Super Bowl Bound!

Seahawks baby! What a game, what a win. And somehow, Seattle is a 3 and a half point underdog for the Big Game. Go figure.

Football psychology isn't really that difficult. Really, it's not. You need a coach with some brains, and players who listen to the coach...

Exhibit A: Mike Holmgren.
After the ridiculous two games Carolina wide receiver Steve Smith had coming into yesterday's game, all you saw everywhere was Steve Smith Steve Smith SteveSmith STEVESMITH stevesmith. "Experts" were picking the Panthers to win with the sole explanation being "Nobody can stop Steve Smith." "Oh really?" thinks Holmgren and his coaching staff. "Okay, let's play along." All week long, all anybody from Seattle said when asked about Steve Smith was "He's a great player, he's having a great season." and "Wow, he's good, ain't he? I don’t know how we can stop him, but we'll try." I actually watched the Seattle press conference on the NFL Network, and was thinking to myself, "Wow, they're kissing Steve Smith's ass. Smart, smart move." You see, it's like the reverse jinx. Talk about how great an opposing player is, and he starts to get a little suspicious. In fact the media hyping up Steve Smith was the best thing that could have happened to Seattle. I mean, it didn't take a genius to figure out that the defensive gameplan should be "Stop Steve Smith and make the rest of the offense beat us." This ass-kissing reverse jinx was capped off before the game, when Mike Holmgren went up to Mr. Smith and told him, "You're a great player. You're having a hell of a season."

This is not the typical reaction to the best player on the opposing team. The typical treatment is to trash talk about how so-and-so is not so good, or didn't put up those huge games against THIS team, or basically call him names. Providing "bulletin board material" is the general MO of NFL teams, particularly in the playoffs. The only thing that came close leading up to this game was from Carolina, when safety Mike Minter said that the only way Seattle stops Steve Smith is by hiring a hitman. Guess what, Mike. They didn't need a hitman. Just some good old-fashioned reverse psychology and triple coverage.

The final numbers:
Steve Smith: 5 catches, 33 yards, 1 lost fumble, 1 TD (on that questionably called punt return)
Seneca Wallace (who is the Seahawks backup QB, by the way): 1 catch, 28 yards - only 5 yards fewer than Smith.

Maybe now people will start to believe me when I say our defense is good. Damn good. The only reason we ranked so low in yardage allowed is because we were ahead big in so many games and teams got a ton of yardage in garbage time. Same thing yesterday. Yes, the Panthers completed some passes late in the game including that fairly deep touchdown catch, but the game was pretty much over and we were in prevent mode.

Lofa Tatupu should have won Defensive Rookie of the Year, and cemented that argument yesterday. He finished second to San Diego's Shawne Merriman, basically because everybody was kissing the Chargers' heiney all season and he had more sacks. Here's some more stats:

Lofa Tatupu: 104 tackles (led the team), 4 sacks, 3 ints, 6 pass deflections, 1 fumble recovery
Shawne Merriman: 57 tackles, 10 sacks, 0 ints, 4 pass deflections, 2 forced fumbles

And Lofa was calling defensive plays and alignments as of Week 4. Don't get me wrong, Merriman is very good. But Tatupu was better and meant more to his team.

And I wasn't going to say it, but Troy Aikman said it after the game, so I can say it now - this Seattle team is pretty young still, especially on defense. They can be good for several years.

Hell of a game by Alexander and Hasselbeck. Alexander shook off the concussion and all the talk about never having it gotten it done in the postseason. Hasselbeck just gave writers everywhere more material with the inevitable comparisons to Favre that we'll see for the next two weeks.

I only had two gripes with the game:

1) The officiating. Horrendous yet again. It wound up not mattering, but picking up the flag on that Steve Smith punt return was ridiculous. Did John Fox somehow slip into a referee outfit while nobody was looking (a la Frank Drevin in Naked Gun) and talk them into reversing that call? That made the game 17-7. As my dad said when I called him screaming moments later, "The refs look at the scoreboard. They shouldn't, but they do." If the game was closer at that point, no way do they pick up that flag. I mean, what was that conversation like?

Referee #1: "We got an illegal block in the back, #50."

Referee #2: "Oh, I saw that. He didn't really mean to do it. He kinda pulled up after he blocked the guy. Sorta."

Referee #1: "Huh? He pushed him in the back. The guy could have made the tackle if he didn't do it. That's a penalty."

Referee #2: "Well, yeah. But come on. It's 17-0! Cut them a break. It wasn't really illegal, was it?"

Referee #1: "Shit, it's 17-0 already? Well we don't want a complete blowout. Okay, you're right, it wasn't illegal. I'll pick up my flag."

Un-frickin-believable. There were some other bad calls, on both sides of the ball, but thankfully it didn't decide the game. In the post-game press conference, a reporter asked Hasselbeck about that play. His response was something like, "Well, I don't think I can comment on that, or I'll get in trouble. But basically we felt like they got a gift. But that's okay, championship teams overcome things like that. Steve Smith is a great player, it was a great play, it got their team back into it, and we had to keep scoring." Good answer.

And speaking of the post-game.. Gripe #2…

2) Terry Bradshaw. Doing the on-field interviews and trophy presentation. Are you kidding me? For those of you who didn't watch it (and Anonymous informed me only fans of the winning team actually watch the post-game stuff, which I knew), it went something like this… First, Terry Bradshaw introduces Paul Allen, owner of the Seahawks and co-founder of a little software company you might have heard of called Microsoft. Bradshaw starts the conversation, "So, first I have to ask you… I'm having a problem with my email, can you help me?" To which a confused Allen thinks to himself "Who put this clown up here with me?" before replying, "Uhhhhh, sure, I can help you with that." A few minutes later, Bradshaw introduces Matt Hasselbeck by putting one arm around his shoulder and then rubbing his bald head, saying, "Hey, it's okay you're bald! I'm bald too! Bald is cool! Bald guys rule!" or something ridiculous like that. I think I saw the other players nearby visibly cringing. It was an awkward and borderline gay moment. (Does anybody know if Bradshaw is married by the way? Maybe he is gay?) And last but not least, he asked Shaun Alexander if he'd be there next year. Come on Terry. This is not the place for that question. Shaun answered as best he could, "I hope so. I want to be back. We'll see what happens. We got one more game to win though!" Fucking Terry Bradshaw. As the post-game ceremonies started, I thought to myself, "Shit, I should be taping this." As they ended, I was like, "God, I'm glad I didn't tape that. Hopefully all the commerative DVDs will edit that out."

And here's something that has bugged me for awhile. As a long-time hockey fan, I'm well aware of the long standing tradition of the NHL champions skating around the ice hoisiting the Stanley Cup, passing it from player to player. It's a great tradition, and when the Rangers did it in 1994, it gave me goosebumps. Somewhere along the line, I'd say in the past 5 years or so, other sports tried to rip it off. Teams started carrying their championship trophies around the stadium. Sometimes passing it around, sometimes not. They don't seem to know what they're doing with it. It's like they're being told to do it by the NFL Secret Service and the TV executives standing around them. This was no more obvious (and almost painful to watch) than with Seattle. While on the podium, Paul Allen hoisted the NFC Championship Trophy, then Mike Holmgren, then Matt Hasselbeck, and then Shaun Alexander. Then someone whispered in Alexander's ear "Okay Shaun, start walking it around the stadium," which he did, but wasn't really sure why or where he was going. At one point he tried handing it off to Pro Bowl offensive lineman Steve Hutchinson, who basically looked at him and said something like, "I don't want to carry that thing around. Keep it." I think he even tried passing it off once or twice more (the camera shot was moving around a lot), but found no takers. Finally, someone directed him to the end zone, since, like, you know, he scores a lot of touchdowns. So I'll say this once, and I'm sure not the last time - sports that are not hockey, please stop with the lame, scripted, poorly executed, walk the trophy around like the Stanley Cup rip-off. It doesn't work.

And last, but not least, I meant to come up with a checklist for beating the Panthers, but forgot. Anyways, here's what it would have looked like:

Put like 3 guys on Steve Smith at all times - Check.
Pressure Jake Delhomme - Check.
Stop the Panthers mediocre running game - Check.
Abuse former Seahawk cornerback Ken Lucas as least once - Check. (He was the one burnt on that catch by backup QB Seneca Wallace)
Get the ball to tight end Jeramy Stevens - Check.
Make sure Steve Smith doesn't make any big plays - Check. (Dubious punt return for a touchdown aside.)
Pound the wounded Julius Peppers until he loses the will to live - Check.
Get a big game from Lofa Tatupu, who deserved to win Defensive Rookie of the Year - Check.
Did I mention all we really have to do on defense is stop Steve Smith? - Check.
Don't get too conservative on offense if we have a lead late - Check. (Though the lead was big enough to get conservative.)
Get decent officiating so the refs don't cost us the game - Well, maybe not a check here, but we won anyways.

Anyways, to the Super Bowl we go! Two weeks to wait though, so expect the analysis to come in small steady doses. Go Seahawks!