Hasselbeck does his job, and well

By Kirby Arnold

Herald Writer

SEATTLE – Confidence boost?

Of all that seemed to bless Matt Hasselbeck in Sunday night’s victory over the Oakland Raiders, the one thing the Seattle Seahawks’ star-crossed quarterback really didn’t need was more confidence.

“I already had a lot of confidence in myself,” Hasselbeck said.

Even after a seven-game start to the season in which he had the lowest rating of any NFL quarterback, Hasselbeck maintained his confidence.

Even after being yanked from the game a week ago after coach Mike Holmgren couldn’t handle the stench of his quarterback’s first-half decision-making, Hasselbeck had faith in himself.

Even going against a once-beaten Raiders team that still had the remnants of opposing quarterbacks – including Hasselbeck, who was knocked out of the Sept. 30 game at Oakland – between its teeth, he strode onto the Husky Stadium turf knowing it was an opportunity to excel.

And he did.

Want a sure sign of Haselbeck’s effectiveness? Nobody was chanting “Dil-fer.”

Hasselbeck didn’t need a backup as he put together his best statistical line of the season: 15 pass completions in 23 attempts for 181 yards.

With no interceptions. And no fumbles. And no stupidity.

“I don’t know if it was mistake-free,” said Hasselbeck, a third-year pro out of Boston College. “But it was critical mistake-free.”

The Seahawks’ drive chart looked like something out of Holmgren’s blueprint for the game, with Hasselbeck taking every snap on scoring marches of 53, 79, 76, 61, 88 and 25 yards.

OK, that 88-yarder was one handoff, to Shaun Alexander on his team-record touchdown run to break a 20-20 tie. But somebody had to hold that lead, and Hasselbeck was most proud of the fact he faced some hectic moments at the finish and stood up well.

“Making the decisions at the end of the game,” he said. “Being in a situation where you’ve got to run the offense when the game is on the line and the crowd is loud, you just can’t simulate those kinds of things in practice.”

He could also add a few decisions to skedaddle out of the pocket when first-down yardage seemed within reach. Hasselbeck did it three times Sunday, including two dashes to keep scoring drives alive.

His best came on a second-and-5 play midway through the third quarter. With his receivers covered, Hasselbeck sprinted toward the right sideline and made a headlong dive toward the first-down stick, just nosing the football past it.

Seven plays later, including a 28-yard pass on third-and-5 to Bobby Engram, the Seahawks scored on Alexander’s 6-yard run to tie the score 20-20.

It was a marked difference from that September nightmare in Oakland, when Hasselbeck was sacked six times and had to leave the game in the third quarter with a groin injury.

“We did watch the film and you had a bad feeling in your stomach,” Hasselbeck said. “There were some things that they did in that game that we didn’t forget. Maybe it was a little bit of motivation for us today.”

That, and a 319-yard rushing game to ease the heat, will do wonders for a budding young quarterback.

“We are always going to be a better football team, certainly this year, when we can run the ball,” Holmgren said. “It takes the pressure off Matt, the quarterback in general, but Matt specifically because he’s so young.

“I was glad that Matt was able to play a game where the other things were working, too. He’s had a couple of games where the people around him dropped passes or we weren’t pass protecting.”

When those things were crumbling around Hasselbeck in past games, his head started swimming with ways to overcome it all himself. All that accomplished was to make matters worse, and last week it cost him a chance to finish the game.

On Sunday, everything seemed right in Hasselbeck’s world.

“This is really exciting right now,” he said. “This was a game that we knew people were not really counting on us. But we believed in ourselves and the guys in this locker room, and we stuck together and played a great game as a team.”

And the quarterback didn’t screw it up.