Win against Redskins doesn't mean dawn of a dynasty yet

As I’ve said before, even though I live in the area, I’m not a Seattle Seahawk fan. This team has no “tradition,” it doesn’t inspire memories of glory past or present. When I was kid growing up in Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to visit Green Bay, stroll through the Packers Hall of Fame and even run the 100-yard dash on Lambeau’s hallowed field.  I have no memory of the Lombardi years, although I occasionally heard the name spoken of in reverence. I only caught the tail-end of Bart Starr’s career, before he was temporarily replaced by another University of Alabama sixth-rounder—Scott Hunter, in 1971. The Packers actually won their division the following year, largely on the back of the second-ranked defense and a league-leading +17 turnover ratio, and a surprise performance by a rookie placekicker—Poland-born “Chester” Marcol, who led the NFL in field goals made (33) and points scored (128); Marcol accounted for 42 percent of the team’s point total (304). 

But the for next 19 years, the Packers managed just one playoff appearance (in the 9-game 1982 strike season) and a 112-168-1 record, a .400 winning percentage. “Unfortunately,” the Packers haven’t won less than four games since 1958, so they never were “bad” enough to be less than completely mediocre, especially when it came to the draft. But since then the Packers have a 214-122 record, a .637 winning percentage, and two more Super Bowl trophies. Fans who came of age during the Favre/Rodgers “era” have this notion that the Packers are just a team that the “experts” expect to be good every year—without being prepared for the eventuality that when the “dark age” returns, people will look at you like an object of pity or puzzlement when you say your team is the Packers.

Another team with “tradition” is the Washington Redskins. It may surprise some people, but the Redskins franchise dates from 1932. If you mention that Sammy Baugh was a quarterback for the Redskins, people might not have any idea who he is, but he sounds like someone who was around before they were born. The Redskins appeared in 6 NFL championship games from 1937 to 1945, winning twice; however the Redskins are better known during that time as the team that played in the most lopsided game in NFL history: The 1940 NFL championship game, when the Chicago Bears obliterated the Redskins 73-0. At a time when the passing game was still exotic, three different Redskins quarterbacks threw 51 passes in that game—eight of which were intercepted, three ran back for touchdowns. 

As for the Seahawks, since they came into the league in1977 the team hasn’t been an “elite” team or legitimately top tier for longer than one season at any point in its history; even during Mike Holmgren’s tenure the team only had double-digit wins in a season three times. This season the team is actually getting some national attention and even respect, mainly because of the surprising play of Russell Wilson and the fact that the team has won some games many felt they had no business winning. Now they are the team no one wants to play, because they are impossible to figure out. They’ve had too good fortune in certain spots (such as against Green Bay and New England); the top tier teams may believe they know how to handle an impertinent upstart, but bringing them to heel for all four quarters has been too great an effort. Mike McCarthy, Bill Belichick and Jim Harbaugh have been left bewildered and befuddled.  Most local commentators believe that Wilson is that franchise quarterback who will guide the Seahawks to that “golden age” that they’ve never had, like perennial fourth-division doormat Pittsburgh Steelers rising from the mud to win four Super Bowls in six years.

But this weekend’s match-up against Robert Griffin III and this version of the Washington Redskins seemed to be an opportunity to bring order to the universe. That is of course, wishful thinking; unlike in Green Bay, the ghosts of past greats and greatness does not exert the same mystique. RGIII was supposed to be the “superior” version of Russell Wilson, and for at least a quarter the Redskins seemingly moved with surprising ease against the Seahawks’ defense. Perhaps it was part of the plan: In order to prevent the Seahawks from getting on a roll early, put them in a position of weakness they have not experienced of late, and confuse and baffle them. It seemed to be working initially, as the Redskins raced to a 14-0 lead. But it was almost as if the Redskins had completely expended themselves on those first two possessions; from that point forward, the Seahawks completely dominated the Redskins between the twenties, outgaining the Redskins 371 to 78. Despite this, the Redskins still clung to a 14-13 lead into the fourth quarter, with the Seahawks not taking their first lead until 7 minutes left in the game. This leads one to believe that with a healthy RGIII, the Redskins likely would have shown enough life to win this game.

That this did not happen persuaded me that RGIII is not the “franchise” quarterback that teams are looking for, because his personal success is dependent on his mobility, and without it he is a liability. Seahawk coach Pete Carroll practically admitted in the postgame interview that RGIII was no longer a threat once it was discovered that he was playing lame:

If you noticed it earlier, when we rushing the passer, everyone was worried about him getting out and containing him. After we saw what he was doing and how he was moving, I tried to encourage the guys to not be worried about breaking containment and running like crazy. It was more like a normal quarterback back there, and we keep our pressure and our rushes and not be so concerned about him, trying to keep him in the pocket.

From that point, RGIII’s play was characterized by poor decisions and inaccurate passing. The question for Seahawk fans is if Wilson plays the same style, is there any reason to believe that he is “immune”? From what I can tell he hasn’t been on any injury report all season, which is unusual for any player. But it may be wishful thinking to believe that if he continues to play this “read-option” or whatever it is called, that eventually an injury that will limit his mobility will come to pass, and will take a little more than good will and politics to prop him up as the “franchise” quarterback who is supposed to help the team contend for the Super Bowl every year. This may be just one of those years where a team comes out of left field to go to a Super Bowl (like the 2002 Tampa Bay Bucs), only to fall back into its usual mediocrity. 

I wonder what the Seahawks 24-14 win proved. It may be that team that play the option game have opposing defenses unused to it at a disadvantage; when the Seahawks' defense was operating in "contain" mode, it looked as hapless as their opponents did for several weeks at the end of the season. Did the win “prove” that Wilson is a better quarterback than RGIII? That is relative; I frankly thought that RGIII was over-rated coming in, have been barely on anyone’s radar screen until half-way through his senior season in college, excelling against some awful college defenses (like the Washington Huskies’). As for Wilson, I thought that he was no more than another of a long line of quarterbacks who excelled under the Wisconsin “system,” but were not legitimate NFL prospects. I may be wrong about this, but given what we’ve seen from Michael Vick and RGIII and how they’ve actually hurt rather than helped their teams once a key part of their “game” has been nullified, I think more than ever Seahawk aficionados should keep their expectations for the future modest.