SEATTLE — The Seattle Seahawks said after last season that their top priority was to fix the running game.
After their first game this season, that project seemed an abysmal failure as they staggered through the opener and ran for just 85 yards in a disheartening loss to Buffalo.
But the past two weeks have seen the fruit ripen, and all of sudden there is optimism in the locker room.
“We knew we had to play the game a certain way,” Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said Sunday after Seattle flattened St. Louis 37-13 in an NFL game at Qwest Field. “We have worked very hard on improving our running game over last year, as you know. We did some good things.”
Seattle ran for 245 yards and three touchdowns on Sunday. Julius Jones led the attack with 140 yards on 22 carries, and T.J. Duckett added 79 yards on 19 carries. Jones had one touchdown, Duckett two.
Last week, Jones ran for 127 yards and one score as Seattle (1-2) racked up 169 rushing yards in a loss to San Francisco.
The Seahawks’ best total all last season was 167 yards, and they had only nine rushing touchdowns all season.
“I think it’s what we want to do,” Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said of the smashmouth approach the Seahawks have used the past two weeks. “It looks a little bit like a nine-on-seven scrimmage, but that’s OK.”
Seattle’s big moves during free agency were to sign Jones, Duckett, and left guard Mike Wahle, all to toughen up the running game. They also moved Rob Sims from left guard to right guard to replace Chris Gray, who retired.
The project hit a speed bump when right tackle Sean Locklear injured his knee in preseason and Sims went out for the season with a torn biceps during the first game. That brought Floyd “Pork Chop” Womack into the lineup at right guard and Ray Willis in at right tackle and restarted the whole process of the line coming together as a unit.
But if this is how it’s going to work in the long run, it will have been worth the wait.
“All you need is time,” All-Pro left tackle Walter Jones said. “It’s a long season, man, and we’ve got new guys out there. It takes awhile for everybody to come together. It takes awhile for the O line, the offense as a whole, to come together. Hopefully we can keep this going and go out there and get on a roll.”
Womack has been particularly impressive in his two starts since Sims went down. In his eight-year career, he has started every position on the Seattle line except center.
“Pork Chop has done an outstanding job,” Willis said. “He’s really brought his lunch pail and come to work every single day. He’s a smart, smart guy, and he really knows our offense. Having a veteran in there definitely helps.”
Willis, a four-year veteran who made his first career start in the Buffalo game, received solid reviews himself from no less an expert than Walter Jones.
“I love what I see,” Jones said of Willis, who is a fellow product of Florida State. “There’s nothing like being out there in the fire to see the live action, and all he’s doing is getting better.”
In addition to the final statistics, there were two remarkable signs of the new confidence the Seahawks have in their running game.
One was on second-and-goal from the Rams’ 4-yard line in the second quarter. The Seahawks went to a power set, gave the ball to Duckett and watched him bulldoze into the end zone behind Wahle, Walter Jones and Locklear, who is back from his injury and is playing tight end in short-yardage situations.
“Usually we are in more of a red-zone passing mode, or maybe a draw mode,” Hasselbeck said of that situation. “But he (Holmgren) called goal-line personnel, we brought Sean Locklear in as a tight end, and he said to the guys up front, ‘We’re going to pound this in.’”
Another novelty was the Seahawks’ drive to their final touchdown, which consumed 15 plays and 86 yards, 80 of them on the ground. The last nine plays were runs, with Duckett scoring from one yard out to make the score 34-13 halfway through the fourth quarter.
A drive like that and a game like that were unthinkable last season.
“It was a fun day today,” said Womack, who left the game in the fourth quarter with a hamstring injury that is not believed to be significant. “As an offensive line you always want to run the ball, and I think we did a good job today.”
In addition to the strong play of the line, Julius Jones has been everything that was advertised. A powerful, straight-ahead runner, Jones has seemingly broken more tackles the last two games than the whole team did last season.
Through Sunday’s games, he is third in the NFL with 312 rushing yards, and he is averaging 5.1 yards per carry.
“I don’t know if you could ask for anything more,” Holmgren said of Jones, who spent his first four seasons with Dallas and topped 1,000 yards in 2006. “He has a knack for spinning and gaining extra yards after the initial hit, which tells you a couple of things.
“One, he is a courageous guy and a tough guy, willing to fight for extra yardage,” Holmgren said. “And two, he has a knack for that. He has got a lot of extra yards after the initial hit in two games. I am very pleased with how he is doing.”
Even under normal circumstances, you want to have a solid running game, but that is doubly true for the Seahawks, whose receiving corps has been ravaged by injury.
If Seattle is going to accomplish anything this season, it is going to start on the ground.
“Coach put it on our shoulders,” Walter Jones said. “We’re going to go out there and run the ball. We have injuries at the receiver spot, so we know we’re going to run the ball. You hunker down, and when you’re number is called you make plays.”
Jones was smiling as he said that.
“As an offensive line, that’s what you want to do, just line up and run the ball,” he said. “Every offensive lineman wants to do that. If you can keep on running until the fourth quarter, that’s our ball game.”
And that’s the plan.
It has to be.
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