Seahawks offensive problems go deeper than people think

After the Seattle Seahawks lost to the Washington Redskins, I listened to a local sports commentator state that he has been minutely observing wide receiver Mike Williams, and suggested that he was quitting on routes, and even giving away running plays because of his supposed lackadaisical play--and this explained why he was rarely targeted on pass plays. Now, how often did we hear early in the year that Seahawk's quarterback Tarvaris Jackson was constantly eye-balling Sydney Rice while missing a wide-open Mike Williams? How often did we hear how few times early in the year Williams was targeted, apparently because Jackson didn’t have a “rapport” with him like he did with Rice (and let's not over-state that case; in Minnesota, Jackson didn’t know how to take advantage of Rice’s size until Brett Favre showed him how). There is no doubt that Williams, after having such a fine year last season, feels that he is being ignored because Jackson and Rice are “buddies” and Williams is just some guy in the way. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that he has gone juvenile on the team, if that is the case. How can you be a "team" player when you feel you are not even part of the team?

I don’t so much blame Williams as much as I do Pete Carroll for allowing this situation to fester, and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell for not correcting it. It seems to me that Bevell, Jackson and Rice are in their own private little clique—a team within a team. What does that give you? A team that is 30th out of 32 in total offense, 26th in points scored; amazing how the local sports media have let those little tidbits slip by unnoticed. Some are blaming the team's latest loss on the defense; I prefer to remember that in their last four possessions, the Seahawk offense advance the ball from the original line of scrimmage a total of minus-10 yards. The Seahawks passing game is a fraud; you can’t blame a 14-30 day all on dropped balls—even the best quarterbacks experience dropped passes. Somehow you have to get the ball in the general vicinity of the receiver at least 75 percent of the time. 17 points against a mediocre defense? Sorry, that’s not going to cut it.

When Favre was in Minnesota, he made every receiver look better than they actually were—including Rice; that’s what a “franchise” quarterback can and should do. Favre, within only a few games in an offensive system he knew only from playing against twice a year, knew who he could trust to either catch a jump ball (Rice), be a big target in the end zone (Visanthe Shiancoe) and who could be counted on to make a big play on a slant or short pass (Percy Harvin). Jackson is trying to shoehorn Rice into be all three for him, and now we see this dysfunction. This is why this offense with this quarterback can’t function in the long-term.