Hawks primed for worst defense tag

By SCOTT M. JOHNSON

Herald Writer

KIRKLAND – By almost all accounts, 1983 was a very good year for the Seattle Seahawks. The franchise’s first playoff appearance translated into a trip to the AFC Championship game, a feat no other Seahawks team has accomplished. The roster was filled with legendary names like Dave Krieg, Steve Largent and Curt Warner on offense; Jacob Green, Dave Brown and Kenny Easley on defense.

Oh, and one more thing. It was the worst defensive football team Seattle has ever assembled.

The statistics show that Seattle’s defense in 1983 gave up the most yards in franchise history – 6,029, which at the time ranked next-to-last in the NFL.

The 17-year-old record might finally be surpassed this weekend. If the Buffalo Bills can muster 218 yards or more at Husky Stadium on Saturday, the 2000 Seahawks defense would take over the unwanted label as the worst in franchise history.

“You are what you are,” said Seattle defensive coordinator Steve Sidwell, who spent 1999 with the New England Patriots. “We are not a good defense. The only thing you can say is that of late we’ve been playing better. But we still have a real propensity to give up some big ones. And that’s obviously something that never makes you as good as you can be.”

The fact that Seattle can break the franchise record this season isn’t really that surprising. After all, the Seahawks defense has ranked at the bottom of the NFL since the Nov. 19 bye weekend.

The more alarming fact is that the previous mark was held by the 1983 team, which is still this franchise’s most accomplished squad to date.

“We gave up a bunch of yardage, but it can be misleading,” said Green, a defensive end on that team who holds an annual golf tournament in Mill Creek every summer. “We had players who could flat-out play. We were a young defense. It was hard to imagine being the worst.”

In seven of their 16 games that year, the Seahawks gave up at least 400 yards to the opposition. Six times, they allowed opponents to score more than 30 points.

Yet a high-powered offense led by Warner’s 1,449 rushing yards kept the Seahawks in almost every game. When all was said and done, Seattle had actually outscored its opponents 403-397.

This year’s Seahawks have been just as porous, but without the offense – they have been outscored 363-297. Seattle’s defense has already allowed seven opposing running backs to go over the 100-yard mark, including two (Oakland’s Tyrone Wheatley and Denver’s Mike Anderson) who did it twice. Opposing teams have put up more than 400 yards in six games, including a season-high 538 yards by Denver about three weeks ago.

Barring an almost unprecedented defensive effort this week – the Seahawks have held only one opponent under 220 yards in their past 46 games – Seattle will surpass the 1983 squad as the worst ever.

“You look at all the yardage we’ve given up, it’s not good,” cornerback Willie Williams said. “We’ve got a lot of talent, but I can’t tell you what it is. We can’t stop the run. We’ve been giving up 200-something yards running. I don’t know what it is.”

Maybe one day historians will look back on this unit and wonder how a defense that has Chad Brown, Shawn Springs and Cortez Kennedy can give up so many yards. There is no easy answer. The players haven’t taken to Sidwell’s system as quickly as planned, injuries and free-agent defections have left holes along the defensive line and at middle linebacker, and the play at safety has been inconsistent.

If there is something to be learned from the 1983 squad, it is that there may be hope. That team – like this year’s unit, playing under a new coordinator – came together in the playoffs, holding rookie quarterbacks John Elway and Dan Marino to less than 200 yards in back-to-back victories. By the next season, Seattle’s defense prospered in coordinator Tom Catlin’s system and finished the season ranked sixth in the league.

“It took us a bit to get going, but once we got used to the system that Catlin was doing, we got better,” Green said. “It helped to have an offense, too.”

Paul Johns, a wide receiver on the 1983 team and currently in the Seahawks’ front office, said he can see some similarities in both defensive units. But there are also differences.

“The coaches felt like, going into the 1984 draft, we had less holes to fill,” Johns said. “It was just a matter of the players we had getting comfortable in what they had to do. The speculation here is that there’s more holes to fill on defense.”

Sidwell, the Seahawks’ fourth defensive coordinator in two years, hopes Year 2 will be a big improvement – no matter who is on the field.

“We should have and could have been a better team had we done a better coaching job, and had we executed better,” he said. “If I were able to say one thing’s disappointing about the way we’ve played, it’s the fact that we’ve given up way, way, way too many big plays.”