State, which I assumed would be the only completely incompetent play one of my teams would make this weekend.
Instead, the Seahawks treated me to another one. After Arizona opened the game with a long touchdown drive, they blooped their kickoff short. Seahawks backup tight end John Owens, instead of catching the live ball, ran forward to block as the ball fell behind him. The Cardinals recovered and scored another touchdown, putting the Hawks in a 14-0 hole before Hasselbeck and the offense had run a single play.
You can see video of that blunder here in the NFL Network’s highlight package from the game. (Where you can hear the NFL Network commentator wonder out loud: “What were these guys thinking?”)
The shame of it all is that this blunder occurred on the day that legendary Seahawks special teams coach Rusty Tillman raised the 12th Man flag. Tillman, the first person I ever heard say “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog,” supervised a crack Hawks special teams unit in the 1980s, grooming Seahawks legends like Fredd Young and Rufus Porter. Can we make Tillman’s appearance more than a one-day thing, maybe?
