The Seahawks’ overall depth this year has been considered the best since 2013, when they won the Super Bowl.
They have had to dip into those reserves here and there throughout the season — especially covering for Thomas Rawls, Kam Chancellor, Michael Bennett and Luke Willson.
But this week, as the Hawks try to stay on the heels of the Dallas Cowboys with a win in Tampa, the depth is being tested at every level.
When C.J. Prosise busted out on his smooth-as-silk, 72-yard touchdown gallop vs. Philadelphia, Pete Carroll likely was thinking, “That’s what I’ve been talking about.”
It was the second straight big game for Prosise, who tallied 153 yards in the Week 10 win over New England. But, just as he had started to show why Carroll was so thrilled about drafting him in the third round this year, Prosise once again got hurt.
And now we really have to wonder whether he is cut out for playing running back in the NFL — at least in the volume Carroll would like to use him.
In 2014, the last time the Seahawks put together a Super Bowl run, their proving game came in Week 14 at the Philadelphia Eagles.
That game was more of a test for Seattle’s No. 1 defense, which had built its ranking on the backs of some bad offenses and faced a big test against the league’s fourth-ranked offense. The Hawks dominated Chip Kelly’s Eagles, winning 24-14, and did not lose again that season.
This Eagles game brought a different challenge: The league’s No. 3 scoring defense against Seattle’s rollercoaster offense.
The Seahawks were coming off two pretty decent offensive games against AFC East teams Buffalo and New England, but the Eagles’ front posed a much bigger challenge.
Just like the defense in 2014, the offense proved itself in fine fashion. The Hawks put up a season-high 439 yards in a 26-15 victory that featured a bevy of big plays, a fully healthy Russell Wilson, a much more explosive running game and a resilient offensive line.
The Seahawks have weathered a few injuries to key players — Russell Wilson, Kam Chancellor and Michael Bennett, especially — this season, but they have yet to endure the kind of bloodbath they took in their 26-15 win over Philly on Sunday.
No fewer than 10 players left the game with various ailments, and the Hawks are looking at playing without at least four key guys next Sunday in Tampa Bay.
The biggest concerns this week are Legion of Boomers Earl Thomas and DeShawn Shead, plus the running back position.
The Seahawks’ watershed win in New England largely has been interpreted as a sign the Hawks are ready to make their usual run through the second half of the season and deep into the playoffs.
But, because the offense has cost the team 2.5 games, the Seahawks find themselves in chase mode in the NFC — not yet in full control of their destiny, not yet the No. 1 seed.
Dallas, led by rookie QB Dak Prescott, holds that position right now — 1.5 games up on the Hawks thanks to an eight-game winning streak. But there is plenty of time to catch the Cowboys — and the remaining slates for each team make it seem very possible, if not likely.
Like clockwork, it’s Kam Chancellor time.
It happens pretty much every season around this time: The heartbeat of the Seattle defense struggles with injuries in the first half and then catches a second wind and helps the Hawks sail to the Super Bowl.
This time it was a four-week absence due to a groin injury. And, on cue, Chancellor returned vs. New England and came up with a couple of late-game plays that earned him honors as NFC defensive player of the week.
As the Hawks head down the second-half stretch, angling for another Super Bowl run, Chancellor looks ready to lead the defense the way he did in the 2013 and 2014 title game seasons. And it also looks like he is re-affirming his long-term place with the team.
Continue reading Chancellor leading the way, like 2013 and 2014
Pete Carroll has been raving about C.J. Prosise since the Seahawks drafted him last spring. But, because the running back had been hobbled by a bevy of bumps and bruises pretty much since the day he was drafted, the rest of us had no clue why — until Sunday in New England.
He started over a slightly hobbled Christine Michael and did a little bit of everything to tally 153 total yards and help the Hawks pull off a meaningful upset. In fact, Carroll was so happy about his play during the game that he wouldn’t let the rookie pull himself off the field.
“He tapped out a couple times to catch his breath,” Carroll said. “There was a time when I told him, ‘Don’t do that. Get out there. Get your butt on the field.’ He kind of looked at me like, ‘Oh, OK, I guess I can’t tap out.’ So he went back in.”
You can’t blame Prosise. The guy had touched the ball just 17 times in four other games this season — basically his personal preseason — and he got 24 touches in 51 plays vs. the Patriots.
“He’s going to get in shape and all that,” Carroll said. “He can’t be in great game shape; he just can’t be. He hasn’t played enough.”
It was hard to know what to expect in New England. Vegas called the Hawks a touchdown underdog, and most analysts went with that in picking the Patriots in the Super Bowl XLIX rematch.
But the Seahawks bounced back off a short week against the bye-rested Pats and put together their best — though far from perfect — game of the season in a 31-24 upset that Doug Baldwin said evoked a “phenomenal emotional feeling in our locker room.”
That is the feeling that this team has made its typical Second Half Turn and is headed for something special again.
This was not a must-win for Seattle, from a standings standpoint. But it certainly was a big game for Seattle’s psyche — to get even for the XLIX debacle and to measure themselves against the AFC’s best team.
Continue reading Seahawks’ season takes the usual super turn with marquee win
At the midway point of the season, as the Seahawks prepare for a mammoth matchup in New England on “Sunday Night Football,” we know a number of things about Pete Carroll’s 2016 club:
Russell Wilson is an iron man. Jimmy Graham is a miracle man. The defense can’t be dominant without Michael Bennett. NFL refs love creating controversy during Seattle games. And …
The offensive line is every bit the problem we all thought it would be — and seems to be getting worse. Is there any hope it will improve? And if it doesn’t, will it prevent the Hawks from winning the Super Bowl?
Michael Bennett has made a bunch of money the past couple of weeks — without playing a down.
If there were any doubt Bennett deserved a raise on his bargain-basement deal, the past three games have wiped it out.
Long upset over his undervalued contract, Bennett nonetheless had showed up and played great for the last two seasons-plus. But now a knee injury has forced him into an involuntary holdout that has shown everyone just how underpaid he is.
