SEATTLE – There was no need to watch film. No need to analyze or dissect or even put the tape in the machine.
When Deion Branch thinks about why the Seattle Seahawks lost 20-17 to the San Diego Chargers on Sunday afternoon, he looks no further than the man in the mirror.
“I think I contributed solely to this loss,” Branch said after dropping four passes in Sunday’s defeat. “I can’t speak for anybody else; I didn’t do my job as a leader. … Man.”
After spending much of Sunday afternoon mishandling Matt Hasselbeck’s passes, Branch was still trying to come to grips with why. He sat alone at his locker for more than 15 minutes, with eyes red from tears, before standing up and taking on questions from the media.
“It was solely me,” he said. “I know these guys look for me to make those plays, and I look to myself to do it, and I didn’t. Coach (Mike Holmgren) kept coming back (with plays) to me, and I wasn’t good enough.”
Branch finished with a team-high five receptions, but he felt like he didn’t do enough. Hasselbeck threw his way 12 times, and four of those passes went off Branch’s hands without any help from the defense. He dropped back-to-back passes on Seattle’s final drive of the first half, then dropped a third-down pass beyond the first-down marker on the opening possession of the third quarter. Branch had another ball bounce off his chest early in the fourth quarter.
“The rest of the guys kept trying to pick me up,” Branch said. “I always kept my confidence, so I wasn’t worried about that. It’s a lack of concentration. I lost focus on what I was doing on certain plays, and it was just bad.”
Making the performance even more befuddling is the fact that Branch has a reputation as one of the most sure-handed receivers on the team – if not the entire league. By unofficial count, Branch had just three drops – total – during his first 12 games with the Seahawks.
Still rattled by a performance that he could not fully explain, the veteran receiver said he’ll do his best to make sure that his dropped passes are a thing of the past.
“I’ve got to go back and work extra hard next week and make sure that doesn’t happen again and try to lead this team to a victory,” Branch said. “That was the whole reason we lost.
“I dropped three third-down conversions. I stopped three drives. That was bad.”
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