Seahawks wide receiver situation goes from bad to worse

Published 10:42 pm Sunday, September 14, 2008

SEATTLE — The Seattle Seahawks’ injury situation at wide receiver has become the worst kind of black comedy.

Before Sunday’s NFL game even started, the Seahawks lost a fifth receiver when Seneca Wallace hurt his calf during pre-game warm-ups. Then, on the first pass thrown to him, Logan Payne went down with a knee injury.

By the end of the game, a 33-30 overtime loss to San Francisco, the Seahawks were down to a second-year player with seven career catches, a rookie free agent fresh up from the practice squad, and a veteran who was out of football all last season.

“What else could happen to us?” wide receiver Michael Bumpus said. “Nobody could script this.”

Of the three receivers still standing by the end of the game, only one was on the active roster last Tuesday.

If it weren’t so disabling to the team — and if the health and careers of young men weren’t at stake — it would almost be funny.

“I’ve never been a part of anything like this,” wide receiver Courtney Taylor said.

“There’s no subs. The subs are all gone,” he said. “You pretty much have to bear down and put it in your head that you have to go. You have to go the whole solid game.”

Not only that, you have to throw out all the plays you planned for four wide receivers, and, perhaps most of all, you lose the chemistry and trust that exist when a quarterback and his receivers have worked together for a while.

Statistically, Seattle’s passing game held up reasonably well as quarterback Matt Hasselbeck completed 18 of 36 passes for 189 yards.

Not surprisingly, tight end John Carlson became a key target, and he caught six passes for 78 yards. Taylor, the only healthy wideout who was with the Seahawks last season, had two catches for 20 yards. Billy McMullen, who was signed as a free agent on Tuesday, caught three passes for 48 yards. Bumpus, promoted from the practice squad on Friday, had two catches for nine yards.

“I think we’re OK for the most part,” Hasselbeck said of his patchwork receiving corps. “I think they did a nice job.”

With Julius Jones running for 127 yards and a touchdown, it would seem there was enough offensive production to win a game.

But Hasselbeck threw two crippling interceptions, and he said that the lack of familiarity with his receivers may have had something to do with both of them.

“I want to get to the point, if I can, here — quickly — where I don’t have to look at them so much and I can just throw it,” Hasselbeck said. “I think some of that leads to batted balls.”

Two of them, to be precise, which turned the game around in the third quarter.

Seattle was leading 20-13 and driving toward another score when San Francisco cornerback Walt Harris got a piece of a pass intended for McMullen. It caromed high into the air, and linebacker Patrick Willis hauled it in and returned it 86 yards for a touchdown that tied the score.

Three plays later, a pass intended for Bumpus was tipped at the line. Harris intercepted it at the Seahawks 41-yard line, and four plays later the 49ers scored again to take their first lead of the game at 27-20.

“My two interceptions turned into 14 points. That’s what killed us,” Hasselbeck said. “On the offensive side, that’s what killed us.”

On the brighter side, the three wide receivers who finished the game seemed to make the plays that were afforded them. They caught every catchable ball, and the only glaring mistake was when McMullen lost a fumble after one of his receptions, which he attributed to his lack of time on the field.

“I’ve got to get back into that practice mode,” McMullen said. “That’s my bad. I’ve got to tuck it away.”

That miscue notwithstanding, McMullen may become a mainstay while the Seahawks wait for their more familiar receivers to regain their health.

He played three years with Philadelphia and one with Minnesota, both of which use variations of the West Coast offense used by Seattle. He spent all of last season waiting for the phone to ring and staying in shape, and he went to training camp with Washington this season.

Payne and Taylor were scheduled to see most of the action Sunday, with Wallace the first guy off the bench. Hasselbeck guessed that he threw only two passes to McMullen all week.

“No, he wasn’t going to play,” Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said of McMullen. “I hadn’t really planned on using Billy at all unless an emergency took place, and an emergency took place.”

In other words, McMullen was on the field less than four minutes into his first game in a Seahawks uniform.

“It’s been a crazy week, that’s for sure,” McMullen said. “In the NFL you’ve always got to be ready. In college, there’s like 10 guys on the sidelines. In the NFL there’s only five.”

Who knows what next week will bring? Deion Branch could return to active duty, although Bobby Engram is still probably two or three weeks away. Wallace has a pulled calf muscle and Logan has a torn knee ligament that Holmgren described as “significant.” Already, Nate Burleson and Ben Obomanu have been lost for the season.

“We will have to sign a couple more guys, first of all,” Holmgren said.

If nothing else, McMullen, Taylor, and Bumpus will all have another week of practice together and with Hasselbeck, which can’t hurt.

“Every game you get under your belt you get more comfortable. You get more relaxed,” said Taylor, who has now appeared in all of 10 regular season games. “But it’s tough. It’s still tough to lose a game like that.”

That was the one common theme from all three.

They felt they played well under these truly bizarre circumstances, but there’s only one thing that counts in the NFL.

“You can’t feel good about a loss,” Taylor said. “I could have come out here and made nine catches for 200 yards or whatever, but we lost this game and it wouldn’t mean anything to me.”