SEATTLE – The Seahawks were in the latest Most Important Game of the Season and they had to play it without five starters on offense.
That’s including 2005-06 MVP Shaun Alexander who, it seems, has been out since Groundhog Day with a broken foot. And that’s including Matt Hasselbeck, the Seahawks’ All-Pro quarterback who may or may not be back next week with a sprained knee.
After Sunday, the Seahawks would either have a two-game cushion on the St. Louis Rams and a tiebreaker or be tied with them, lose the tiebreaker and spend the rest of the season looking over their shoulders.
Crucial? You bet. A slam dunk? Anything but, not even at Qwest Field.
Not with the injury blizzard that’s hit the team all season.
“The trainers are starting to not even look me in the eye around here,” Seattle head coach Mike Holmgren said.
The offense hadn’t remotely resembled the one that finished at the top of the NFL last season. The defense had been giving up big plays.
The Seahawks needed more than a few to contribute to the cause.
They got it.
They got a clutch 90-yard punt return for a touchdown from Nate Burleson, the nearly forgotten wide receiver who was shoved into the deep, dark recesses of the depth chart once the Seahawks acquired Deion Branch.
“The return game is what I’m doing right now,” Burleson said. “When I touch it, I’m trying to make a big play for my team. I want to do what I can to help this team win.”
They got their second straight great game from tailback Mo Morris, who rambled for 124 yards on 21 carries. It was his second 100-yard game in six days.
“You always want to get the chance, but the biggest thing is we got the win,” Morris said. “My biggest thing is to not get more yards, but to do whatever it takes to win.”
Seneca Wallace has shown his value to this team, efficiently completing 15 of 23 passes Sunday for 161 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He also brought the Qwest crowd of 68,175 out of their seats with a daring 31-yard scramble in the second quarter that eventually led to a 15-yard TD pass to Jerramy Stevens that put the Seahawks up, 14-10.
It’s to Wallace’s credit that he earned the first game-winning drive of his career. Yes, it was just 29 yards in length, but had Wallace not had the presence of mind to audible at the line of scrimmage and find Darrell Jackson for a 10-yard pass for a first down, maybe Josh Brown’s game-winning field goal would not have happened.
“We knew it was crunch time and that we had to pick up 20 or 30 yards to get into field-goal range for Josh,” Wallace said. “Everybody feeds off that.”
And don’t forget the defense, which was verbally abused for spotty efforts against Kansas City and Minnesota. Against the Rams’ powerful offense, Seahawk defenders yielded just one touchdown. They sacked Marc Bulger four times, intercepted him once and not once gave up a big pass play.
Only Torry Holt averaged double-figure receiving yardage, catching seven passes for just 73 yards.
“They get a little frustrated if you make them dink and dunk and stop them from getting their big plays,” cornerback Kelly Herndon said. “They have big-play receivers, but we’re not giving up the big play.”
The season has a long way to go, but the feeling here is that the Seahawks are ironing out the offensive and defensive difficulties they’ve had much of the season.
And finally, they appear to be getting healthy. Hasselbeck should play next week against San Francisco. It’s also hoped that Alexander will return. Wideout Bobby Engram appears close to coming back from a thyroid condition. Robbie Tobeck missed Sunday’s game with flu symptoms and should be back against the 49ers.
Get the starters back and the Seahawks could be poised to make a run.
Holmgren always said that one of the highlights of the Super Bowl year was the way reserves filled in for injured starters. The Seahawks are far from duplicating last season’s magic, but they are getting contributions from a variety of sources.
In the season of the injury blizzard, at least the Seahawks have that going for them. The timing couldn’t be better.
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