Closing games has become problem for Seahawks

Seattle Seahawks fans, don’t fret if you have other engagements when Seattle’s game against the Carolina Panthers gets started Sunday afternoon at CenturyLink Field. If you have errands you need to run early in the afternoon, no big deal. Yard work to do? You’ve got time.

Just make sure you’re done by around 3:15 or so. That’s about when the fourth quarter will begin, and that’s when things really start to matter for the Seahawks.

The fourth quarter has become a worrying problem for Seattle, and how the Seahawks perform in the fourth quarter Sunday will go a long way toward determining whether Seattle still has a chance at being a team capable of reaching its third straight Super Bowl.

Seattle head coach Pete Carroll’s mantra is “Finish.” He believes the way a team finishes a game is far more important than how it starts.

But this year’s Seahawks haven’t proven they could finish a grade school 50-yard dash, let alone an NFL game. In the fourth quarter and overtime this season Seattle has been outgained 636-435 and outscored 48-24. The problem had been building, and it all came crashing down last weekend at Cincinnati when the Seahawks blew a 24-7 fourth-quarter lead and wound up losing 27-24 in OT, with neither the offense nor defense providing any indication it was capable of seeing a game out.

The problem goes back further than this season. Include last season’s NFC Championship Game and the Super Bowl and Seattle has had a fourth-quarter lead in each of its past seven games. The Seahawks have won just twice — and one of those wins (against Detroit two weeks ago) required a miracle forced fumble at the goal line and an uncalled penalty for tapping the ball out of the end zone to be assured.

So it seems the “finish” has been fading from these Seahawks for a while.

When quizzed about the team’s issues with fourth quarters and finishing during the week, the response from the Seahawks coaching staff was strikingly uniform.

Offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell: “Our talk all the time is continuing to do things right longer than the other team can do it. That’s not getting caught up in the moment, not getting caught up in the score. Whether you’re up 17 points or whether you’re down 17 points, you don’t ever judge the game.”

Defensive coordinator Kris Richard: “(Finishing is) doing things right, ultimately. That’s all finishing is about, doing things right longer. That’s what we’re focused on, that’s what we have to get done.”

Assistant head coach Tom Cable: “You reteach what it is to finish. That means you keep doing right longer. Don’t worry about the score, look up when they say it’s over and, ‘OK, we’ve got more than they do, we won.’ That mentality is something we worked at and been able to grasp in the past.”

Give Seattle’s coaches credit for sticking to the script, but they have a point. It wasn’t long ago Seattle was perhaps the best finishing team in the NFL. Last season the Seahawks outscored their opponents 128-67 in the fourth quarter and overtime. That’s essentially the same two-to-one scoring ratio Seattle has this season, except in the opposite direction. The Seahawks went 8-1 when outscoring their opponents in the fourth quarter last season, but just 2-3 when being outscored in the fourth, so maybe Carroll is onto something with his finish mantra.

Seattle was even better down the stretch last season. In the Seahawks’ final six games of the regular season they didn’t allow a single point in the fourth quarter. That’s right, a six-quarter shutout. Meanwhile, Seattle scored 45 points of its own in the final quarters of those six games, and unsurprisingly the Seahawks won all six.

So this Seattle team does know what it means to finish. The Seahawks don’t need to dig very deep into the video vault to find examples of fourth-quarter success, and they made a point of doing just that this week in an effort to snap the team back on track.

“As far as the visual aspect, they’ve shown us in situations in the past where we’ve finished all the way through,” free safety Earl Thomas said. “So it was good to see us out there finishing, because we know we can do it.”

One of the clips the coaches could have shown the players was last season’s 31-17 playoff victory against this week’s opponent, Carolina. That game was a textbook example of finishing. Seattle was clinging to a 14-10 lead in a slugfest when the fourth quarter began. But after Steven Hauschka kicked a field goal on the first play of the quarter, Seattle’s defense responded by forcing Carolina into a three-and-out. The offense then marched 58 yards on six plays, culminating in Russell Wilson’s 25-yard touchdown pass to Luke Willson. Finally, Kam Chancellor intercepted a Cam Newton pass and returned it 90 yards for a touchdown. Seventeen points in nine minutes, and just like that the result was secure.

The Seahawks need to find that finish this week. They’re facing an undefeated Carolina team, and while a 3-3 record seems salvageable — Seattle was 3-3 last season before winning nine of its last 10 to catapult its way back to the Super Bowl — a 2-4 mark doesn’t look anything like a team ready for another lengthy playoff run. With Seattle and Carolina having a recent history of playing closely contested games, Sunday’s game likely will go down to the final 15 minutes.

So for those who watch Sunday, don’t fret about having to make a run to the kitchen to prepare extra snacks during the first three quarters. Just make sure you’re settled in when the fourth quarter begins. That’s all that really matters for the Seahawks.

Check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at http://www.heraldnet.com/seattlesidelines, and follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.

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