Percy Harvin's second game in Seattle didn't go according to plan
Pete Carroll made a familiar announcement today.
Percy Harvin won’t be playing for the Seahawks this Sunday.
Talk about a frustrating year.
Fans who spent a summer dreaming about the deal have just two games to reflect on so far.
Actually, it’s more like two halves.
It’s a blow for the Seahawks ahead of the NFC Championship game. No doubt about it.
Yet Harvin playing wasn’t necessarily going to be a defining factor. It sure would’ve helped, but it’s hardly the end of the world.
They got this far without Percy, after all.
The passing game has stalled recently against some good defenses. Feeding the ball to Harvin and letting him go to work would’ve taken some of the pressure of Russell Wilson.
While San Francisco can call on three top-tier targets for their quarterback (Crabtree, Boldin and Davis), the Seahawks have to hope Doug Baldwin, Golden Tate, Jermaine Kearse and the two tight ends can be a little more productive than recently.
All have made plays this year. But they’ve also had quiet days too. Against the Cardinals this group struggled to do anything — despite coming up against a weakened Arizona secondary.
They have to be ready. And when Wilson takes his shots, they need to make it count.
It’s times like this that a healthy Sidney Rice would’ve come in handy. He might’ve lacked big time production with the Seahawks — but he can make key plays and has a little more size/speed than the remaining healthy receivers.
Still, there’s no point wondering what could’ve been.
Missing Rice and Harvin hasn’t stopped this team reaching a 14-3 record.
The passing game just has to find other ways to make enough plays to win this weekend.
Just as they’ve done time and time again this season, without Harvin.
Golden – do you want a big time contract? Here is your stage, your time to show everyone what you can do. Baldwin – do you want that $2Mill contract for a year – bring your best. Kearse, Lockette – catch the balls thrown to you. We can win without Percy, but these guys are going to have to play better than they have all year! Go Hawks!
Brilliantly put.
I would like to see them run some Harvin style plays with Tate, screens even a carry or two out of the backfield would be good. Tate doesn’t have the speed of Harvin but he is tuff to bring down and getting him the ball in space should help get the offense in rhythm. Tate can win one on ones down field but he can also win horezantally.
Well said, those receivers have all made plays this year, but have struggled of late. I hate this new narrative that “the Hawks passing game has struggled w/o Harvin and Rice”. We haven’t had Rice since 10/28, and have barely seen Harvin since then either. The other guys CAN do this!
Yes, brilliantly put, by both of you!
TE, we have to utilize the tight end’s. Against Atlanta last year Miller was phenomenal and Willson has played very well in the 2nd half of this season. Willson also had a big game at SF.
Time to unleash Richardo Lockette. His speed is not being utilized.
I’d love to see a seam route thrown to Lockette early. If it hits, wonderful, if it doesn’t you may get a little cushion off the line because they’ll be afraid of the deep route.
Not to mention about a 50% chance of a PI call in today’s NFL…
I can’t believe we haven’t seen one yet. I can only assume its been called but perhaps a safety was in good position??? Or perhaps they’ve been waiting for this moment. First offensive play, beast mode play action deep shot to lockette, touchdown.
I really think Seattle will have some wrinkles for SF, offensively. Luke Willson burned Patrick Willis not once but twice down in SF for big gains. There are holes in that defense we can exploited, but we can’t just run everyone deep down the field and then try and play action everytime we pass. It won’t work.
Yep, TE’s over the middle are the key. That will soften the LB’s commitment to playing close to the LOS to clog our running game. We need to make them pay for that!
Everyone sounds like they think the Hawks are the underdog, but they seem to have forgetten: for however much their recievers are better than the Hawks’ recievers, our secondary is DOMINANT. In both of their last two playoff games, Kaepernick threw more than one pass that should have been intercepted (in the DB’s hands) that the Hawks’s secondary will catch.
Not to mention that this game is being played in Seattle, and for however loud it has been before, it is going to be so much louder this time.
Have confidence in your Hawks, they’ve earned it 🙂
Well put! I would say I’m cautiously optimistic. I think getting OLB KJ Wright back will be a boost to our already dominant defense. The Seahawks have earned it and they will play their hearts out. If we play our game; we win it. It’s ours to loose. This is our chance. Get pumped this is our year.
also something I would like to point out, is we can match up with them their WR’s V.S out secondary, we didn’t have Thurmond in the last meeting I don’t believe so imagine Maxwell on Boldin, Sherm on Crabs, and Thurmond on Patton, Davis?
I only Mention Patton because Niner People (media and Fans) have been liking Patton, I didn’t think anything of him he played against us in Wk 13 maybe not much but apparently he’s been doing quite a bit to show he can produce, so I guess we will see, but I think the Hawks can match up to their WR’s, Which seems to be the biggest concern.
with Kj coming back, I think will help immensely with the Run D, so think we’re ok there. just hoping our offense can come through, which I think they will.
GO HAWKS!
I wish we would’ve drafted Patton over Harper… I’m surprised he fell so far in the draft. I give him 2 yrs of development and he’ll be scary good
I liked Patton more than Harper leading up to the draft as well. I like his route running, good hands.
As far as specific CB/WR matchups, one thing I noticed from our game in SF was the Niners frequently lining up Boldin, Crabs, and VD on the opposite side of the field from Sherm, leaving Sherm to cover a useless Patton or no one at all in just a run support role while Maxwell and Lane were picked on. This effectively neutralized Sherm for much of the game because our scheme requires the same CB to cover the same side of the field all the time. This drives me a little nuts as it seems arbitrary and suboptimal. Why not have your best CB eliminte the opponent’s best receiving weapon wherever that weapon lines up? The Pats have no such arbitrary rule and have no qualms about using their secondary in whatever configuration makes it most difficult on opposing offenses. If I’m not mistaken, their secondary was the only other besides ours to shut down Jimmy Graham this season, and they did it by having Talib in Graham’s grill all game wherever he lined up. They do that sort of thing as a matter of course. Sometimes it seems that the Seahawks ‘do what they do’ to a fault, at times ignoring what oppontnes give us gift-wrapped all in the name of ‘staying on schedule’. This is especially true on offense. For all we do right, one thing I think we could do a lot better at is being more opportunistic schematically, when opportunity arises.
Well I think they’re gonna have no choice if they wanna play all 3 of em at the same time, which I assume they will, and I think if necessary they will move sherm. but we will see
I am soo stoked for this game
GO HAWKS!
Screw the Saints- cheap, classless, dirty damn team! Seahawks play physical, but they don’t headhunt players.
I can’t wait for Sunday!
Hey Rob, knowing what we know now, would you keep the picks/money and get Cordarrelle Patterson with the 1st round pick of the ’13 draft, or does the long term nature of the Harvin deal still have the better overall value?
Personally, I’m still backing the Harvin deal. It’s a long term contract and he can still have a big impact. On his day, he’s an elite player. Not often you get a chance to deal for one of them.
No way.
1. Patterson was allowed to develop fairly freely on a bad team. Not unlike Seattle in 2010. If Patterson was our pick, he probably only sees the field sparingly. Patterson had opportunity in Minnesota that he would never have had here.
2. Even if we’re talking revisionist history, I still make the deal. The solid gold truth at the time of the deal was you were trading for an elite player with some drawbacks. The upside of the deal was the appeal.
It didn’t work out this year and may not for the life of the deal. But if we get another deal similar to the Harvin deal, I want Seattle to make that deal again. This team is aggressive in their pursuit of home run talent. And they don’t linger on the deals that went bad. They move on to the next deal.
The Harvin deal, from a reason and overall team building philosophy standpoint remains sound. Harvin, as a prospect, was safe in the areas you want to be safe in. Productivity, desire, quality of player and youth. He wasn’t an Albert Haynesworth type of superstar deal. His sin was and continues to be something beyond his control.
Teams don’t get opportunities like that often. But Seattle seems to get more than it’s fair share. And that’s because they don’t dwell on the results of every failure. They move on to the next deal and don’t look back.
Beautifully written.
The two things I hate about the Harvin trade are not that he has been injured. That’s just second guessing based on
The frustration is from the fact that we don’t need Harvin. We already have good options for split end and slot receiver. Even if Harvin were healthy he wouldn’t fix our real problems on offense. What we need is a flanker to replace Sidney. (And improved offensive line play, but if you look around the league I don’t know if any team is really strong at O-line anymore. Even the Niners seem down this year.) Committing 12 million to a luxury player when we still need to take care of critical players like Sherman and Thomas seems crazy.
Second, despite the fact that last year’s draft was weak overall it had a lot of nice talent at wideout. I won’t criticize them for not drafting Keenan Allen despite the fact I really liked him. But there were lots of other good options: Cordarrelle Patterson or DeAndre Hopkins would have been great too. And I think Justin Hunter would have worked well for us as well.
Sorry for the broken sentence. I meant to say “that’s just second guessing based on results.” I wish we could edit our posts.
I also don’t meant to be negative. Ironically I think the mistakes are more irritating when the GM is usually brilliant. I expected this sort of thing from Ruskell so it didn’t bother me as much.
It’s hard to say anything critical about the Harvin trade without sounding negative. I’ve been concerned since preseason when they “discovered” he had a hip problem. Do we really need to pay players that discover health issues? Or should they get their health issues fixed off season and come back to football when they are ready. It was a `12 million dollar free ride curtsy of the Seahawks. Plus a first, third and seventh round draftpick. I feel for Harvin and his issues, but he really shouldn’t be rehabbing on our money.
Percy has a skill set that very, very few in this league have. Calling him a ‘luxary’ is downplaying his abilities.
And as far as the salary cap issues go, that’s a talking point by those who really aren’t paying attention to what’s going on. The Seahawks will have to let players go, and we won’t see the big FA signings we have in years past, which is fine. It means we have solid core of players. Signing Percy Harvin doesn’t decrease the odds of resigning Sherman, Thomas or Russell Wilson.
He is a luxury to this team because even if he were healthy we would only throw the ball to him 6 or 7 times per game. If we were a team like the Falcons or Saints he would be a good addition, but we are a run first team that relies on our defense. That’s the core of what we do, and the passing game keys off of the running game.
“And as far as the salary cap issues go, that’s a talking point by those who really aren’t paying attention to what’s going on. The Seahawks will have to let players go, and we won’t see the big FA signings we have in years past, which is fine. It means we have solid core of players. Signing Percy Harvin doesn’t decrease the odds of resigning Sherman, Thomas or Russell Wilson.”
Signing Percy to 12 million per year means we will have to find 12 million to drop elsewhere. Maybe it means letting Sherman walk. Or Bennett. Or somebody else. But whoever it ends up being will likely be more important to the fundamental strategy this team employs that Harvin is.
I think the last game showed Seattle was very much in tune with getting Percy his touches. 6 or 7 times a game? Really? He touched it 4 times in very limited action. They’re not oblivious to his talent.
And yes, players will have to be released, but you can bet your hat Sherman, Wilson and Thomas will be resigned. Maybe Bennett gets to walk, and that would be unfortunate, but how did this team get to be great in the first place? Through the draft.
You can’t keep everybody, and I’m not bummed about the Percy deal at all. I wish he hadn’t torn his labrum, I wish he hadn’t gotten a concussion- but we can’t control those things.
Darrell Bevell (and Carroll) prioritize spreading the ball around and finding the open man more than they do forcing it to one guy. IIRC in the year Sidney Rice was added and Golden Tate was a rookie, they still only gave Sidney 21% of the targets. Obviously Harvin will draw a bigger share than that, but it shouldn’t be 30+% of the passes.
Wilson has had 393 and 403 passing attempts in his first two years. That comes out to 25 attempts per game. 6 targets/game is 24% of the total. 7 targets/game is 28% of the total.
To be worth 12 million per year Harvin will either have to have a huge percentage of the passing game run through him (in which he is unlikely to stay healthy) or the Seahawks will have to pass the ball a lot more.
Given that Percy is a threat to score everytime he touches the ball, he is worth that $12 million. He’s only touched the ball a handful of times and look what’s happened. 58 yard KO return. Two 17 yard catches. A handoff for 11 yards.
The guy is an ultimate playmaker who is multifaceted.
Comparing Sidney and Percy is comparing apples to oranges. They play different positions and have different skill sets. I don’t think you really appreciate what Harvin can do for this team. The Seahawks acquired a great playmaker at great expense for games like tomorrow. This wasn’t a premature move- it was a move designed to give them a boost within the window of opportunity, and again, it sucks that he won’t be playing tomorrow, but this was a move they shouldn’t regret.
When PH is on the field, defenses must over-allocate personnel to contain the threat he poses. This factor undermines opposing defensive strategy and creates opportunities for our offense.
There doesn’t appear to have been much evidence of this happening with Harvin’s Vikings WR teammates, though.
I suppose you could make an argument that he was a big help to AP since the other team used a strong safety to give him extra attention instead of a FS like most wideouts like Calvin Johnson attract. But many of AP’s best games last year came after Harvin was injured.
My guess is that open field players probably don’t do as much to distort defenses as guys like Randy Moss or Calvin Johnson do.