The Seahawks may have looked like radioactive frogs last night, but I don’t care because they finally, FINALLY, beat the hell out of their bogey team. The 24-3 win over the Los Angeles Rams reverses a series of bruising losses to the former scions of Jeff Fisher, and clinched a division title for the Seahawks. Was it a great Seahawks performance? No. Are the Seahawks going to play a home playoff game this year? Yup.
Let’s get the biggest point that needs to be made out of the way up front: the Rams are sloppy garbagemen. Firing Jeff Fisher, who trained them in the arts of throwing garbage cans around rather than dumping them in a dump truck, won’t fix things until the whole coaching staff is cleaned up and someone figures out why they gave up so many draft picks to go get Jared Goff who may not be an NFL caliber quarterback. And thank God the Rams are a mess, as, despite the final margin, they could have hung around in this game had a couple big plays gone their way. They dropped a would-be touchdown, committed a roughing the passer penalty to extend a drive, failed to take advantage of some opportunities to create turnovers until the end of the game. But when you’re sloppy, you’re sloppy, and the Rams executed at a low level all night long.
And let’s be frank, so did the Seahawks. Jersey aside, Russell Wilson looked pretty shmedium again. Despite hitting on a couple big plays in the second half, he missed some gimmes in the first half. The first TD of the game wouldn’t have been if the Rams hadn’t held on a brutal miss on fourth down. Wilson is still wearing a knee brace, and while his mobility is largely back, his touch has been average the past few weeks. It’s weird to watch Wilson miss. I don’t like it. I hope it stops happening soon.
The running game also stagnated at the hands of Aaron Donald and a sloppy performance from the offensive line. Seahawks rookie guard Germain Ifedi hasn’t developed like we might have hoped, and was owned by Rams tackle Aaron Donald all night long. Thomas Rawls was cutting decisively, but he wasn’t able to make much happen. The biggest Seahawks run of the night came from punter Jon Ryan, who promptly fumbled and took a hit that landed him in the hospital. It wasn’t great.
Also not great? A dumb semi-scandal involving Richard Sherman yelling at Pete Carroll for throwing the ball from the one yard line. Pete handled the whole situation well, and the Seahawks scored on the drive, but it was all a bit weird. Sherman is smart enough to know that the Seahawks’ passing attack matches up better against the Rams secondary than their inside running game does against the LA defensive line. Whatever. Because it’s Sherman the media will talk about this more than they should, and since I’m part of the media I’ll stop this paragraph here so as not to be part of the problem.
Because, despite playing a largely bad game, the Seahawks won by 21. Some guys played great (Tyler Lockett, Mike Morgan, and Cliff Avril stood out) and no one did anything to cost the team the win. And while this is the worst Seahawks team of the past five years, relative to the rest of the league they are once again near the top because everyone is worse this year. So who’s to say this season won’t end in a Super Bowl.
As Twitter user @Daggerhandz pointed out, the Sounders lost their best player, had to beat a number one seed in Dallas, and then won MLS Cup. Who’s to say the Seahawks cannot take a similar trajectory, especially in a year when no teams have established themselves as being any damn good? Not me. I say they can, and they will, and when they do I will be goddamn insufferable. It’s time, folks. Let’s bring back the insufferability.
