Today, I yelled and screamed and carried on like an idiot… but I was in good company!

I went to the Seahawks’ NFC wild card playoff game with Bryan. He has a pair of season tickets, fabulous seats about 20 rows above the field on the 10 yard line, right above the Seahawks’ grand entry tunnel. He usually takes his dad or a friend – but today I got to go. It was a total blast, and the Seahawks won handily.

Did anybody see “Fever Pitch”, where Jimmy Fallon says his baseball seatmates are like family? Well, it’s not quite like that, but the season ticket holders around him do get very friendly, know everyone’s name and ask where he’s been if he misses a game.

Qwest Field is notorious for being one of the noisiest stadiums in the NFL. The rumor periodically circulates that the team pumps additional noise in to make it more deafening – but investigations have shown they do not. It’s just 70,000 crazed, rowdy, well-lubricated fans yelling their heads off. The noise level really makes the opposing teams frustrated – they can’t hear the plays in the huddle, nor the signals from the quarterback on the line. Delay-of-game and false start calls are frequent.

Today was one of those awesome games where everything went our way, even the rain stopped for the duration of the game, and nobody in the stadium even sat down for more than a minute or two. (I don’t know why we all spend so much money on seats.) After each big play and improbable score, perfect strangers were hugging each other in the aisles, high-fiving each other across the rows and the generations.

I haven’t gone to many of the Seahawks games, maybe only two a season. I usually defer, because I’m not much of a football fan compared to the men in my family. (OK, my son Zach is even worse, he finds the sport “boring” as only a supercilious teen can.) But you know what? Every time I go I have a great time – and I surprise myself with how much I know about the game and the players. Sometimes I even notice one I’ve never paid attention to before – like Patrick Kerney, above.)

I think I’m going to go to a whole lot more games in the future.

4 – 4. Crap.

So at the season halfway point, after a chance to really get a jump on the other members of their division, the Seahawks blew a 21-6 lead and lost to the Cleveland Browns, 33-30 in overtime. Mired now at 4-4, I would guess the whole team and staff are really questioning themselves, as they should.

It was an odd game, to me. Even with the big lead I never felt comfortable. We never got a rush on the QB on defense, and Julian Peterson, as he does on occasion, just seemingly disappeared. Cleveland has got something on offense, there’s no doubt, but in a sense I think the Hawks’ D just never really put the heat on as they have other times.

And then there is the Seahawk Offense. Man, how can you be so good at some things, and so frickin’ terrible at others. It boils down to this…the offensive line can’t block strong enough…more than once…to get a 1 yard gain for a first down on a run play. It isn’t Shaun either, not this time, as he was on the bench a lot of the time after a knee problem. Maurice Morris, his backup, did better, but we have GOT TO come up with a way to make a 3rd or 4th and short play that will work at least some of the time. Instead, the line gets pushed back ½ to a full yard, and our back runs right into them, not over the top, not around the end…for no gain or a loss.

This one feels worse than a road loss to a relatively equally matched opponent should. Mostly because Seattle let it slip away through sheer inability to impose its will to win on an opponent that they were beating.

Silver linings: Bobby Engram is the man. In spite of being relatively undersized, going through the terrible thyroid problem that sapped him for most of last season, all the guy goes is keep going across the middle and catching balls in traffic for about 7 – 15 yards over and over. Also, in spite of a ton of hype going in, Marcus Trufant kept Braylon Edwards, the Brown’s wideout, well under control. Amazing considering the lack of rush…but the Browns went to Kellen Winslow instead, and he ate us up.

Footnote: the Pats did win their game, but it was close and they had to come back to do it. I think they’ve got the best shot I’ve seen since the ’85 Bears to break the Dolphins’ undefeated season record. Those Bears lost to…the Dolphins. Since this years’ Dolphins haven’t won yet, I don’t see that one happening.

So, there was no Seahawks game this weekend, thus eliminating my usual blog topic. So what do I do instead? Random musings, sports and otherwise:

1. I watched some of the Patriots game this weekend (52-7 over the Redskins. It wasn’t that close). Barring injury, the rest of the league is playing for second place and below. New England is that good. I declare this, knowing full well the Pats are playing the Colts this weekend, and both are undefeated, and that game is this season’s “Game of the Millennium”. The Colts are good. The Pats are better. I admit am saying this in the hopes that my endorsement is as good as putting the entire Patriots squad on the covers of both Sports Illustrated AND the Madden NFL video games. That’s extreme bad luck to all you non-sporty types.

2. Why is Jerry Seinfeld making an animated movie about bees being treated as the second coming? Seriously, I have nothing against the guy, or animated movies, or even bees, but come on!

3. If Al Gore is on top of the world, ask yourself: why isn’t he running for President? Then look at Hillary, and ask who will be her Secretary of State, if she wins. You heard it here first – at least a high cabinet position for staying out of the race.

4. So the Red Sox win the Series in 4. Combined with the Patriots, this will make Boston sports fans insufferable. (I would mention the Boston Celtics looking pretty good as well, but I have banned myself from thinking or talking about the NBA – and not because of the Sonics. I was a Blazers fan. I think the NBA is a wasteland now).

5. Heroes needs to step it up this season. Battlestar Galactica and Lost need to get back on the air, already. When The Next Iron Chef is the most compelling TV I am watching, something is oddly wrong. However, I must say Alton Brown joins his long lost cousin Seahawk kicker Josh Brown in the pantheon of the gods.

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6. Lost and Mission Impossible III’s J. J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek movie reboot fascinates me (pun fully intended, Spock fans). Weird casting. Rumors of a Spock-centered, alternate universe theme. Paramount praying that between this and Indiana Jones and the Lost Bottle of Geritol (ok, ok, I can’t resist the age joke, but will cop to hoping that Indy movie is good), they can be a mighty studio again. My prediction for now is that the failure to get a true big name A-lister to be in the movie dooms it to mediocre box office, something I’ve harped on Paramount about for a long time…they refuse to spend bucks on acting in the ST movie series and then are pissed the films don’t do better money- and critic- wise. The biggest name in this movie is Eric Bana; that’s better, but not great. Also, why the hell is Leonard Nimoy in this movie, and Shatner, in the midst of the most unlikely career renaissance ever, not in it? I know, Kirk is dead. Yeah, right, so was Spock.

Finally.

Just as Seahawks Nation is ready to throw itself into the abyss of despair, the team comes through with a big victory, albeit over a winless St. Louis Rams team, 33-6. So, at 4-3, the Blue Men are back in first place, heading into a bye week, and all is well.

Or is it?

All seems to be well on the defensive side of the ball. The D thoroughly dominated the Rams oddly pitiful offense. “Oddly” I say because, other than the O-line, these are the same offensive players that have been good to great for the past few years. Proof, sez I, that the offensive line is the heart of a good team. So many things go better if your O-line is healthy, experienced and has played together for awhile. You dominate the line of scrimmage on offense, you can wear a defense down, have long, clock-eating drives, and you’ll win. The football maxim is that “defense wins championships”; but I think the O-line gets you there. Not that I have any bias as a former offensive tackle.

So the problem remains the offense. Matt had a mediocre at best game, but it turns out he got hurt halfway through and it affected his accuracy. Even so, he’s forcing some passes into coverage that he ought to not be trying. The run game is now a bone fide huge bone of contention among the fans. Shaun Alexander is now booed with regularity. Coach Holmgren felt the need to come to his defense, blaming the offensive line for some of the problem (See, See!) while making it clear that he’s not too happy with Shaun either. Holmgren benched Shaun in the 4th quarter and had a bit of an argument with him about it when Shaun expressed some displeasure at sitting. Bottom line for me: I am getting the feeling that Shaun may be done as a premier running back in the league. Overall then my read remains the same, the offense is sputter-y. By the way, I heard that term used to describe the Hawks O on the radio on the way home from the game, so it’s officially a word.

To the good, Will Heller had a nice little game as a starter as Marcus Pollard was out. Heller caught two TDs and looked very good. Nate Burleson had a good return for TD that arguably iced the game to start the second half…the Rams were never a factor after that. Burleson has found a great niche in that return role, and is loony enough in his style that it is truly fun to watch him.

So, the Hawks are off this weekend and next face Cleveland there the weekend after. Cleveland has shown good signs of life this year after several years of misery. Here’s hoping that they haven’t quite gotten it together yet.

It’s bad when your team loses a game. It’s really bad when they lose at home. It’s really, really bad when that game is a nationally televised game. It’s extremely, epically bad when the team you lose to hadn’t won a game all year before that game. All of that happened to the Seahawks Sunday night as they lost to the previously hapless, suddenly back-to-prior-year-form New Orleans Saints, 28-17 at home.

Other than the passing game, the team looked awful in just about every way. The defense is now suffering from the inability to stop the other team on third down. The offense is chronically unable to sustain a drive…the sputters I’ve commented on several times has now become the equivalent of a chronic cough. The running game is virtually non-existent. Special teams cost us a touchdown, and had a field goal blocked. Ugly.

New Orleans came ready to play, but the game was lost because Seattle lost it, not because the Saints won it. Whatever swagger the Blue Men had, is now, official el gonzo. I will say this, New Orleans must have figured out a way to control the speed of the Seahawks defense, and specifically Julian Peterson’s ability to disrupt opposing offensives.

Of greatest note in the game: the fans were much displeased. Booing was a rule, rather than exception. There is a very nice couple who sit next to my seats now; they’ve had season tickets for 24 years, they drive from the Tri-Cities area (a four hour drive, at least) to come to the games. Midway through the third quarter, the lady looked at me and said “I might not be here next week”. That, my friends, is serious disillusionment.

Shaun Alexander was booed from the first carry. Look, the fans want to believe in him. Shaun had one 10 yard carry early in the game that the fans cheered with hope. Since he only had 35 years the rest of the game, and virtually was non-existent in the second half, I have to say its time to take a really hard look at sitting him down. The O-line is a part of the problem, for sure, but the way he “runs” isn’t helping. Behind a bad line, you can’t stutter-step and hope for a hole, you have to bash in there and take what you can, and hope for a missed tackle. Honestly Shaun, it doesn’t help not to let everyone know you’re mad about it too.

Most mass media reported on the game’s surreal moment, when the wired overhead camera crashed on the field, nearly hitting Matt Hasselbeck. I can’t even imagine what the fallout would have been if it had hit him or injured him. I think its possible Mike Holmgren could have gone nuclear right there, causing massive damage to south downtown Seattle.

So this week we get the Rams. They haven’t won a game yet. That didn’t help last week, and apparently Vegas still believes in Seattle enough to make them 9 point favorites. I’m not so sure, unless the team gets mad. I thought they’d be that way after the Pittsburgh debacle. Nope. It just has to happen this week, or I fear a no-playoff year is in the offing.