Seahawks Recap
Welcome to week three of my blog, though unfortunately this trilogy doesn’t have a triumphant ending for our heroes. Sadly, the Seattle Seahawks will be watching the rest of the playoffs on their enormous flat screens from the comfort of their couches. The game in Chicago was an absolute train wreck, only slightly salvaged by some touchdowns in garbage time when the game was already decided. There are a lot of possible explanations as to why the Hawks choked worse than David Carradine; big drops from wide receivers, inability to cover Bears’ tight end Greg Olsen, or having to play from behind never allowing Seattle to develop a consistent rhythm in the run game. Three particular plays in the first half stood out to me as momentum shifting in favor of the Bears:
1) John Carlson landing on his head and getting a concussion on the Hawks’ first drive. Carlson was instrumental to the victory over the Saints, catching two TDs. The backup tight end, Cameron Morrah, would drop a pass shortly after coming into the game. This play was also psychologically devastating; having to wait around for Carlson to be strapped to a gurney and carted off the field was surely disheartening and traumatic for the rest of the team.
2) Punting on fourth and one from the Bears’ 41 yard line. Seattle was in Chicago territory, losing 7-0 on the road, a short conversion away from keeping the drive alive, close to field goal range, and they choose to punt. “Pistol” Pete Carroll was known for taking risks at USC, but this sort of timid play calling sent the Hawks home as losers. He also decided to kick a field goal down 28-0, rather than try for a TD. This was most likely to prevent a shutout, not to try to win the game.
3) Jordan Babineaux dropping an interception at the goal line. This was the Hawks’ biggest miscue of the game. The Bears were on Seattle’s one yard line already leading by a touchdown and threatening to score when emo kid Jay Cutler errantly threw the ball right at Babineaux, who was so shocked he couldn’t catch the pass. Chicago scored on this drive to go up 14-0 and Seattle was out of the game. If Babs hangs on, the Hawks go on offense only down seven and all momentum is swung towards them.
Overall, the Seahawks were outmatched by the superior Bears, who move onto the NFC Championship game against the Packers. The Hawks did score some points in the fourth quarter when Chicago was already planning its post-game celebration, making the final score a more respectable 35-24. So even though he lost to move to 5-6, Matt Hasselbeck was able to pad his postseason numbers with an excellent statistical game of 258 yards/3 TDs/0 INTs/94.3 rating. And Seattle has the distinction of being the first and only team to finish a season with an 8-10 record. But this is overshadowed by the horrific loss and brutal injuries to Carlson and DB Marcus Trufant.
Headed into next season, the Seahawks have one HUGE advantage in their favor: they play in the squalors of the NFC West, where any team can emerge victorious. Carroll already overachieved his first season by bringing Seattle back to the playoffs and winning one playoff game when the team was supposed to be in rebuilding mode. They do have a few issues to address during the offseason, including solidifying their shaky offensive line, determining if Marshawn Lynch is the answer at running back, and finding some players to strengthen a defensive backfield that gave up too many big plays. They also need to hire a new offensive coordinator to replace the fired Jeremy Bates (for about 24 hours I was terrified that Pistol would choose Denver Broncos castoff Josh McDaniels, thankfully he signed with the Rams). The Seahawks return in the fall with high hopes and confidence from a successful season.
Random Thoughts: Student Athletes
In this year’s Orange Bowl, the Stanford Cardinal beat the Virginia Tech Hokies. This matchup is significant because of these institutions’ outstanding graduation rates for their football players: Stanford at 86 percent and Virginia Tech at 79 percent. Very few college athletes go pro, so those that take advantage of a free education will be better prepared to earn a living after their athletic opportunities have expired. The NCAA sets academic standards that collegiate athletes must maintain in order to be eligible to play for their teams. For many athletes, this minimum requirement is the goal, not graduating with a degree. I won’t judge someone who just wants to play football or basketball, especially a young man who has been the best at his sport his whole life prior and cannot accept the fact that college is as far as their athletic talents will take them. It’s difficult to recognize at the time how important an education will become when previously the only thing that mattered was how fast you ran, how many three pointers you could hit, or how good you were at pass blocking. I would speculate that some colleges and coaches do not put great enough emphasis pointing out to most of their young players that they won’t become professionals, so they should take advantage of their free education, because if they don’t complete their degrees it will cost thousands of dollars to do so later. My guess is that many coaches convince recruits to attend their universities by selling them on the dream of going pro and making millions. Telling them otherwise would hurt the chances of convincing athletes to join the team. A combination of naivety and over optimism combines to lead these athletes astray.
That being said, I’m tired when sports analysts, column writers, ESPN reporters and others in the media use the same tired line of reasoning when athletes fail to make grades; “they’re student athletes, the “student” comes before the “athlete” because that’s the most important part.” No. Just no. First of all, the “student” comes before the “athlete” because semantics dictates that it is said that way, not because one is more important than the other. Whoever coined the phrase selected the order of the words (which most likely should have been student-athlete or student/athlete because student isn’t an adjective, much like someone isn’t labeled a student musician) and thus engrained the term into the public’s mind. This ordering of words to familiarize a subject is common in the English language, for example “peanut butter and jelly sandwich”; “rock, paper, scissors”; “Simon and Garfunkel.” To reverse the orders would sound weird to the ear; “jelly and peanut butter sandwich,” “scissors, rock, paper,” “Garfunkel and Simon.” The specific arrangements of words come to distinguish them as a single unit, rather than one a collection of items. They may as well be read as a peanutbutterandjellysandwhich, a game of rockpaperscissors, and the band SimonandGarfunkel, because the mind conceives them this way. So the phrase “student athlete” only makes sense because we have been trained to believe it does through repetition, not because it is any better than “athlete student.”
Furthermore, I would argue that having student first almost acts in the opposite manner than those media folks would have you believe, instead emphasizing the fact that they are athletes by turning the word “student” into a pseudo-adjective. If I were to inform you that a polar bear was charging towards you and you turned around only to find a brown bear in full sprint, jaws open, drool dribbling out, would you lecture me about the differences between a polar and brown bear or would you turn and run, because some bear, regardless of breed, was attacking you? You’d run, and be thankful I had only messed up the adjective rather than the noun, like declaring a brown bunny was trying to eat you. The student athlete works the same; the important part that distinguishes them from other athletes is that they’re also students, rather than the thing that separates them from other students is they also happen to be athletes. They should really be labeled as “athletic students,” but that doesn’t really differentiate them from other students that happen to be athletic, but don’t have a scholarship or play for a school team. This is why they should be denoted as studentathletes, or at least student-athletes or student/athletes, identifying the phrase as a label and not a rank of responsibilities.
The second, and more fundamentally important, reason that the media should not use the “they’re student athletes, the “student” comes before the “athlete” because that’s the most important part” argument is that the student part is not the most important aspect of these people’s lives, though maybe it should be. If they got recruited because of musical talent, would you say that homework was more important than practicing the violin? And honestly how would you feel if a receiver dropped a sure touchdown because he was tired from studying all night for a history exam? I understand some sort of balance must be made between athletics and academics, but most colleges do not foster this idea, turning athletes into superstars, gods even, by using their names and pictures to promote the sporting events and thereby the university itself. In a setting where everybody knew who you were because of a skill in one area, would you care about anything else? No, you’d try to get even better in that one area. Don’t get me wrong, it is very unfortunate, but don’t blame the kid for underachieving in a system that promotes the opposite. If more schools followed the lead of Stanford and Virginia Tech and placed more emphasis on education, we would have better graduation rates and I wouldn’t have to hear moronic analysts deliver speeches on “being a student first,” while they criticize other players performances on the field.
Playoffs: NFC and AFC Championships
Green Bay over Chicago: I’ve been watching the Packers the past few weeks and despite only being the six seed, they’ve been playing like best team in the NFC, if not the whole NFL. QB Aaron Rodgers is playing out of his mind, absolutely decimating a Falcons team that only lost three games all year by a final of 48-21. In two playoff games they have the NFL’s top rusher in James Starks (189 yards), outstanding linebacker Clay Matthews has three sacks, and Tramon Williams has three interceptions at crucial spots. The Bears’ best advantage is that the game will be played at home in Chicago, likely in weather conditions similar to those the Hawks saw last week. Chicago’s defenseless is ferocious, but so is the Packers’. Green Bay’s offense is superior and should not have much trouble leading the Pack to the Super Bowl.
Pittsburg over New York Jets: This is a matchup between two of the league’s best defenses. Pittsburg and New York rank 2nd and 3rd in yards allowed and rank 1st and 6th in points/ game allowed, respectively. They both have battle-tested QBs with post season experience; Mark Sanchez is 4-1 and Ben Rapelisberger is 9-2 with two Super Bowl wins. Last week, the Jets knocked out Super Bowl favorites New England and Pittsburg defeated Baltimore in a tight game. This is guaranteed to be a low-scoring, close game. Watch for a big play on defense to determine the outcome of this game, either an interception returned for a touchdown or a crushing blow to a QB causing a fumble. In the end, I think the home crowd will help Pittsburg win and Big Ben will take out another victim.
Bonus Random Thoughts: LA Traffic
Driving in Los Angeles can be the most liberating experience, or the most frustrating. It seems I’m either going 80 or 0, with no in between. When traffic is bad, I sit in my car inching along about ten feet per minute, banging my head on the steering wheel in rhythm with the crappy Mexican song blaring on the radio. Sometimes I actually hope there has been a horrible car accident and rubber-neckers are slowly cruising by before zipping along with open road ahead, just so there is a chance that I will be on the freeway for a slightly reduced amount of time. Yes, I’d put someone else’s safety behind my own impatience. I’m a monster, but a week in this city would make any person change their opinion.
The upside of the painful traffic jams is that clear highways are cause for everyone to fly down the road like Superman trying to catch a falling Lois Lane. You may as well be on the Autobahn. Most of the time, the speed limit is 65 (a glorious number FYI), but if you drive that slowly with no traffic, you’ll get passed by like a twenty-year-old in a pedophile’s neighborhood. Everyone knows that you’re approximately three minutes from rush hour at any given point of the day, so you drive like a pregnant girl is giving birth in your back seat. In Seattle you have to be afraid of cops when you speed because all they have to do is post up somewhere on I-5 and they’re bound to catch someone, but in LA there are so many different freeways that it’s impossible to watch them all. And even if they could, the LAPD are so busy protecting the ridiculously rich and harassing the pathetically poor that they have no time to write insignificant tickets. What’s more important, punishing someone trying to make a meeting or arresting a gang-banger selling crack? (On an interesting note, a few days ago Seattle Mariners outfielder Milton Bradley was arrested for making threats against a woman less than three miles from where I live.) Even if the cops did want to pull someone over, most of the interstates I’ve seen are too thin to allow this. Why would city planners create a shoulder when they could squeeze in another lane? That doesn’t make any sense. Whether I am in tortoise or hare mode, at least I can take solace that it is over seventy degrees and beautiful and the rest of the country is freezing or raining.
That’s it for this week. Next time, Super Bowl analysis!
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