NEW ORLEANS – This was not the way days like these were supposed to end.
Shaun Alexander, lying on a training table, while a team doctor poked and prodded his right knee for a possible ligament tear.
Shaun Alexander, who had just rushed for 135 yards and scored three touchdowns to lead his Seattle Seahawks to a 21-7 season-opening win over the New Orleans Saints.
This was not the way it was supposed to go down.
One by one, his teammates stopped by the training table to offer words of encouragement as the game continued. Others ignored the action on the field while they craned their necks to get a peak at their fallen hero. Even one assistant coach admitted to letting his eyes drift away from the Seahawks’ final offensive possession to get a look at Alexander’s knee.
“We’re up by two touchdowns, there were three minutes to play, so I was checking out my guy,” said offensive coordinator Gil Haskell, who spends game days high above the field in a coaches’ box.
Eventually, doctors felt good enough about Alexander’s right knee that they allowed him to sit up. A few minutes later, he was standing. And then, when the gun went off to signify an official end to the game, Alexander gingerly took his ceremonial walk across the field.
He smiled for cameras and pointed to the crowd, taking his time to soak it all in. After the kind of performance Alexander put on Sunday at the Superdome, he deserved to at least take a victory lap.
“Even more than the three touchdowns, I’m just glad we got the win,” Alexander told the media a few minutes later. “We’re trying to establish something big this year, and that’s a good way to start.”
Although Alexander is slated to undergo an MRI today, his sprained right knee appeared as if it had survived after getting tangled up with the turf while trying to avoid a tackle by linebacker James Allen on the final drive of the game.
That news was the icing on the cake for Seattle, which enjoyed the sweet taste of opening-day victory for the second year in a row. Not since 1985-86 had the Seahawks won back-to-back openers.
And, as anyone who watched the team last season might recall, road wins are not always easy to come by.
“It’s not like we were doing something different, or we had some kind of spell on us or something,” linebacker Anthony Simmons said of the Seahawks’ 2-7 road record last season. “We just didn’t play very well on the road. To come out and win on the road against a good team, I think we did a pretty good job today.”
While Alexander’s heroics were the most obvious, there were several reasons why the Seahawks got off to such a good start Sunday.
* The defense held New Orleans to 281 yards of total offense and forced three turnovers.
* The offense methodically gained 30 yards or more on six of its 13 drives.
* The Seahawks held the Saints scoreless on both possessions following Seattle turnovers.
“That’s a solid way to start,” offensive lineman Steve Hutchinson said afterward.
While it was a balanced effort, Alexander was the man responsible for 18 of Seattle’s 21 points – not including the three point-afters from kicker Josh Brown.
Alexander’s first touchdown – a 14-yard scamper on a screen pass – was pretty impressive, but the scores got more jaw-dropping as the game went on.
Eight minutes after scoring a second-quarter TD that had broken a scoreless tie, Alexander gave the Seahawks a 14-0 lead on a 6-yard run. Alexander got strung to the left side on that play, but managed to avoid cornerbacks Fred Thomas and Fahkir Brown before stiff-arming Tebucky Jones at the 1.
The Saints got within 14-7 on a touchdown from Kent native Ernie Conwell late in the second quarter, but Michael Boulware’s interception set up a third Alexander touchdown in the third.
On that one, Alexander took a handoff and started to his right before cutting back to the left, avoiding Allen and waltzing into the corner of the end zone for a 9-yard touchdown.
“Sometimes it looks crazy,” Alexander said of his touchdown runs, “but in my head it doesn’t.”
Seattle maintained its 14-point advantage into the fourth quarter when Alexander took the field again for what looked like the Seahawks’ final drive. With just over three minutes left in the game, he made another cutback run, again for nine yards, and got his legs intertwined with Allen’s. Afterward, he had to be helped off the field.
“Our entire sideline went silent,” backup quarterback Trent Dilfer said later.
While trainers attended to Alexander, the Seahawks’ offense got two more first downs to clinch the victory.
Backup Maurice Morris and fullback Mack Strong carried the load as Seattle successfully ran out the clock.
“You hope that it’s nothing serious, especially with your Pro Bowl running back,” Hutchinson said of going on without Alexander. “But we still had to get a first down.
“A little bit of our Achilles’ heel the last couple years was not being able to finish close games at the end. We had the opportunity to put the game away, and we had to do that.”
Alexander underwent X-rays after the win and will probably have more tests today.
“On injuries, I always try to wait and see, so I don’t go and get all worked up about something I don’t have to be worked up about,” coach Mike Holmgren said. “He seems to feel OK right now.”
After helping carry his team to a rare season-opening win, Alexander was feeling more than OK.
“The biggest thing is that it was the first game of the season and being on the road,” he said. “I take a lot of my own personal stuff out of it when it’s a team effort. Football’s the ultimate team sport. … I usually get the blessings of it.”
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