Tag Archives: football

Marshawn Lynch’s Game-Saving Shimmy

Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch, auteur of the most exciting run in team history, today busted out the sickest juke this Hawks fan has ever seen. The play not only left one of the NFL’s greatest defensive players grasping at turf, it helped save the Seahawks’ 22-17 win over the Baltimore Ravens. Let’s take a look, shall we?

To set the thing up: With just over three minutes left, Seahawks have a 3rd at 5 at the Baltimore 46. If the Seahawks don’t get a first down, they’ll have to punt, giving the Ravens–who still have all three time-outs–plenty of time for a game-winning drive. Lynch starts in the backfield, takes a handoff fake from Tarvaris Jackson, and cuts into the right flat, where Jackson throws him the ball.

1) Lynch catches the ball at the Baltimore 44, three yards short of a first down, with two Baltimore defenders closing–one of whom is middle linebacker Ray Lewis, one of the greatest defensive players in NFL history. The other, at the bottom of the screen, is outside linebacker Jarret Johnson.

2)  Here’s the same moment from an angle that will let us see Lynch’s juke better.

3) As Lewis and Johnson (not in your picture) close in, Lynch plants his right foot as if he plans to cut back inside.

4) Lynch sells the fake with his body, wrenching his head down and to the left as Johnson goes in for the tackle.

5) But then, suddenly, Lynch wrenches his body back to the right. Johnson’s tackle corrals nothing but moist Seattle air. Lewis is likewise flummoxed.

6) With Lewis and Johnson piled up at the 40, Lynch doesn’t not stop to rubberneck–he sprints upfield. And the result?

7) That’ll be a Seahawks…FIRST DOWN!

A minute later, Lynch plowed through the Baltimore defense for yet another first down, this one the game-clincher. He finished with 109 yards, and here’s how tough those yards were–his longest run was just 8 yards. It’s Lynch’s second consecutive 100-yard rushing game, and he becomes only the second back all season to run for 100 yards against Baltimore’s stout defense. The Seahawks move to 3-6 on the year, and with a glimmer of hope left for the season–three of their next four games are at home, and all four are against last-place teams.

Husky Quarterback Keith Price Feels Neither Pain Nor Pressure

Price

Imagine: You’ve got a new job as a widget salesman! Catch is, your predecessor had so much sales talent, he was known around the office, unironically, as “The Savior.” Your second-in-command is the son of one of the greatest salesmen of all time. And you? You’ve got no hype, no pedigree. Still want the job?

Keith Price did. Not widget salesman (that was a clever rhetorical device!), but quarterback of the University of Washington football team. A position occupied for the past four years by Jake “The Savior” Locker, and now vied for by Nick Montana, son of NFL Hall-of-Famer Joe. So how’s the Compton-raised sophomore done under the pressure of following a legend, and being shadowed by the son of another?

Oh, he’s only leading the nation in touchdown passes.

Locker

Price may not be better than Locker, but he’s sure playing like it. Last week’s Husky game against Nebraska provided an interesting chance for comparison. The Huskies played Nebraska twice last season with Locker at quarterback. In those two games combined, Locker completed just 9 passes, for 127 yards and 1 touchdown. In last Saturday’s game, Price completed 21 passes for 274 yards and 4 touchdowns.

There are reasons to believe that Nebraska’s defense is weaker this year, but there can be little lingering doubt that the unsung Price is a more proficient quarterback in UW head coach Steve Sarkisian’s pro-style passing offense than Locker ever was.

And Price is doing all this on two sprained knees. (“They’d probably have to cut off my legs to keep me from playing,” Price told a media contingent this week.)

Rooting for Locker, as perfect a physical specimen as has ever played quarterback, was never satisfying. Because of his overwhelming hype even before coming to Washington, you expected greatness from Locker–something that just wasn’t possible his first two years as a subject of the incompetent Tyrone Willingham fiefdom. Under Sarkisian, Locker had to learn a pro-style offense in just two years. Didn’t happen–though the NFL’s Tennessee Titans are so convinced of Locker’s ability to learn, they made him the eighth-overall pick in April’s draft.

Montana

Sarkisian has had much more success coaching Price. Maybe that’s because he and Price have a lot more in common–at least in their lack of pedigree and hype. Sarkisian’s dad not only wasn’t a football star, he’d probably never heard of the game when he came to the US from Iran at age 18. And Sarkisian was so lightly-regarded as a quarterback recruit that he began his college athletic career on the baseball diamond.

It was a surprise when Sarkisian named Price the starter during spring practice–most fans expected Montana to compete for the spot. But Sarkisian’s decision has proved to be an outstanding one.

Saturday, Price and the Huskies host Cal at Husky Stadium in a critical game for two teams scrapping for ground in the middle of the Pac-12 North Division. Cal’s pass defense is suspect–they allowed Colorado to pass for 474 yards two weeks ago. Yet the Huskies’ pass defense may be worse–they’re ranked 115th out of 120 NCAA teams in passing yards allowed per game. Vegas expects a close, high scoring game: UW is favored by one point, with the over/under set at 58.5. Bookies have pegged UW as just a one-point favorite.

Do the Seahawks Have a Top Secret Motto?

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, discussing what, if anything, has been earned (Photo: MvB)

After suffering through the 2011 Seahawks opening-game loss Sunday, some friends and I kicked around mottos for the team.

  • 2011 Seattle Seahawks: I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
  • 2011 Seattle Seahawks: Better Than Last Year (In the sucking department)
  • 2011 Seattle Seahawks: It’s either us or shopping with your wife.
  • 2011 Seattle Seahawks: Stop Believing
  • 2011 Seattle Seahawks: As Boring As Church, But With More Praying

The team’s actual public motto–“Earn everything”–is emblazoned on a banner affixed to the facade of CenturyLink Field. But a second, more pragmatic motto may be driving the team’s decision-making: “Suck for Luck.”

That’s “Luck” as in Andrew Luck, the star Stanford quarterback whose strong arm, large frame and pedigree make NFL scouts quiver. Some say he’ll be as good as Peyton Manning, which is like saying a President will be as good as Abraham Lincoln.

The team with the first pick in next year’s NFL draft will have the right to pick Luck, and, if the scouts are right, have that near-pre-requisite to a Super Bowl win–a Hall-of-Fame quarterback.

So who gets that #1 pick? The team with the NFL’s worst record. And, after their performance Saturday, the Seahawks look like as likely a candidate for that distinction as any team in the league.

To wit: Behind a offensive line with three players making their first NFL start, the Seahawks averaged just 3.4 yards per play Sunday, worst in the NFL. This against San Francisco, hardly one of the NFL’s dominant defenses. Yes, the Seahawks defense held the Niners to only 209 yards, but with San Francisco holding a two-score lead for most of the game, they had little incentive for aggressive offense.

The keenest observers of NFL football–Vegas oddsmakers–were so repulsed by the Seahawks’ performance, they’ve made them the biggest underdogs in the NFL this week: The Hawks are 15-1/2 point underdogs to Pittsburgh. A two-touchdown spread in the NFL is about as bad as it gets–and the handicap is even more incredible considering that the Steelers lost their opening game 35-7.

If there is cause for hope in 2011, it resides in the persons of left guard Robert Gallery and wide receiver Sidney Rice. The two were the big Seahawks free agent acquisitions of the off-season, but neither played Week 1 because of injury. And they may not play again in Week 2.

The Seahawks, behind coach and grand poobah Pete Carroll, clearly did not build this team to win in 2010–failing to re-sign starting quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, cutting defensive stalwart Lofa Tatupu, building the offensive line around two rookies and two second-year starters. But were they built to lose?

We may be in for a lot of long Sundays this fall–with Luck as the potential payout.

Seahawks’ Hiring Spree Begins Now; Will It Include Matt Hasselbeck?

I don’t care how many meetings, off-sites, or team-building events you’ve got on your Outlook calendar, there’s no way you’re busier than Seahawks GM John Schneider. He’s got nine months’ worth of work to do this week.

If Schneider’s annoyed, I wouldn’t blame him. His bosses (NFL owners) and their employees (NFL players) have been locked in a labor dispute since February–aka Schneider’s usual window to re-sign existing players and draft picks, woo veteran free agents, sign undrafted rookies, and broker trades with other teams. Now, Schneider must do all that in about seven days, and he won’t get a day of rest like that lazy, unionized God did.

This sucks for Schneider, but for football fans it’s thrilling. Instead of the usual slow drip of signings and trades that go on during the long NFL break, we’ll enjoy a monsoon of moves. The clouds burst today.

As of 7 a.m., Schneider (with heavy input from Seahawks head coach and “executive VP of football operations” Pete Carroll) can make trades, sign rookies, and negotiate with free agents. Seahawks training camp begins Wednesday. On Friday at 3 p.m., he may begin signing free agents to contracts.

Job one for Schneider and Carroll: Figure out who’ll play quarterback.

Quarterback is a position unlike any other in professional sports. Besides his responsibility for pre-snap adjustments, and the fact that he handles the ball on every play, the quarterback is seen as the de facto team leader–whether you’re playing on an NFL field or two-hand touch in the park.

Matt Hasselbeck, the Seahawks’ starting quarterback for the past ten seasons, is a free agent. Though aging and prone to injury, Hasselbeck provides stability, which could be appealing in this bizarre year. The man is a leader–Hasselbeck organized and led team workouts during the training-camp-less offseason, despite having no contractual obligation to the team. Yet Hasselbeck’s incumbency is not as critical as it might normally be. The Seahawks hired a new offensive coordinator in the offseason. Under former Minnesota Vikings OC Darrell Bevell, who prefers a run-heavy version of the West Coast offense, Hasselbeck must learn a new, if not entirely unfamiliar, playbook.

Given the compressed training camp schedule, a quarterback who already knows Bevell’s system may be a better fit. So you might be hearing the name “Tarvaris Jackson.” It’s a name you may have heard before–as the punchline to a joke.

Once a promising quarterback prospect for the Vikings, Jackson has never recovered from a comically inept performance in the 2008 playoffs, which compelled the Vikings to replace him with 97-year-old Brett Favre. Still, Jackson’s five seasons in Minnesota coincided with Bevell’s tenure there. If there’s one quarterback who could step in right now and run that offense, it’s Jackson. Well, Jackson and Favre, but let’s not go there.

The Seahawks have one quarterback under contract: Charlie Whitehurst, acquired last year as the presumed successor to Hasselbeck. Whitehurst did not impress coaches, to the point that the Seahawks had to develop a special “training-wheels” game plan for his emergency start in the pivotal Week 17 game against the Rams.

Hasselbeck, who made $5.75M last season, may well get offers approaching that from other teams–money that in the rebuilding Seahawks’ case would be better invested in younger players. Then again, Hass did throw 4 TDs in a playoff game last January. Jackson hasn’t thrown 4 TDs in a game since 2008. Whitehurst hasn’t thrown 4 TDs in his entire NFL career.

Other possibilities:
—Kevin Kolb, who was Wally Pipped by Michael Vick, and now wants a trade. The Seahawks will surely be in on the bidding for Kolb, but may not be able to match desperate Arizona, still shell-shocked from Year One of the post-Kurt-Warner era.
—Matt Leinart, who won the Heisman Trophy under Carroll at USC but flopped in Arizona.
—Carson Palmer, another former USC Heisman winner who’s had more NFL success (though not as much since his 2008 elbow injury). Palmer has demanded a trade from Cincinnati.
–-Vince Young, who won 30 of 47 starts as the Tennessee Titans QB but will be released due to his emotional instability.
—Donovan McNabb, if the Redskins release him from his massive contract (he’s actually younger than Hasselbeck).
—Kyle Orton, a solid starter for Denver the last two seasons, now on the trading block with Tim Tebow ready to take over.
—Rex Grossman, who has, at times, been a competent NFL quarterback.

Complicating things even more, any free agent QB the Seahawks sign–even Hasselbeck–couldn’t practice with the team until August 4.

Besides finding the person who’ll be the most important player on the team, Schneider must also decide whether to resign several Seahawks who started last year but are now free agents. These include defensive line star Brandon Mebane, starting safety Lawyer Milloy, starting offensive linemen Chris Spencer and Sean Locklear, and kicker Olindo Mare.

The action will come in Twitter-time. Follow ESPN’s Mike Sando (@espn_nfcwest), or the Seattle Times’ Danny O’Neil (@dannyoneil) for breaking news. For in-depth, Seahawks-centric analysis, check out Field Gulls or the inadequately-named Seahawks Draft Blog. And once the downpour’s over, I’ll be back to try to make sense of it all. Unless the Seahawks sign Brett Favre, in which case I’ll have drowned myself in an Occidental Ave. puddle.

You can buy that pin (illustrated by Mad Magazine’s Jack Davis) for $15 at Seattle’s Gasoline Alley Antiques. Here’s all their Seahawks memorabilia.

Did “White Guilt” Destroy Husky Football? Author Derek Johnson Says Yes

Bow Down to Willingham book coverWriter and Husky fan Derek Johnson, author of two previous books on Washington football history, led himself back into the torture chamber that was the tenure of former head coach Tyrone Willingham for his latest book, Bow Down to Willingham.

Folks, things were worse than we thought. Willingham has lost his team through arrogance and poor communication well before the 0-12 debacle. “Willingham didn’t have anyone’s respect,” former Husky and current San Diego Charger C.J. Wallace told Johnson. “It was always us versus him.” Even Willingham’s admirers grade him low as a coach. “He gave us a lot of stuff to make us better as men,” says former Husky Caesar Rayford. “He just forgot to focus on football.”

Johnson’s convinced me that Willingham was a disaster of a coach. But the author makes a second, more controversial claim, one best encapsulated in Johnson’s subhead, which is: “How White Guilt Enabled a Secretly Malicious Coach to Destroy Husky Football.” If Willingham were white, Johnson contends, he would’ve been fired sooner. Later in his book, Johnson links Willingham’s tenure to the election of Barack Obama, writing that “white liberals worshipped at the altars of Willingham and Obama.” Since I was both a Willingham supporter and an Obama supporter, and am undeniably a white liberal, I figured Johnson and I should have a chat.

What’s the strongest specific evidence you have that Willingham’s tenure lasted longer than it ought to have because he was black?

By the end of the 2007 season, Willingham was a disastrous 11-25 through three seasons at UW. Unseen to the public, team morale inside the program was a travesty. Players were petrified to speak out for fear of Willingham’s retribution.

At the end of 2007, Willingham had a private meeting with President Emmert and Todd Turner in Hawaii, where the Huskies were to play (and lose) to the Warriors. President Emmert privately told multiple people that he entered that meeting with the intention of firing Willingham. Something happened in that room to change his mind. Sources told me that there were concerns of Washington suffering a public backlash like the one Notre Dame endured when they fired Willingham in 2004.

Who are your sources?

Those names are off the record, but generally speaking they were in close proximity of former President Emmert and knew of his concerns of a racial backlash.

In your epilogue, you compare Willingham to President Obama, arguing that both are “arguably incompetent” and have “attained powerful roles they had no business assuming” because “white guilt…provided a catalyst to their careers.” But many whites have attained similar roles with less experience: Steve Sarkisian and George W. Bush come to mind. How can you be sure “white guilt” propelled Willingham and Obama?

For his many faults, George W. Bush had real world business experience running and managing businesses. He was not a career politician (though if Bush ran his businesses like he did the country, they would have all gone bankrupt). As for Sarkisian, his resume was light at a time when Husky Football was on life support. When it happened, I was deeply disappointed by the fact Washington hired him.

I understand and appreciate why you posed that question, but those circumstances are apples and oranges when compared to the Obama and Willingham situations. The crux of Obama’s presidential campaign was the chance for America to make history by hiring a black man as its leader and change the world for good. This was hyped extensively. But the media never properly vetted him to let us know who he really was and what he really stood for. We’ve come to see him as he really is, and many Americans feel tremendously let down. Obama’s popularity rate has plummeted from about 90 percent to 38 percent. He was never what most people thought he was.

As for Willingham, he went directly from running backs coach with the Minnesota Vikings to a head coaching job at Stanford. Where else in modern times has a coach ever gone from running backs coach to head coach? Willingham had been groomed by the legendary Bill Walsh from his Minority Coaching Fellowship program. It was an admirable intention, but the reality is that Willingham was promoted way too fast through the ranks because he looked the part. But looking the part isn’t the same as being a good coach who knows the game well enough to teach it effectively.

Quick food for thought: If Sarkisian went 11-25 in his first three years, mistreated players and bungled virtually every aspect of his job, he would be fired with haste. There would be no public outcry and vigorous public debate about giving him a fourth year.

Former kicker Michael Braunstein told you: “Willingham would be a great coach at Air Force, Navy, Army…(where) guys are soldiers and will do everything they’re told.” Do you agree?

No, I don’t for the most part. If he was in a situation with fantastic coordinators running things for him, and he could serve as the titular leader, he could evade disaster like he did at Stanford. (To be fair, Willingham led Stanford to their first Rose Bowl since 1971–Seth.) The key is would the assistant coaches work hard at recruiting even with Willingham spending minimum effort at doing so? It’s rare to find great organizations or businesses that don’t have the tone set by a hard-working leader. The leader sets the tone for everybody else.

If white guilt is so powerful, how can you ever be sure that a black coaching candidate wasn’t “propped up” the way you say Willingham was?

Each situation is unique, so it’s not like there is some scientific formula to utilize. If we’re speaking generally, without inside information, then we only have our common sense to guide us. When I heard a few months ago that New Mexico’s black head coach Mike Locksley was one of five candidates for the Maryland job, I winced. In his two seasons at NM, Locksley had gone 2-22. Really? You’re going to consider a guy who has gone 1-11 in each of his two seasons as a head coach? It’s almost insulting to the black population to bend in contortions like that. If you want to provide blacks with more coaching opportunities, go find a hard-working assistant or an up-and-coming guy toiling in Division II somewhere, and give him a chance.

Many observers of the Husky football program (including me) argued that Willingham shouldn’t have been fired after the 2007 season because the Huskies had faced a killer schedule, and because another disruption to the program could be devastating. Do you think those arguments were motivated by white guilt as well?

No, I don’t believe that white guilt was the only factor that led to people supporting Willingham. The line of reasoning you cite was understandable but short-sighted, even for people that didn’t know the inside stories. The program was being devastated from the inside and people who saw what was happening could have said something but didn’t. If you, Seth Kolloen, and thousands of other Willingham supporters had heard the player testimonials in my book after the 2007 season, I’m guessing you would rethink your position. (He’s right about that–Seth) There were people, most notably former athletic director Todd Turner, who witnessed what was being done to the players, and yet seemingly deluded themselves into believing everything was being done for the greater cause of maintaining the number of black coaches in college football. On the surface it was a worthy cause, but Turner sacrificed the careers of those players and the welfare of the team in the process.

In December 2007, I privately had a heated but respectful debate with a famous former Husky player. He told me that Willingham needed more time to turn the program around and that I was being too impatient. Two months ago, I spoke with him again, and told him some of the stories that were going to be in the book. He was stunned, and said that he wished he knew that information back then so he might have been able to speak up on behalf of the players.

Thanks, Derek. You can buy Bow Down to Willingham and Johnson’s other (less political) Husky history books at DerekJohnsonBooks.com.

NFL Draft Recap: Seahawks Get Bigger, Smarter

John Moffitt
"An intelligent player"

Pundit grades for the NFL draft are out, and the national football media has about as much love for the Seahawks draft picks as the official Libyan media has for NATO.

What say you, Clifton Brown of The Sporting News? D! ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr? D+! FOX Sports’ Adam Caplan? D!

Seahawks drafters Pete Carroll and John Schneider get low marks for failing to pick a quarterback and for the crime of “reaching,” draft parlance for picking a player who most teams thought would go later in the draft.

Yet, in the rainy sky of morning, it’s plain that the Seahawks followed a clear strategy: Get bigger, and get smarter. Let’s chat about it, shall we? We’ll start with size.

Take cornerback, where the Seahawks’ primary starters were both 5-foot-11. The Hawks took Stanford’s Richard Sherman, who’s 6-foot-3, and 6-foot-1, 210-pound Byron Maxwell of Clemson.

Or wide receiver, where the Seahawks made their biggest “reach” of the draft, taking Georgia’s Kris Durham. Durham wasn’t among the 329 draft-eligible players invited to the NFL’s Scouting Combine–but he is 6-foot-5, a head taller than most of Seahawks receivers.

The Seahawks’ top two picks, offensive linemen James Carpenter and John Moffitt, aren’t necessarily larger than their roster counterparts, but they represent a dedication to building the team around the largest position group.

And these dudes are sharp! Moffitt touted himself on a conference call with reporters as “an intelligent player.” Sherman lasted six years at Stanford, so you know he’s smart. Durham was First-Team Academic All-American and won UGA’s Scholar-Athlete award. ESPN’s scouting report lauded Wright as a “well spoken and valued representative for the program.”

Ironically, the Hawks draft smart guys and get near-failing grades. What’s going on here is that the graders were looking for a research paper and the Seahawks turned in a first-person narrative. They didn’t draft based on the pure numbers, they drafted based on their own biases, their belief that bigger and smarter will help win games. For the sake of all throw-able objects in the vicinity of my television, let’s hope they’re right.