KIRKLAND — Head coach Mike Holmgren has spent a good part of the past week reminding his Seattle Seahawks about the dangers of looking past an opponent.
After Friday’s news out of Baltimore, he might have to bust out the speech again.
The injury-plagued Baltimore Ravens, who take an eight-game losing streak into Sunday’s matchup with the Seahawks, announced Friday that they’re likely to be without three more starters.
Ravens coach Brian Billick told Baltimore reporters that middle linebacker Ray Lewis (broken finger) and tight end Todd Heap (hamstring) were unlikely to play in Seattle, and cornerback Samari Rolle (shoulder) was placed on injured reserve, ending his season. A fourth starter, linebacker Terrell Suggs, is listed as questionable due to a thigh injury.
Baltimore was already without starting quarterback Steve McNair and star cornerback Chris McAlister, among others, and spent the first eight weeks of the season sans Pro Bowl left tackle Jonathan Ogden.
The injuries, and last Sunday’s loss to the previously-winless Miami Dolphins, have made for a forgettable year in Baltimore.
“This has been a long season,” Billick told Seahawks reporters earlier this week. “The injuries continue to mount up. Emotionally, you get worn down.”
The Ravens’ litany of issues brought several reminders from Holmgren about the importance of focusing on the task at hand. Seattle played a struggling Carolina team last Sunday and lost 13-10.
“It’s important for us to come out and play well and play hard,” Holmgren said earlier this week. “They’ll play hard. We played hard last week; it was just kind of, blah.”
When told by the media about the finger injury that was supposed to keep Lewis out of action, Holmgren was not exactly turning cartwheels.
“Ray Lewis is one of the best players I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s for sure,” Holmgren said on Friday. “Last week we lost the football game to a quarterback (Carolina’s Matt Moore) who’d never played before so I think you have to be real careful about thinking about those things too much — if at all. The next guy comes in. It’s his chance, and he’s going to play hard.
“It’s more important how we play. We have to decide how we’re going to play.”
Earlier this week, Ravens linebacker Bart Scott issued a similar warning about his struggling team.
“We still have a lot of those good players, and any week we’re always capable,” Scott said during a Wednesday conference call. “Things haven’t worked out, due to a lot of different circumstances. But if you go into the game and if you want to protect yourself, and you just want to walk in and (believe you will) walk over us, you’ll find yourself sadly mistaken.”
Gordon comes home: Baltimore defensive tackle Amon Gordon, a Mariner High School product, returned to the area while at Stanford but never as an NFL player. Gordon, 26, is excited about being back in town.
“It’s definitely a new experience for me,” said Gordon, whose mother Ava lives in Federal Way. “It’ll be a nice time.”
Gordon was a star fullback/linebacker at Mariner but transferred after his junior season, along with best friend Teyo Johnson, to a school in Southern California. The duo also played together at Stanford before going on to the NFL.
Since then, “we’ve really grown apart and done our own things,” Gordon said in a phone interview Friday.
While Johnson’s NFL career was short-lived after being a second-round draft pick of the Oakland Raiders in 2003, Gordon has persevered since being taken by the Browns in the fifth round the following year.
“A lot of it is good fortune,” Gordon said of a four-year NFL career that has included stops in Cleveland, Denver and Baltimore. “This business can be really volatile, so for me to have a decent chance of coming back next year is better than most.
“I continue to count my blessings that I’m able to do what I love for a living.”
Next year’s schedule: Next weekend, the Seahawks will travel to Atlanta to cap off a long regular season that included three cross-country trips in the month of December and more than 35,000 round-trip miles in eight road games.
Next year’s schedule is even more grueling.
The Seahawks’ official regular-season schedule won’t be announced until April, but the opponents are already known. Seattle will log 37,000 miles on road trips to Arizona, San Francisco, St. Louis, Dallas, Buffalo, Miami, Tampa Bay and New Jersey, to face the New York Gian
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