SEATTLE – Washington coach Joe Gibbs said it isn’t hard to explain what was different about the Seattle Seahawks this time around.
“Obviously, they were playing at home,” Gibbs said.
Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald
Apparently, that’s all it took for the Seahawks to turn the tables.
Sunday, in an NFL playoff game, the Seahawks won 20-10 before a manic, rain-soaked crowd of 67,551 at Qwest Field. In a regular-season game in October, Washington was the home team and won 20-17 in overtime.
Everywhere in the Washington locker room, people were saying the crowd had a lot to do with that.
“It was loud, man,” said Washington defensive end Phillip Daniels, who spent his first four NFL seasons with Seattle. “It was the loudest I’ve heard, and I played here. This crowd, they were loud. It felt like a lot bigger crowd than what it was. They did what they needed to do to help their team and help them win.”
That sort of thing was said often, but not as a complaint. Rather, it was more like a testimony on how hard it is to win on the road in the playoffs.
“That was a tough assignment there,” Gibbs said. “That kind of tells you the reason why people fight so hard for home-field advantage. That was a tough environment today, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
The game wasn’t filled with false start penalties like it was when the New York Giants lost here in November. Washington was penalized seven times for 50 yards, and only two of the flags were for false starts.
That’s maybe more than a coach would like to see, but hardly catastrophic.
But the crowd helped muddle up the Washington offense in other ways.
“Any time you’re at the line of scrimmage and you’re making audible calls and you can’t even hear the quarterback, it’s tough to deal with,” Washington tackle Chris Samuels said. “The guard has to hear the call. He relays it to me, then I relay it to the tight end. It’s tough to deal with.”
And when the visiting offense has to go to a silent snap count, which Washington did virtually every time it was in the shotgun formation, it loses another edge.
“It gets us off the ball slow. The defense is already penetrating, trying to get into the backfield,” Samuels said. “But that’s the nature of this game. When you don’t get home-field advantage in the playoffs, it’s going to be tough.”
Still, Washington already posted a road playoff victory last week at Tampa Bay, and it could hardly have hoped for a better scenario to snatch another one on Sunday.
Washington forced three turnovers, and Seattle running back Shaun Alexander, the league’s Most Valuable Player, left the game for good in the first quarter because of a concussion.
“Our chances went up,” Daniels said. “But they have good coaches, and they adjusted.”
In other words, with the running game hobbled, Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck rose to the occasion.
Hasselbeck completed 16 of 26 passes for 215 yards and a touchdown, and he scrambled six times for 21 yards and a touchdown. It rarely looked smooth as Washington’s defense pressured him well, but he came up with enough big plays to win the game.
“By them losing Shaun, I think he knew he was going to have to make some plays today,” said Washington cornerback Shawn Springs, who was a Seahawk for seven seasons. “He beat us with his feet. He was moving around. He got first downs and moved the chains.
“When you have a quarterback that’s mobile and accurate like Matt is, it’s pretty tough to defend,” Springs said. “We didn’t expect Matt to be as effective as he was today, and he was great.”
In terms of statistics, one thing that jumps out in comparing Sunday’s game with the October matchup is third-down conversions.
In the first game, Washington converted on 13 of 18 third-down situations, including a staggering 11 of 13 when it was third-and-7 or longer.
Sunday, Washington was 5-for-19 on third downs. Washington went three-and-out the first five times it had the ball and seven times overall.
Though nobody offered an explanation – the old NFL mantra about needing to see the videotapes first – there was no doubt that was a key development.
“Last time we played Seattle, a long time ago, obviously, that’s how we won,” Washington quarterback Mark Brunell said of the third down issue. “We were able to stay on the field and keep their offense off the field.
“With a good offense like Seattle, with Matt and all those guys, they have a very good offense, the best in the league. If they’re on the field long enough they’re going to score some points,” Brunell said. “We just needed to keep the ball in our hands and convert those third downs and get some points, and we just didn’t do that.”
So even with the turnovers and the injured MVP, it wasn’t going to be Washington’s day.
Not in front of that crowd.
“We played a good football team on the road, in the playoffs, and you’ve got to bring your A game. You’ve got to be at your best,” Brunell said. “If you don’t, then you’re going to lose.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
