One Bad Game a Season Is Allowed

It took me a day to work up the motivation to write about yesterday's abysmal showing by the Seahawks. We'll see if I can write about the game rationally.

Seattle seems to have a game like this every year. At Pittsburgh in 2007. At Chicago in 2006. At Jacksonville in 2005 (which also happened to be the opener). These were games where, for one reason or another, everything fell apart and the Seahawks got routed. Perhaps each game provided its own unique confluence of negative inputs that led to the Seahawks looking horrible. In each year, the Seahawks, on average, were much better than they looked on those worst performances of their respective seasons. You could call each of those games 'outliers'.

Was Sunday's performance by the Seahawks an 'outlier'?

I would say yes, but I'm not sure by how much. Other than a fairly stout defensive performance (four three-and-outs to start the game, plus only one first down allowed in the two Buffalo possessions following the first touchdown), the Seahawks looked bad - special teams, offensive line, the mystery group or whatever they're calling themselves, the running game. It was all bad. Thank goodness the Seahawks get, by my judgement, their two easiest games of the year in the next two weeks, which they can hopefully use to fix these problems.

I'll post about a number of topics as the day goes by, but here's my overall take:

For now, I'm going to write this off as a bad performance that by no means signals the Seahawks' window closing. However, if this is an outlier performance, a typical performance should be good enough to beat the 49'ers and Rams at home in the subsequent weeks. If either of those games are lost, that will be a signal that the window is closing. But, if everything goes according to plan, with the Seahawks winning their next two games, then going into New York with Locklear and Branch and/or Engram back, with Rocky Bernard and Jordan Babineaux back from their suspensions (which will help next week), possibly with Nate Burleson playing, and putting on a good showing against the Giants, then I won't be concerned.