TEMPE, Ariz. – When the opportunity arose to seize the day, the Seattle Seahawks looked more ready for a mausoleum than carpe diem.
The Seahawks couldn’t take advantage of a prime chance to crawl back to the top of the NFC West standings Sunday, nearly swallowing their own tongue in a bitter 25-17 loss to the lowly Arizona Cardinals.
The performance was so bad – particularly from Pro Bowl quarterback Matt Hasselbeck – that even answer man Mike Holmgren was at a loss for words afterward.
“We were bad today. I don’t know how else to say it,” the Seahawks’ head coach said during a terse post-game question-and-answer session that left him steaming like Mount St. Helen’s. “I feel bad about it. I’m embarrassed about how we executed offensive football today.”
He wasn’t the only one ready to blow.
“We just keep repeating ourselves. We’re saying the same things every week,” said Ken Lucas, who had an interception return touchdown that gave Seattle its first lead at 17-16 midway through the fourth quarter. “We’re making too many mistakes. We have to learn to stop saying we’re making too many mistakes and do something about it.
“As long as we keep doing what we’re doing right now, we’re not going to beat anybody.”
The Seahawks’ lost opportunities didn’t just pertain to the fact that the NFC West-leading St. Louis Rams dropped a game to Miami earlier in the day, thereby giving Seattle a chance to move back into first place. They also dropped the ball on numerous fourth-quarter chances Sunday, during a game in which they had no business staying close.
Seattle (3-3) bumbled its way through an offensive performance that included four turnovers and just 257 yards of offense. Yet a pair of second-half touchdowns in the span of less than two minutes, including Lucas’s return, kept the Seahawks within striking distance.
Hasselbeck threw just about every chance away, including interceptions on the Seahawks’ final two drives of the game.
“In the NFL, you’ve got to play great every Sunday,” Hasselbeck said. “And I didn’t play great today. I didn’t even play good.”
Arizona kicker Neil Rackers nailed three field goals from beyond 50 yards, the Cardinals recorded a go-ahead safety in the fourth quarter, and Emmitt Smith broke a 23-yard touchdown run on a key third down in the fourth quarter to put the Seahawks away.
Now Seattle finds itself floating at .500, with three consecutive losses. It’s a far cry from the unbeaten team that was almost everybody’s pick to win the NFC West just three weeks ago.
“It’s not good,” running back Shaun Alexander said. “When you go 3-0 and then get to 3-3, there are some issues. We have to get down and decide what we’re going to do.”
Coming off back-to-back losses to St. Louis and New England, the Seahawks appeared ready to get back on track. Their next three games included a trio of opponents that had a combined 3-13 record, the first of which was a 1-4 Arizona team.
But the Cardinals came to play on an afternoon when the Seahawks often looked ready for a toe tag. Hasselbeck completed just 14 of 41 passes while throwing four interceptions, while the defense had its share of mistakes at key moments.
But the game may well have turned on a special teams play.
With Seattle clinging to a 17-16 lead following Lucas’s 21-yard interception return in the fourth quarter, Arizona blocked a punt before rookie punter Donnie Jones intentionally batted the ball out of the back of the Seattle end zone for a safety. Although Jones saved a possible Cardinals touchdown, the momentum of that play seemed to carry Arizona the rest of the way.
“It was the turning point in the game,” said Arizona linebacker Gerald Hayes, who blocked the punt after running through blocker Terreal Bierria to help put the Cardinals ahead 18-17. “Afterward, things started happening.”
The Seahawks had three more possessions over the final 8:50, but never came close to getting into scoring position. Hasselbeck was 2-for-8 on the final three drives, throwing interceptions to Duane Starks and David Macklin to help cement Arizona’s surprising win.
No one was as surprised as Holmgren, who thought that his team had learned from its mistakes in back-to-back losses to the Rams and Patriots. This loss was the most disheartening of all, leaving Seattle’s coach with very few answers.
“The mood stinks right now,” Holmgren said. “We’ve got to decide if we’re the team that started the season, or are we the team that has played the last three games? We’ve got to decide that.
“We can still fix this, and we can still finish strong, but we’ve got to play better than we played today. If not, it’s going to be tough.”
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