Too happy to hate

I could start out by declaring that the Seahawks’ come-from-ahead loss to the Bucs epitomized what appears to be this team’s fatal flaw.

In fact, I probably should do that. Empassioned finger pointing is what gets rewarded in journalism these days. Strong, unflinching opinions delivered at maximum scold are what elicits a reaction or at the very least grabs attention, and the inability of this Seahawks team to hold a fourth-quarter lead is the single biggest question about this team through five games.

I don’t have the heart for it this morning, though.

Some of that relates to just how well Sam Darnold played on Sunday. More of it relates to what the Mariners did after the Seahawks game. It’s also entirely possible that at the age of 50 I’m simply too old for the sports-journalism racket as it is currently practiced. Hot takes are a young man’s game.

The point is that I’m finding it hard to work up a proper froth of indignance over this Seahawks’ loss so I’m going to double back at the end and try again.

⚾️ You should know by now ⚾️ 

I’m not going to demand that anyone apologize to Julio Rodriguez for things that were said in the first half of this season. After all, I’m not going to say I’m sorry for arguing that Jerry Dipoto should be fired. 

I did admit to being wrong in this matter, however.

And there are some mea culpas in order for people who thought Rodriguez was overpaid. Or that he should be moved down in the batting order. Or if you complained about him being named to the American League All-Star team (which was done according to a vote of players btw). 

It’s OK. Confession is good for the soul.

On Sunday night, Rodriguez’s one-out double in the bottom of the eighth scored Cal Raleigh, giving the Mariners a 3-2 lead. Andres Munoz went ahead and locked that down in the ninth, recording his seventh, eighth and ninth outs of the weekend to earn the save and tie the divisional series 1-1.

1. Those were some exceptionally pitched games;

2. Watching them felt like I was chain smoking on an empty stomach;

3. Rodriguez and Cal Raleigh were absolute studs, accouting for eight of the Mariners’ 15 hits

4. Jorge Polanco deserves a special nod for his pair of Sunday homers off Tarik Skubal.

The Mariners have scored five runs in the 20 innings they’ve played against the Tigers. Rodriguez has driven in three of them.

And while the first half of this season was perhaps the least productive three and a half months of Rodriguez’s major-league career, that’s not as bad as it sounds given how extraordinary he has been.

The second half of the season is right up there with the best three-month stretches in Rodriguez’s career, and it looks like that has carried over into the postseason.

🏈 Huskies only half bad 🏈 

One of my favorite people in journalism once offered what I considered to be very sage advice: Every reporter is afforded one (1) chance to write a story that begins, “It was a tale of two __________.”

I don’t remember if this was during a meeting or in a workshop. I do know that I wasn’t the only one she was speaking to because Greg Bishop was present, and within a month, he sent an email to this wisened journalist and myself pointing out that another reporter in the area had begun his story with the Charles Dickens’ construction: It was a tale of two halves. 

The response from the journalism sage: Oh no! That poor reporter. At some point in the future they’re going to be up against a brutal deadline and they’re going to have no clue how to start they’re story and they’ll be absolutely stuck because they’ve cashed in their “Tale of two …” voucher.

Well, if you were ever forced to use that particular bit of hackery, Washington’s game at Maryland on Saturday would have been a very good time to do it.

For the first two quarters of Saturday’s game, the Huskies offense was listless and uninspired. I would say they were sleepwalking, but that entails movement and the Huskies didn’t manage much of that at all.

I’m still not quite sure what happened. The game was on the East Coast, but it was 3:30 Eastern so it wasn’t an early kickoff. Demond Williams, so accurate through the first four games, was absolutely and unambiguously off. The offensive line, which had been better this season, was getting absolutely worked over by a pair of true freshmen pass rushers. There continued to be a ton of penalties.

The best thing you could say about Washington: Its defense gave up yardage in small, bite-sized increments instead of surrendering it all at once. I’m not saying the Huskies were good on that side of the ball. They couldn’t get off the field, allowing two scoring drives that spanned 16 plays. They were at least making Maryland work for it, though.

The second half? The second half was a revelation, and if I were strapped to a chair and injected with truth serum, I would point out that the uptick in Washington’s effectiveness on offense coincided with the targeting ejection of one of Maryland’s freshmen pass rushers (Sidney Stewart) and an ankle injury to the other (Zahir Mathis). Mathis continued to play, but was not able to run around left tackle Maximus McCree with the same impunity that he did in the first half.

In the first half, Williams was 10-for-19 passing in the first half for 70 yards. His longest completion was for 14 yards. In the second half, he was 18-for-22 passing for 205 yards with two scoring passes in the fourth quarter.

It was a huge victory. Gargantuan. Not just because Washington erased a 20-point deficit in the final 20 minutes, but because of what it means for the rest of the season.

🏈 Another come-from-ahead defeat 🏈 

The Seahawks played a great game Sunday.

Wait. That makes it sounds like I think they played great, and while Sam Darnold and Jaxson Smith-Njigba certainly did, I’m not willing to extend that label to the rest of the team.

The Seahawks played in a great game Sunday.

This is undeniably true. There were four lead changes in the second half, the score was tied three times and it came down to the very final play in which Tampa Bay’s Chase McLaughlin kicked a 39-yard field goal.

The most charitable perspective on the Seahawks defeat: This was two really good teams playing a really good game, and an undermanned Seahawks defense simply wasn’t able to hold off Tampa Bay in the second half.

A less charitable perspective on the Seahawks defeat: This defense can’t hold on to fourth-quarter leads, and as good as Darnold has looked, in each of Seattle’s two losses, he had a chance to lead the Seahawks to a win, but turned the ball over.

Evidence for the more charitable perspective:

• Darnold completed almost 80 percent of his throws for 354 yards and four TDs;

• In the second half, Seattle effectively ran the ball against one of the best run D’s in the league;

• Any criticism of the defense must be tempered by pointing out Seattle was missing five of the top 15 players on that side of the ball by the time the game ended. CB Devon Witherspoon, S Julian Love and DL Demarcus Lawrence were out Sunday while CB Riq Woolen and LB Derick Hall left the game because of injuries.

Evidence for the less charitable perspective:

• In Week 1, the Seahawks took a three-point lead over San Francisco with 3:42 remaining. The 49ers drove 68 yards in less than 2 minutes, scoring the go-ahead TD without ever being forced to go for it on fourth down.

• In Week 4, the Seahawks held a 14-point lead with less than 10 minutes left in the game, but gave up back-to-back touchdown drives, avoiding overtime only because of a last-minute field goal that was set up, in part, by a penalty against Arizona on the kickoff.

• In Week 5, the Seahawks took a seven-point lead with 3:12 remaining. The Bucs needed five plays to go 70 yards, Baker Mayfield completing four of the five passes he attempted on the drive.

✅ A change worth noting

Week 1: Seattle had the ball fourth-and-1 at the SF 19 with 3:28 remaining and the score tied 10-10. The Seahawks kicked the field goal, taking a three-point lead.

Week 5: Seattle had the ball fourth-and-2 at the TB 21 with 3:25 remaining and the score tied 28-28. Seattle went for it, and Darnold made an incredible play under pressure, moving to his left and finding Tory Horton open for the go-ahead touchdown.

⚖️ Closing argument ⚖️ 

If anything, Sunday’s result boosted my expectations for how far Seattle can go this season.

As efficient as Darnold was the first four games, he wasn’t asked to do a ton. He was asked to carry the load on Sunday and he was devastatingly effective.

Smith-Njigba now ranks second in the league in receiving yards, and while Seattle couldn’t run the ball at all in the first half, it did so quite effectively in the second.

Through five games, Seattle’s offense has been much better than I expected given that you had a new coordinator, a new quarterback and had lost three of the top receiving targets from last season with the trade of D.K. Metcalf and release of Tyler Lockett and George Noah Fant.

The second-half defense was no good. It was lousy. Terrible in fact. I’m just not sure that’s indicative of what we’ll see going forward. None of the players Seattle’s defense is missing are out for the year.

When this season started, I projected Seattle would go 11-5 and win the division. The second half of that will depend (at least in part) on how the 49ers manage an extraordinary number of injuries. The first part, though? I feel more confident in that 11-5 projection that I did back when I made it.

Am I crazy?

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