BALTIMORE, Md. – In a perfect world, the image that would have lasted from Sunday’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and Baltimore Ravens would have involved Trent Dilfer throwing his arms in the air.
The Seahawks’ backup quarterback, cast off by the Ravens three years ago following their Super Bowl victory, would have led Seattle down the field to beat his former team in overtime.
But the storybook ending didn’t pan out. Dilfer replaced Matt Hasselbeck for only two plays, including one in which he threw an incomplete pass, and the Seahawks lost 44-41 to the Ravens.
Instead, the lasting image will be one involving Hasselbeck that went unseen by those in attendance.
The Seahawks’ quarterback claims that on a key fourth-down play, he laid beneath a pile of players and felt a hand around his throat.
“I certainly got choked,” Hasselbeck said afterward without naming names. “One guy was grabbing me where the sun don’t shine, and that was making me mad. Another guy was choking me. But this is football, and sometimes at the bottom of those piles, some nasty stuff goes on. That’s part of the game, unfortunately.”
The image was appropriate except for the fact that the Seahawks were the ones doing the choking Sunday. They gave up a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter, eventually losing on Matt Stover’s 42-yard field goal in overtime.
But don’t blame Hasselbeck. Seattle’s starting quarterback did everything in his power to put the Seahawks in position to win. His five touchdown passes were the most ever thrown against a Baltimore Ravens defense, while he passed for 333 yards. From the final drive of the first half until the Seahawks’ final drive of regulation, Hasselbeck did whatever he wanted against the Ravens.
All three starting receivers caught at least one touchdown, while Hasselbeck posted a remarkable quarterback rating of 122.3 during the game.
“I don’t care about that,” he said of his personal statistics. “I’d rather be where the Dolphins were last week: 9-6 and coming out with a win (over the Ravens). That’s all that really matters is getting a win right now, especially with the race as tight as it is in our division right now. We just really needed a win today, and we didn’t get it.”
Hasselbeck’s incredible day got a dose of reality down the stretch. First he was stopped on the fourth-and-inches, which would have clinched a victory had he converted. Then he hurt his left shoulder during Seattle’s only overtime drive and had to come out of the game for two plays.
When Dilfer ran onto the field, even the die-hard Ravens fans must have had a lump in their throat. On his first snap, Dilfer tried to hit Darrell Jackson on a hitch-and-go play from the Seattle 45-yard line. Baltimore’s cornerbacks didn’t bite on the fake, and the ball sailed over everyone’s head, so the storybook ending was not meant to be.
Hasselbeck returned to the field and got sacked on third down to put an end to the Seahawks’ overtime drive.
Afterward, Hasselbeck said Dilfer played a big part in Seattle’s offensive success Sunday, and not just because he knew what to expect from the Baltimore defense.
“I lost my composure a little bit during the game. I wasn’t seeing things well,” Hasselbeck said of a sloppy first half in which Seattle’s offense took a while to get going. “They were disguising a lot of stuff. They were blitzing on both sides, and I really had no idea what they were doing early on. And Trent was great.
“I can’t say enough about what he’s meant to me as a quarterback, never mind the other stuff. He just really kept my head in the game all throughout the game.”
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