CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Seattle Seahawks entered Sunday’s game with the slimmest of chances to earn one of the NFC’s two playoff byes, but after hitting a wall in a 13-10 loss to the Carolina Panthers the slim hopes have dissipated into none.
An uninspired afternoon of football has taken the Seahawks out of contention for one of the top two seeds in the NFC, meaning Seattle will host a first-round playoff game during the weekend of Jan. 5-6.
By the looks of Sunday’s performance, the Seahawks (9-5) are anything but ready for the postseason.
“At this point, our (playoff) seed is still unchanged, but we’ve got to get our act together if we want to achieve our next goal,” quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said after his first subpar performance in more than a month. “We’re not in this to go part of the way there; we’re in it to go all the way there.”
The Seahawks played one of their worst offensive games in a long time Sunday, yet still had a chance to win in the end. Two major mistakes — one on offense, and another on defense — slammed the door and ended Seattle’s five-game winning streak.
A sack and Hasselbeck fumble near midfield with 1:38 remaining killed the Seahawks’ chances of attempting the game-tying field goal in a 6-3 game.
Three plays later, Carolina running back DeAngelo Williams broke a 35-yard touchdown run on third-and-5, giving the Panthers a comfortable 10-point lead with 1:17 left on the clock.
A Hasselbeck-to-Deion Branch touchdown pass in the final second of regulation made for a score that looked closer than was actually the case.
“We didn’t play very inspired football,” coach Mike Holmgren said after a game that was scoreless going into the fourth quarter. “(Before the game) I told the team, ‘We went on a nice run to win five in a row, and be careful not to catch your breath.’ I thought we caught our breath a little (on Sunday).”
The Seahawks looked nothing like a playoff contender, particularly on offense, during three scoreless quarters. Seattle had just one first down in the first quarter, punting four times during that stretch, and only got slightly better in the second and third periods. Through three quarters, the Seahawks had converted just 1 of 9 third downs and found themselves anchored in a 0-0 tie.
Not until Carolina’s John Kasay hit a 53-yard field goal 2:42 into the fourth quarter did someone finally score, and after that both offenses seemed to get into a groove.
“It took them putting some points on the board for us to kick into gear, for whatever reason,” Seahawks receiver Bobby Engram said.
Seattle responded with an eight-play, 76-yard drive that culminated in Josh Brown’s score-tying field goal. The Panthers (6-8) then went 41 yards in 10 plays to pull ahead 6-3 with 2:59 left in the game.
After that, the Seahawks looked poised to go on another scoring drive as Hasselbeck converted four consecutive passes, including one that converted a third-and-6. After using its first timeout with 1:44 remaining, Seattle had the ball at the Carolina 43 with a second-and-2.
Hasselbeck dropped back and tried to release a pass to Engram, but Carolina linebacker Thomas Davis hit the quarterback as he tried to release the ball. The ball flew backward, bounced, and escaped the grasp of running back Maurice Morris before the Panthers’ Richard Marshall fell on it at the Seattle 40.
Hasselbeck said after the game that he thought his arm was moving forward, which would mean an incomplete pass because of the so-called “tuck rule,” but game officials never looked at a replay.
As for the sack, Hasselbeck was uncertain what went wrong. He was blindsided and had no way of knowing that Davis had simply beaten Morris on a pass rush.
“I hit (Davis), then he jumped outside,” Morris said. “And before I knew it, he was on Hasselbeck. It was one of those things where (Davis) made a good play.”
The Panthers took over, and the Seahawks burned their final two timeouts on first and second downs. On third-and-5 from Seattle’s 35, while still trailing 6-3, the Seahawks had a chance to get the ball back.
But Williams took a handoff, stepped to the left, then cutback into a huge hole between defensive linemen Craig Terrill and Patrick Kerney. The Seahawks had three safeties in the game, but none of them were in position to stop Williams once he broke through the hole. No linebacker was in the gap either.
“In an eight-man front, (offenses) shouldn’t have to be able to do that,” said Jordan Babineaux, who was the only deep safety but had to come from the other side of the field to pursue Williams unsuccessfully. “Somebody shouldn’t have success running the ball against an eight-man front. It was crushing.”
After Williams scored for a 13-3 Panthers lead, the Seahawks went on their first touchdown drive of the game. But Branch’s juggling touchdown catch — he tipped the ball away from cornerback Patrick Dendy before corralling it in the end zone — came too late to make a difference. The Panthers fell on a squib kickoff to burn the final second off the clock, and Seattle’s winning streak was over.
The Seahawks still have the No. 3 seed in the NFC, edging out Tampa Bay because of a tiebreaker that stems from Seattle’s head-to-head victory over the Buccaneers in the season opener. Both teams are division champions and will host first-round games, regardless of what happens in the final two weeks.
“All our big goals, going forward, are still out in front of us,” Seahawks safety Brian Russell said. “We wanted to run the table. We wanted to win the last eight games of the second half of the season. It didn’t happen, and that was a setback.
“But we’re in the playoffs, we have the first one at home, and we want to go into the playoffs playing well after finishing strong.”
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