SEATTLE — This time last week, Mike Holmgren ushered in his final season as the Seattle Seahawks’ head coach with a loss in his team’s 2008 home opener.
Three days later, St. Louis Rams coach Scott Linehan celebrated his 45th birthday amid rumors that he was close to being fired.
The days of two NFC West powerhouses battling for division supremacy couldn’t seem further away. The once-mighty have fallen, some harder than others.
When the Rams face the Seahawks today at Qwest Field, the two teams aren’t just looking up at their division opponents, they’re also searching for their first win. St. Louis and Seattle are a combined 0-4, having been outscored by 90 points.
“Desperate’s a good word,” Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren said during his weekly press conference, when a team employee used that word to describe Seattle and the Rams. “There’s a lot of football to be played, but early on, there’s a certain significance (to today’s game) because of how we both started.”
Ten NFL teams are in a similar situation, and all of them can find solace in the 2007 New York Giants, who started 0-2 but went on to win the Super Bowl.
But the more likely scenario, one that happens all too often in NFL circles, is that teams with high hopes find themselves unraveling one month into a given season. The loser of today’s game might be on that unwelcome path.
“We’re both 0-2, and before training camp you never would’ve figured that,” Seahawks linebacker Leroy Hill said. “But it’s happened, and now we’ve got to come out and do our thing.
“We know that 0-3 is pretty hard to dig out from under, and I’m pretty sure that they know that, so it should be a good game.”
The last time the Seahawks started a season with an 0-3 record was 2002, when the team eventually fell to 1-5 and had to rally for a final mark of 7-9. This year’s Seahawks have no such plans to dig themselves in that kind of a hole.
“It’s not the situation we want to be in, obviously, but we’re working our way through it,” offensive lineman Mike Wahle said. “We feel like we have a good team here, but we’re not good enough to overcome mistakes. It’s just a matter of continuing to work hard and shoring up those mistakes we’ve made on the field.”
The Seahawks’ problems are pretty easily summed up to health, with a receiving corps that continues to get depleted by injuries. But the issues are not exclusive to that position.
The defense gave up too many big plays last week, particularly on third downs, and Seattle’s special teams was plagued by problems in both losses.
“This is a tough situation, but it’s not the first tough situation, and we’re not the only team with a tough situation,” Holmgren said last week. “The one thing you have to do is hit it straight on.”
It’s unfamiliar territory for many of the current Seahawks, who haven’t tasted a whole lot of adversity over the years. Hill, who came into the league in 2005, has never experienced a sub-.500 record this late in the season. Seattle hasn’t had more losses than wins after Week 1 since ‘02.
“It’s still a long season,” said left tackle Walter Jones, who went through his share of frustrating seasons before the Seahawks turned into a perennial division champion. “Every week, you’ve just got to keep going out there and doing whatever you can do to get a win.”
The once-mighty Rams, on the other hand, have fallen on hard times for a few years. The Seahawks’ longtime rival for NFC West supremacy hasn’t finished above .500 since 2003. St. Louis has a 17-31 record over the past three seasons.
This season has all the makings of the worst of the Linehan era.
“We wanted the season to start differently, but as we said in the old days: the night’s young,” Linehan said last week. “We are just getting ready for this game. It is a big divisional game for both of us.”
Two disappointed teams will go into Qwest Field this afternoon, and only one of them will emerge with hope.
For the Seahawks, who have a bye next weekend, losing does not seem to be an option. An 0-2 start is manageable, while three consecutive losses might be as good as an epitaph. According to a recent article in USA Today, the last 0-3 team to qualify for the playoffs was the 1995 Detroit Lions.
“We’ve got to come back from it,” Hill said of the Seahawks’ first 0-2 start since 2002. “We all know what we have to do, and it’s time to do it. We don’t have anymore room to wait.”
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