The Top 10 Regular Season Games in Seahawks History

First of all, a hat-tip to Enjoy the Enjoyment for giving DKSB some exposure. ETE is a great spot for anyone who follows Seattle sports, y'all... If you haven't yet, check it out.

If you're going to make a list of the greatest games in Seahawks history, playoff games HAVE TO top the list... From the '83 miracle in Miami to the Tony Romo game, the absolute greatest games in Seahawks history have been post-season affairs.

So I decided to up the ante: What are the best REGULAR SEASON games in Seahawks history? A couple of initial observations:

-I started following the Seahawks in 1983 at age 8.. so you won't see any games on the list before that. I invite grizzled Hawk vets to suggest games from 76-82.

-No losses. Frankly, it was bad enough to experience any loss the first time, so you won't see any Seattle losses on this list. For example, you could argue that the Testaverde "phantom touchdown" game was "great" in that it led to the hiring of Mike Holmgren... But I'm not going in that direction.

Just to get the torment out of the way, here are the 5 most painful regular season losses in Seahawks history:

5. Jets 41, Seahawks 3 (1997)
4. Cowboys 43, Seahawks 39 (2004)
3. Ravens 44, Seahawks 41 (2003)
2. Rams 33, Seahawks 27 (2004)
1. Jets 32, Seahawks 31 (1998)

Man, 2004 SUCKED.

OK.. Here we go:

10. Seahawks 27, Packers 7 (1999)
The '99 season spiraled out of control a few weeks later, but on one glorious Monday Night it looked like Seattle was headed for XXXIV. In Holmgren's return to Lambeau, the Hawks dominated the Packers in front of a national audience, inspiring me to look into how long the drive from Columbus, Ohio to Atlanta would be. Yeah... We all know how that turned out...

9. Seahawks 30, Rams 28 (2006)
I considered putting Seattle's 2005 win at STL here, but the 2006 victory was even more satisfying. The Hawks came back from a halftime deficit, overcame a back-breakingly spectacular TD catch by Torry Holt, won on a 54 yard FG at the gun, and made Scott Linehan look like a jabbering idiot.

8. Seahawks 24, 49ers 17 (2003)
The Seahawks needed a win on the road to keep their wild-card hopes alive on the last weekend of the 2003 season, and quickly fell into a 14-0 hole. Seattle got it together, and held off a later SF rally to stay alive. The right teams won/lost the next day to put Seattle in the playoffs, which they haven't missed in any season since.

7. Seahawks 34, Bears 21 (1987)
In the great Walter Payton's final regular season game at Soldier Field, the Seahawks were an afterthought, barely a notch above Homer Simpson stepping into the ring with "opponent" on his robe before his fight with Drederick Tatum.

The Hawks were playing for their playoff lives, and it showed in a rousing win punctuated by a 75-yard catch-and-run TD by John L. Williams.

6. Seahawks 45, Chiefs 0 (1984)
5. Seahawks 51, Chiefs 48 (1983)
Two home games against KC, and two classics in Seahawk legend. In 1983, Seattle won what was probably the CRAZIEST game in Kingdome history behind 207 yards and 3 TDs from Curt Warner. In '84, Seattle DBs ran back an NFL record FOUR interceptions for touchdowns in a 45-0 route of the Chefs.

4. Seahawks 24, Patriots 6 (1983)
In 1983's regular season finale, the winner would grab a Wild-Card playoff berth. The Seahawks stomped the Pats and took a famous post-game curtain call to thank the rabid Kingdome crowd (an honor that would return after Seattle clinched the #1 seed in 2005).

This game gets extra points because it was also the first Seahawks game I attended in person.

3. Seahawks 43, Raiders 37 (1988)
Another regular season finale where the winner would make the playoffs. In this case, the Seahawks were playing for their first AFC West title. On a damp, dreary day at the LA Coliseum, the Hawks pulled ahead in the 4th and held on for the biggest regular-season road win in team history (Once again keyed by a spectacular John L. Williams TD on a perfectly executed "middle screen").

2. Seahawks 24, Giants 21 (2005)
1. Seahawks 13, Cowboys 10 (2005)
The two biggest wins from our Super Bowl year had to top this list. The win over NYG was the (unofficial) rebirth of the 12th Man, and the Hawks have never received the proper credit for the resilience they showed that day.

A few weeks earlier we got the first real glimpse of where that 2005 squad was headed... So many images are seared into my brain from that day:

-Bledsoe being stopped cold on 3rd down...
-Ryan Hannam's sliding TD catch to tie the game...
-Big Play Babs picking off Bledsoe and streaking down the sideline into FG range...
-JB's tossing his helmet and being mobbed after hitting the game winner...

What do you think, sirs?

Top Ten Single Season Performances in Seahawks History

My previous post about Stan Gelbaugh in 1992 got me thinking: What were the 10 best single-season performances in team history? I'm not going to go all PFR and crunch all the numbers, but here's what I came up with off the top of my head:

10. Josh Brown (2006)
Yeah, we hate the guy now, but that little bald fucker was the difference back in 2006.

9. Patrick Kerney (2007)
Hopefully Kerney can at least come close to repeating his dominant performance from last season.

8. Steve Largent (1985)
Which Largent season to choose? The team only went 8-8 in 1985, but it was #80's best individual season.

7. Curt Warner (1983)
Who knows where Warner's career could have gone without that blown ACL in the '84 opener? We got a glimpse in 1983, where he showed flashes of Barry Sanders level brilliance.

6. Dave Krieg (1984)
5. Matt Hasselbeck (2007)
In '84 and '07, major injuries in the running game put the burden on the QB to carry the team. In these seasons Krieg and Hasselbeck delivered with career-best Pro Bowl performances.

4. Kenny Easley (1984)
The first Seahawk to be named defensive player of the year, and it was well deserved. Like Roy Batty, Easley was a light that burned twice as bright and half as long.

3. Cortez Kennedy (1992)
The only performance worth remembering from that lost 1992 season. Wearing #99 to honor fallen friend Jerome Brown, Tez annihilated the opposition and was named NFL defensive player of the year.

1. Shaun Alexander & Walter Jones (2005)
It's impossible to separate these two performances, so they share the top spot. Alexander delivered the (fleeting) single-season TD record and NFL MVP honors, but Big Walt not only blasted open holes for SA... He also kept Hass upright and slinging the bean around.

Both career-best performances were essential to our trip to XL.

What do you think, sirs?

Your memory is correct. Stan Gelbaugh WAS that bad in 1992.

Oh Stan... While you were tearing up the World League of American Football, abusing teams like the Orlando Thunder, little did you know that soon you'd turn in one of the worst seasons for a QB in NFL history.

According to Pro Football Reference, you were the worst QB in the NFL in 1992. Considering you led your team to its worst season ever, had a rating of 52.9, and inspired the team to draft a franchise QB the next spring... Let's just say I'm not surprised by PFR's findings.

But at least you gave us one awesome, majestic, memorable moment.

Fuzzy Seahawks Memories: The Husky Stadium Days

Back in 2000-2001, I went to four Seahawks games at Husky Stadium. They went 3-1 in those games, and my future wife Amy passed a big early-in-the-relationship test by going to a Seahawks game with me and enjoying it. Even so, I think about these days as the absolute dark ages of Seahawks football.

First of all, to the extent that I care about college football (which isn't that much), I'm a Wazzu fan. Being an Eastern Washington native, any time spent in Husky Stadium was too much for me. On top of that, it felt like every time I went to a game there the weather was 39 degrees with 40 mph winds and sideways needle rain. This wasn't true of course, but I'll never shake how miserably wet and cold it could get at Husky Stadium.

My season ticket seats were down near ground level in the closed end of the horseshoe, with awful sightlines and total exposure to the elements... which meant that by the end of the 1st quarter I always moved up to one of the nearly empty upper deck sections under the roof.

We think of the Kingdome and Qwest Field as giving the Hawks an amazing home field advantage, but in 00-01 the Hawks only went 9-7 at home. Of course, that was partly because the team was mediocre, but it was also because Husky Stadium never came close to capacity during this era. Overall, Husky Stadium provided one of the blandest, most depressing fan experiences I've ever witnessed, and I praise the ghost of Pete Rozelle that I'll never have to go to a game there again.

Here's my specific memories of those four games:

9/10/00: Rams 37, Seahawks 34

A nice day out and an exciting game against the defending World Champion Rams (who we didn't all hate yet)... I've rarely felt better about a loss; My girlfriend Amy seemed to have fun (thank god the game was exciting), and a three point loss to the mighty Rams gave us SOME reason to be optimistic after an embarassing shutout loss at Miami the week before

9/17/00: Seahawks 20, Saints 10

A boring, forgettable affair. At least it was nice out, and I got to kick it with my friend Kris.. Other than that, my mind's a blank about this one.

12/16/00: Seahawks 27, Raiders 24

The peak of the Husky Stadium days. Despite a 5-9 record at the time, we gave the AFC West Champion Raiders all they could handle. Y'all might remember this: trailing 24-17 in the 4th quarter, Ricky Watters broke off a huge run, but was caught near the goal line and fumbled. However, the Raiders rolled back into the end zone with the ball and it was ruled a safety! The legions of Oakland fans in attendance bitched and moaned like Dino Rossi, but the Hawks had the ball down by 5... Jon Kitna had his last memorable moment as a Seahawk when he drove Seattle the length of the field for the winning score and 2-point conversion.

It was a rare moment of joy in a lost season, and the sweet lamentations of all those Raider rooting assfucks still echo in my brainpan. :-]

1/6/02: Seahawks 21, Chiefs 18

A pretty damn somber win.

A) This game was rescheduled from right after the 9/11 attacks, so that was on everyone's minds of course

B) It was the most intolerable weather I've ever sat through at an NFL game. Heavy rain, wind gusts, temps in the 30s... WAY worse than simple cold or snow. brrrrrr!

C) Late in a fairly boring Seattle win, we found out that John Hall had hit a 50+ yard FG to beat the Raiders and almost certainly kill Seattle's playoff hopes.

D) We decided to do the park & ride thing to and from the game. Big mistake that day.... Wet, cold and depressed, it took almost two hours on the bus to get back to the parking lot.

In conclusion... Good riddance, Husky Stadium.

Humiliation

My wife likes to say that I have more toys than books in my office, and she's probably right. I loves me some McFarlane Figures, and for a long time I've wanted a Seahawk to sit on my desk alongside Carlton Fisk and Jonathan Papelbon.

My choices? Shaun Alexander (ugh) and Matt Hasselbeck (yay!)

However, to get my Hass, I had to buy Troy Fucking Polamalu. Why don't you twist the XL knife some more, you assbags? Jesus Christ... Come on.

So I'm gonna get this extraneous figure, and I welcome creative suggestions about how to dispose of it. :-]

(or, I might just sell it on eBay.. I haven't decided.)

Yup. I taught my son to say "GO SEAHAWKS!"

...and his training begins in earnest. Someday he will be an even greater 12th Man than his father. :-]

Embarassing Correction

In the previous post, I said 1993 was the first year Tom Flores coached the team.

Um, no. He was also responsible for the 2-14 debacle of 1992.

My apologies for that massive, clusterfucky brainfart.

Fuzzy Seahawks Memories... 10/24/93: Seahawks 10, Patriots 9

1993 was the first year of the Tom Flores regime in Seattle, and even though the fuck-o was a Raider, he did also bring two rings to town. He also had a hot shit rookie QB in former Notre Dame superstar Rick Mirer, and after six games the Hawks were a respectable 3-3 (already besting their two wins in 1992).

1993 was also my first year at Western, and yes, you'll have to slog through this... I was in love. She was a girl I had known for two years in high school, and we worked closely together on the school paper (NERRRRRRDS!). We became good friends, and a big chunk of the reason I went to WWU was to follow her there. I was already crazy about her before we left for Bellingham, but once we got there, as two dorks from the Tri-Cities, we hung onto each other for dear life. We ate at her dorm's dining hall every night. I would watch TV in her dorm room with her all the time (including Star Trek TNG every Saturday night... NERRRRDS!).... We spent 3-4 hours a day together.

Alas, I was Toby Flenderson to her Pam Beesly... We were "best friends," but of course that wasn't what I wanted... and being an 18-year-old dipshit, I had some weird ways of trying to woo her.

Like taking her to a Seahawks game.

I invited her to the Seahawks/Patriots game at the dome... It was October of 1993 and Kurt Cobain was still alive (in fact, Nirvana had released the amazing In Utero just a month before... it would become the soundtrack of my freshman year at Western), as were the Seahawks chances of a competitive season.

Drew Bledsoe's homecoming wasn't to be... With #11 out with an injury, Scott Zolak faced the Seahawks. But even with that advantage, the Hawks trailed 9-3 late in a very boring game. I was in a near-panic that she wasn't having a good time, and this whole thing was a very bad idea.

Suddenly, Rick Mirer was doing his best Joe Montana impression. He drove us down the field, and with only seconds to play, threw the winning touchdown pass. The crowd went batshit crazy... even my lady friend got into it, and I got a nice prolonged, semi-passionate hug out of it. At that moment, the future was ablaze with possibilities, both for the Seahawks and my personal life. The Hawks were 4-3, and Rick Mirer was going to lead Seattle to football glory.

That 4-3 start turned into a 6-10 lead turd of a season. That game was the high point of Mirer's career... It was all downhill after that.

A couple of months later, my best friend started dating someone. I told her I was in love with her. Crash. Burn. Despair.

So everything turned to shit.

But it was through those setbacks that a better future was forged. Without the crappiness of the early-90s, we would have never gotten Holmgren, Hasselbeck, etc. We were able to get Walter Jones as a result of trading Mirer to Chicago in '97, so things turned out OK.

After things fell apart with my best friend, I had to venture out and find new friends, and those are a lot of the people I am closest to, even 15 years later. If I would have ended up with her, I would have never moved out to Ohio, met my wife or had my awesome, kick-ass son Jack.

I'm not one of those "everything happens for a reason" folks, but sometimes fortune does break in favor of those who keep persevering... or something.

:-]

DKSB's Summer Yard Sale

If I wanna buy some new Seahawks gear when I roll out west next month, I gotta thin the herd a bit... Here's what I've just put up on the eBays:

Two Awesome Seahawks Baseball Caps

Matt Hasselbeck Semi-Authentic Home Jersey

Walter Jones Replica Jersey

and... ugh:

Josh Brown Replica Jersey

They'll be up on eBay for a week, and shipping is free within the USA. Feel free to ask questions in the comments and/or spread the word to folks you think might be interested.

Fantasy can only compete with reality if I control it...

It's pre-school level knowledge: Fantasy football is fucking HUGE. It's a big-money enterprise, and is part of the reason the NFL is the most powerful pro sports league in the world (besides maybe the EPL). Some of you may even be "that guy..."

The one who gets as worked up about your fantasy team(s) as you do about your real NFL team... The one who won't SHUT THE FUCK UP about how some player screwed your fantasy team last week... I could go on, but it was this type of behavior that totally soured me on fantasy football for a long time.

But then I realized something.. I could play God. :-]

I started my own league, and as Commissioner I realized I really enjoyed setting things up, establishing the rules my own way, etc. My league (it's on Yahoo!) is populated entirely by people I know in real life, which also helps makes it more fun.

Last year was our first season.. 18 teams, and we all played each other once. There were no playoffs; The team with the best record was declared the champion (with points scored being the tie-breaker). So that was one weird method I used: A soccer league system for Fantasy Football.

I finished tied for the best overall record, but took 2nd based on points scored. I did this despite the fact I refused to have players from the following teams on my roster:

-Rams
-49ers
-Cardinals
-Steelers
-Cowboys
-Raiders

That's almost a 5th of the league! Plus, I was bested by a team that had Adrian Peterson, Tom Brady and Randy Moss... Hard to beat that trio.

I also set up some non-conventional rules.. I don't want to bore you, but one thing I did in the league was adjust the QB scoring so fuck-ups (sacks, INTs, incompletions) were harshly punished, making accurate, West Coast style QBs more valuable... Gee, I wonder why I'd do that? :-]

Anyway, as we get closer to leagues starting up again, I'm interested in how y'all look at fantasy football. Are you into it? Do you hate it? Do you play for money?

Discuss away!

The Folly of Geographical Determinism

Another series between the Seattle Mariners and my Boston Red Sox has ended, and it's a great occassion to talk about something that has always annoyed me: The idea that you HAVE to root for the sports teams from the geographic area you grew up in/near.

Not to slag on my readers, but this anonymous comment sums up what bugs me about this perspective...

I don't mind if Hass suppports the sox, He is FROM Boston. My "bitch" is for the "poser" fans that support the sox because they are fashionable. I went to the 3 game series last week and was in a local sports bar. Out of the 10 so called sox fans that were there, I did not talk to one FROM Boston. I am positive that if Boston has a couple of losing seasons, you would not see all the bandwagoners.

First of all, us loyal types will ALWAYS have to deal with bandwagoners if/when our teams are successful. If you've been to any Seahawks road games in recent years, you've probably noticed a lot more Seattle fans in attendance than, say, pre-2003.

Is this a bad thing? They're not all flying in from Seattle, dawg. Would we rather Seahawks merchandise molder on the shelves nationwide? And how do you really tell the difference between a new fan who is going to grow into a loyal, knowledgable passionate 12th man and a "bandwagoner?" Do you administer an effing quiz?

Here's the other thing... Didn't most of us, at some point, latch onto the Seahawks during a successful, or at least memorable, season? I know it was the magical 1983 season that hooked ME for life. How is that different from someone whose passion for the Hawks was stirred in 2005? If they fade off to another team over time, yeah, they're poesurs... But what if that grows into lasting, rabid fandom?

That's another thing.. the whole "at least x is from blank" argument. If you really believe that, do you reject Seahawks fans who, maybe, fell in love after seeing that game against NYG in 2005 but are from Portland, Maine rather than Portland, Oregon? Maybe that same person gets the cash together to come out to Qwest this year, buys a Tatupu jersey, and screams his motherfucking lungs out for three hours.

Do you not want THAT guy in the fold? I'll take him over some fucking Bellevue suburbanite who tells me to sit down during a goddamn NFL game.

There's lots of reasons people form a life-long attachment to a pro sports team. Geographical proximity, by itself, is a pretty weak-ass reason to root for a team, IMO. If you love a team, your story had better be deeper than "they happened to be on TV where I live."

So what's your story? Who's with me on this? Violently opposed?

Best Seahawks Non-Playoff Season?

We're all spoiled these days... Five years in a row where our season extended well past New Year's Day have made it harder for me to remember that once upon a time we had to find someway to fondly remember non-playoff years.

Here's my picks for the best Seahawks non-playoff squads:

3. 2001 (9-7)

I was there in person to see this season begin with a rousing last-second win at Cleveland, and I saw it end with a win in the driving rain at Husky Stadium over KC (the way we missed the playoffs wicked sucked).

In between, I didn't have a dish yet, so I spent my sundays at loud, crappy sports bars eating fried dough and drinking cheap-ass beer. In the end, I used the expense of this weekly tradition to convince my wife we needed a dish. :-]

Doesn't it seem odd that there was a time where Dilfer seemed like Seattle's best option at QB? For a few magical weeks in 2001, dude could do no wrong.

2. 1990 (9-7)

This was the first year Post-Largent, and on some level I was kind of shocked we still bothered to field a squad without him. A 3-5 start pretty much confirmed the notion that there was nothing memorable about those guys.

Then Krieg-to-Skansi happened.... as I said here before:

You know this story.. I hope. The late, great Derrick Thomas sacks Dave Krieg SEVEN times, but somehow the Chiefs only hold a 16-10 late in the game. On the final play, from the KC 25, Krieg avoided Thomas for the first time all day and fired a missile to Paul Skansi between three KC defenders. TOUCHDOWN! SEAHAWKS WIN!!!! I jumped so high that I whacked my 15-year-old noggin on my basement ceiling, but it was worth it. This is the greatest play in Dave Krieg's illustrious Seattle career.

Sparked by that gridiron miracle, the Hawks finished with a 6-2 flourish, including a season-ending win over Detroit where Barry Sanders was held to under 20 yards rushing.

1. 1986 (10-6)

If you're old enough, you remember how the '86 team packed more thrills into five regular season weeks than the entire decade of the 1990s.... The thanksgiving beatdown in Dallas, a MNF shutout over the Raiders, and a 41-16 thrashing of the Super Bowl bound Broncos highlighted what was probably the most enjoyable month in Seahawks history (until 2005, of course).

What do y'all think?