With :15 second left in the first half and his Seattle Seahawks down 28-17 in their road playoff game against the Green Bay Packers, Mike Holmgren showed why he is a coach who was lucky to have won any Super Bowls, and why he likely will not win another no matter how talented of a team he is coaching. By taking a knee to run out the clock after his team had squandered an early 14-0 lead on two scores that came as a result of Ryan Grant’s two early lost fumbles, Holmgren once again demonstrated that he sometimes forgets football fundamentals and has almost no clue about the very existence of a small thing called time. They ran out the clock – with time-outs to spare.
I don’t know how to better express what a mistake this is, so I’ll quote Gregg Easterbrook from ESPNs Page 2:
“Then again, maybe Spenser, my 12-year-old, had the explanation. Trailing 10-0, the Redskins took possession on their 9 with 47 seconds remaining in the first half, holding three timeouts. Washington ran up the middle to kill the clock, not using its timeouts, and this led to some interesting tactical maneuvering in the closing seconds to prevent Seattle from attempting the extremely rare free kick after a fair catch. Anyway, when Spenser saw the Redskins had no intention of trying to score, despite a zero on the scoreboard and all three timeouts, he scoffed, “They’re sure to lose now.” And yea, verily, it came to pass. I don’t care if you are backed up on your 9, it’s a playoff game and you have no points. Try to score!”
Ever since the Super Bowl that Seattle lost to the Steelers, when they appeared to not realize there was even a game clock, Holmgren has seemed to have lost his edge. Unfortunately for his team, it gives them very little chance to live up to their potential.
The Yardstick for this game finalized favoring the Packers to win by six points. They have outscored the Seahawks 28-3 since going down by fourteen. Make the score 35-17 now. I could not even finish this piece before the Packers scored again. Seahawks…get rid of him.
***Update: Wow, is Babineaux ever fast. He just took Ryan Grant down from behind in almost blizzard conditions on a run where Grant set the Packers post-season record for rush yards in a game. He now has 167 on 20 carries, with two touchdowns. Talk about making up for those two fumbles.
In Holmgren news, the offense, backed up in their own end and with 18 yards to go on first down, called an Alexander run, which got maybe a yard. Dumb call, if you are trying to get a first down, anyway – which is the point isn’t it. Green bay allowed seven runs of 20+ yards in 424 attempts during the season. That’s less than one in sixty. Might as well try, though, hey what?
Oh…make it 42-20 and give Ryan 169 and three scores. If Grant had celebrated his third score by making a snow angel, would he get fined by the NFL for using a prop?
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