(Originally posted on December 10th, 2007)
Seattle Seahawks at Arizona Cardinals, December 9th, 2007
As a football coach, one of the most important things you have to learn is how and when to get out of your team's way. It's an axiom: it is always easier to LOSE a game, than it is to WIN one.
On Sunday, December 10th, 2006, the Seattle Seahawks played a game in Sun Devil Stadium against the Arizona Cardinals. The odds-makers had Seattle by eight and a half. A win locks Seattle in to the NFC West Championship and guarantees them a playoff appearance. (Remember, this is a Seattle team that barely lost a Superbowl last year.)
The Hawks' many blunders included penalties at key moments: the very first play of the game was a holding call against them. I understand that the offensive linemen are playing against the most effective defensive athletes in the world, but aren't they themselves supposed to be of similar caliber?
Seattle finished the game with nine fumbles, including a key by Mack Strong in the third quarter. As they get set to put the game away after briefly taking the lead, a swing pass to the flat hits Strong in stride. He turns, makes three steps, and the defensive end makes contact with him. Because Strong is not protecting the football properly, it is stripped, and Arizona recovers. They go on to score and take the lead for the final time.
When Seattle gets the ball back, on the ensuing drive, a block in the back gives them a first and seventeen after the ten yard penalty is assessed and the down is replayed. Block in the back is one of the easiest penalties to avoid; all it takes is competent coaching to discipline the athletes until they pay attention. There's no excuse for it at the youth level, much less from a professional making $3.4 million a year. (Or approximately 100 times the salary of a high school teacher.)
Seattle completed their next pass over the middle, and the receiver fumbles because he never puts the ball away. Seattle recovers, but LOSES nine yards, leaving them with an eventual 4th and six inches from their thirty. (These are pros? Why can't they execute the most basic fundamental in football: hanging onto the ball properly?)
Right here is where Mike Homgren lost the game for Seattle. With less than ten inches for the first down and the league MVP from 2005 at running back, instead of going for it in a game that would clinch the championship (with a San Francisco loss) Holmgren chooses to instead punt the ball away.
Arizona also blundered. After the punt they ran five straight plays to Edgerrin James in which he gained, at minimum, four yards per carry. If they'd kept giving the ball to James they would have scored. Instead, they went to the drop-back and killed their drive with incompletes.
The punt leaves Seattle on their own four yard line.
Just under eight minutes in the game and Seattle now gets to drive the length of the field if they want to win the game. Or three and out, which is sort of expected. The punt leaves Arizona on the SEATTLE 44 yard line. Defensive penalties give Arizona a nice free first down and a chance to kill more clock after they already take two and a half minutes off. The field goal pretty much ends it for Seattle: 27-21. They end up six inches short of a conversion on the Arizona six with 53 seconds left.
Exciting finish? NO! Am I the only person that's sick and tired of seeing these "exciting finishes" that only come about because of flat out blundering in the first 58 minutes of the game?
There's a lesson in there, I think. Youth and high school coaches can learn a lot from the pros, even if it's how NOT to run a football team. I wish I could stop being a Seattle fan, so coaching blunders wouldn't be quite so offensive, but I've been following them for thirty of my thirty-three years.
Here's where we get to profit from the experience of the pros. If I'm coaching Seattle, I'm going to re-evaluate my game plan for practices.
Next week would focus on two major points in practice:
1) Ball security. I would run some form of gauntlet drill every day with all potential ball carriers.
2) Penalty avoidance. Each and every penalty yard would result in some form of team punishment, with an extra focus on sportsmanship and safety penalties. Generally, a good rule of thumb is ten yards of sprints or bellies for every yard of penalties incurred in a game.
Additionally, as a head coach for a potential champion, I don't think that it's good coaching to be tentative or demonstrate anything other than complete confidence in my team. Facing a fourth and six inches with one of the best running backs in the league on my team, it's preposterous that Holmgren chose to kick the ball away instead of going for the first down. Remember the statistics analyzed by Carroll, Palmer, and Thorn in The Hidden Game of Football (ISBN: 189212901-9) indicate that going for it on fourth down, even when deep in your own territory, is almost always a good idea. The consequences of failing are rarely as bad as one thinks, and the return on investment usually outweighs the potential drawbacks. Seattle was on their own thirty-four, hardly "deep" in their territory, and a first down could win the game for them.
What Holmgren showed his team was that he didn't have confidence in them as a unit when the chips were down. This is not surprising in a coach that once told the press that "Seattle will never be better than 8-8 with Jon Kitna at quarterback," but it is just as contemptible now as it was in 1998 when he said that about his starting offensive leader.
Tentative coaching and technical mistakes killed Seattle in a crucial game. Good coaching means learning from those errors and not making similar mistakes when your own championship is on the line.
~D.
Author: Impact! Coaching Successful Youth Football
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