SEATTLE – The wind blew, the rain fell and Ricky Watters ran the ball. Which is as it should be when it’s December in Husky Stadium.
Maybe you can’t always count on the weather to be crappy. But you can often count on Watters to deliver when he needs to. And he needed to on Sunday.
His coach had made the difficult decision to bench the youngster who, while Watters was sidelined with an injury, had run for more than 1,000 yards. Some criticized the decision. Some applauded it.
The kid, Shaun Alexander, couldn’t have liked it, but he kept his mouth shut because that was the smart – and only – thing to do. The veteran Watters was excited, as he always is when he knows he is going to get the ball. And he had to know he was going to carry it a lot the way the weather was acting up on the way to the stadium.
“It lived up to its reputation today,” said Seahawk quarterback Matt Hasselbeck. “Coming across the 520 bridge on the way here, I knew it was going to be one of those games, and it was.”
Wet. Windy. Wretched. Weather unfit for man or beast. Well, most men.
“I didn’t really notice it,” said Seahawk center Robbie Tobeck, who got toughened up on hard winters when he played at Washington State. “We practice in it, we play in it, we like it.”
Really, it’s the kind of conditions football should be played in during the late fall or early winter. Not in some stuffy dome.
“I was thinking (it was like) a late November game, two Big Ten teams, just sort of going at it,” said Seahawk rookie lineman Steve Hutchinson, a Michigan alum. “Whoever is going to possess the ball and keep driving and running the ball is going to end up winning.”
Which is how it was.
The old man ran like a rookie trying to impress his coach. And when Watters stopped running, he had 104 yards, his first 100-yard game of the season. Not that he wanted to stop. He had to. An ankle injury forced him to the sideline early in the fourth quarter.
“He played like I expected him to play,” Seahawk coach Mike Holmgren said. “For the most part, I thought he played fast and he hit the holes hard.”
You knew he would. Watters is a competitive cuss. He wanted to show the people who said Alexander should still be starting that he, Ricky Watters, could still tote the ball effectively and that Holmgren knew what he was doing when he made his decision.
Now they know.
Watters didn’t eat up large chunks of turf every time he touched the ball, but in the first half, he gained at least five yards on 10 of 17 carries while rushing for 88 yards. And on the opening drive of the game, when the Seahawks made it clear that neither the Cowboys nor the weather was going to keep them from carrying out their game plan, he ran with spirit and a dash of flash, once spinning after hit to get an extra five yards on an 8-yard dash.
When that drive ended with Watters scoring from the one, he went to the sideline and the first person to greet him was the man he had replaced in the lineup. “He was positive all week, he was positive before the game,” Watters said of Alexander, the second-year player out of Alabama. “We prayed together, just like normal.”
Watters made his best run of the day the next time the Seahawks got the ball. He went 18 yards and he carried cornerback Izell Reese with him the last eight. That drive ended with a Rian Lindell field goal, giving the Hawks a 10-0 lead and all the points they would need.
And maybe, just maybe, it put some negative thoughts in the Cowboys’ heads. “I know they were thinking about the weather,” Hasselbeck mused. “We go down and score first, and have a pretty good drive the second time and come up with three points. They had to be saying, ‘Why doesn’t this weather affect them?’ Hopefully, we can use this type of weather to our advantage in the future.”
Watters not only ran the ball 28 times, he also caught it five times for 34 yards. Once he dropped a short pass and you could tell by his body language that he was upset with himself. You could almost hear him returning to the huddle and telling the quarterback, “Throw it to me again.” Which Hasselbeck did and Watters caught, gaining eight yards.
With all that Watters was doing, running, catching and blocking, there was really no reason to get Alexander in the game, and when he finally did enter, on a third-and-2 with 4:18 left in the third quarter, Hasselbeck threw incomplete to Bobby Engram.
It was back to the bench. About 5 1/2minutes later, Alexander got off of it again, and he wouldn’t sit down the rest of the game.
For when Watters got hurt and limped off the field, it became Alexander’s job to carry the ball. And you knew he was determined not to fail.
His finest moment came with the Seahawks at the Cowboy 7. Given the ball, he started left and Dallas cornerback Mario Edwards appeared to have him wrapped up. Not this time, buckeroo. Alexander pulled free and had open country to the end zone.
It was the kind of play that makes a coach say to himself, “Young man, you showed me something today.”
It showed Mike Holmgren that Alexander wasn’t about to let his disappointment over not starting affect his effort.
Holmgren will be sure to file that away. And not necessarily for a rainy day.
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