Losing this game is way more frustrating than I would have expected. The Hawks played their defensive starters almost the entire game and gave up 44 points to a pitiful offense. There was zero life in the Falcon players or crowd until the Seahawks gave them a reason to believe. We have gotten some swagger in our game during the 5-game win streak that now seems totally lost. That’s not how you want to enter a playoff game against a hot team.
It was even more disheartening to learn that Matt Hasselbeck injured his throwing hand. Time will tell if the injury will play a role this week. You can never trust what Holmgren says about those things.
I take a very small amount of pleasure in having predicted the Hawks final record in my season preview. Although, as late as Wednesday, I had updated that prediction to 11-5, but why focus on the negative. 🙂
Some quick thoughts:
- The running game was by far the best it has been all season, and not just from a stats perspective. The Hawks consistently ran inside and outside, in obvious run situations and with any back. They finished the game with a 5.4 YPC which is their first game over the 5 yard mark this season, and easily beat their best rushing mark established last week (167 vs 144). This was by far the most encouraging part of the game.
- I’ll have to check, but the 501 yards of offense may be a season high
- The 9 penalties for 85 yards has got to be a season high, and shows the focus just was not there
- DJ Hackett looked as bad as I’ve ever seen him. He dropped multiple passes and just seemed lost out there a bit
- Nate’s 9 TDs for the year almost completely replace D-Jacks 10 from the year before
- Lofa played his worst game of the year. He was consistently out of position and not wrapping up. The most egregious error was on the 55-yard TD catch by Crumpler.
- No pass rush again. Kerney has lost the sack lead with Jared Allen of KC having 2 so far, which gives him 15.5
- Great game for Weaver. Almost 100 yards of total offense on 6 receptions and 8 rushes.
- It looked like we went pretty vanilla on defense. People talk about coaches resting players before the playoffs, but they are even more likely to simplify their game plans to give their playoff opponents less to look at.
- Ray Willis made an appearance and seemed to play okay.
- Marcus Pollard showed some glimpses.
- Bad game on kick coverage
- Great game for Josh on FGs and on coverage
- Plack took a step back on punting