A well-deserved title for what is without a doubt one of the all-time greatest teams in Seattle sports history.
I don’t really like the word blog. It sounds like blagh. Which is the noise that vomit makes. There’s nothing appealing about that. Just sayin’.
Fun fact: I’ve considered penning an entire article entitled Just Sayin’ for the sole purpose of creating a forum in which multiple topics can be discussed in rapid-fire succession with little devotion to overwhelming context. Make sense? Yeah, I got a little uppity with that description. Let me give it to you in layman’s terms. Basically, I want to be able to write down brief opinions on numerous newsworthy bits and place them within the framework of one post. Kind of like Facebook status updates. Only more structured. And without the little red notification icon that won’t go away no matter how many times you click it.
So for lack of better things to do, let’s give it the old college try. This is my blagh, after all.
Just Sayin’ (take one)
Tyreese Breshers retired from the UW basketball team today. A few months ago, I heard someone refer to Breshers as “the next Zach Johnson,” who you may remember as the forward that spent his entire Washington career as a medical redshirt. Well guess what, everybody. Breshers turned out to be the next Zach Johnson, after all. Ain’t that a bitch.
Part I: The Downfall
They were a lowly bunch. A 1-12 season rarely breeds much confidence. They couldn’t win. They couldn’t compete. They barely remained relevant. Scorned by their constituents in the Pearce Fantasy League, the 2009 Compton Honkies were a disgrace to fantasy football. Only one team — the Covington Tsunami — was kind enough to roll over and die for the Honkies, bestowing upon the CPT a gift in the form of their only victory.
They entered the offseason with zero expectations and little hope. The league was getting stronger, while they were getting weaker. Their owner had mitigated the Honkies’ future by trading away draft picks during a failed run at the 2008 PFL championship, a quest for immortality that was halted with a title-game loss to the Bitter Lake Bastards in the vaunted Pearce Bowl. That very same man then compromised even more draft choices by attempting to salvage the 2009 campaign when everyone could see that the year was a lost cause.
He was not stupid, this man, so much as he was passionate. He loved his ballclub unconditionally, and never was content to let his players hang their heads. He talked their game when they failed to walk it. He instilled faith in them when no one else was by their side. He wanted the best for them when they didn’t know what the best was. He was brash, bordering on cocky, but he truly believed in his players and his franchise. He was nothing if not devoted. A consummate optimist, even in the face of extreme pessimism.
Are you jacked? You better be.
Did you see what our local teams did over the weekend? If you live in the Seattle area and aren’t going to work in a good mood today, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself. For real. No, I’m serious. FOR REAL!
It doesn’t matter if you’re a Husky or a Coug, a basketball fan or a football fan. There was something for everyone this weekend, from the Dawgs’ thrashing of Syracuse, to the Cougars’ timely (albeit unsettling) victory over Montana State, to the Storm’s last-second win in the WNBA Finals, to the Seahawks’ dismantling of the 49ers. Every one of our major sports teams gave us reason to believe over a 48-hour time frame, including the Mariners, who continued to do their best to improve their 2011 draft position by tanking down the stretch (keep fighting the bittersweet fight, M’s).
Though the feel-good juices could be found flowing all over the Emerald City, they were perhaps no more prevalent than amidst the bowels of Qwest Field on Sunday afternoon. While the Huskies, Cougars, and Storm were all projected to take home wins in their efforts, the Seahawks were viewed as a ridiculous underdog in their matchup with San Francisco. Which, in turn, made their triumph all the more impressive.
Let’s not kid ourselves, however. In spite of the fact that the Hawks ultimately routed their Bay Area foes, we weren’t feeling so sure about the boys in blue until one-fourth of the battle had passed. It took a 35-yard reception from one of the newest Seattleites, Mike Williams, to unlock the floodgates for a Seahawks ballclub that had struggled to remove themselves from life support in the contest’s opening period.
Nebraska has a great football program. Let’s tip our caps to them for all that they’ve achieved. Good for you, Cornhuskers. You’re college football royalty.
That said, you’re going down on Saturday. Game on and game over.
Washington can beat Nebraska, should beat Nebraska, and has the home crowd to help them beat Nebraska. Husky Stadium is one of the toughest places to play in the nation. The Dawgs are coming off a 41-20 pasting of Syracuse. We’re on the rise. We want this. We need this. This is the game to dictate a season. It’s do or die. Crunch time.
We’ve got one of the best quarterbacks in the nation under center, a big play receiver who looks like a superhero these days, and the swagger to topple anyone right now. We’ve got this.
Seven (7) days until Nebraska gets smoked. The countdown is on.
Because this Husky Legend can pump you up. And because Beno could type out the telephone book in caps with exclamation points, and I’d feel the passion.
MOTIVATION:
Is is just for “U”? Or is it a tool for U to use to help galvanize the interest of “OTHERS”!
“BOTH!!”
As a DAWG, “WE” need to focus on motivating the interest of others, which will lead to TEAM EFFORT, as well as an overall success!
Matthew Hasselbeck
Were you sucked in by the title? Get it. Sucked in. Okay, enough of that.
This is it. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. The officially unofficial 2010 Seattle Seahawks preview. A forecast, if you will. Brought to you by Seattle Sportsnet. Where Leon Washington wears the name of the state he plays in on his back.
And now, without further ado, on to the player-by-player prognostication. Organized by position, with starters listed first.
*The asterisk denotes a starter. Not a steroid user or anything weird like that.
OFFENSE
QB – Matthew Hasselbeck*
Steve Raible calls him Matthew so I will too. I’d also like to add that a lot of writers put a comma directly after the word that precedes “too” in a sentence. F**k those guys. That comma is completely unnecessary.
Some quotes from the Husky Legend, via Seattle Sportsnet’s Facebook profile:
Disappointed in our squad. We gotta play with some passion and our QB needs learn to manage the game. He doesn’t have to win it. Manage it. I like Sark, however he needs to let others help Locker help himself. I still believe in them both, as well as the system (that hasn’t been displayed yet). Line up, man to man, and take the will from these teams!
We judge ourselves by what we think we can do. Others judge us by what we have done!
We’ve done NOTHING, so riding a hype mobile is not in this DAWG’s mentality! COMMITMENT, CONSISTENCY, HEART, WILL, DESIRE, AND PASSION! Where has it gone?
Don’t just read my words, my friends! Read the blank spaces between the letters! This is something serious to me…WHEN YOU BLEED PURPLE AND CRY GOLD!
If Seahawks management ran the Mariners…
…Jose Lopez would be screwing up my order at Wendy’s right now.
…Ryan Rowland-Smith would be back in Sydney blowing a didgeridoo.
…Brandon League would be ruining people’s lives at Supercuts.
…David Pauley would be on the practice squad.
…Chone Figgins would be training for his bout with Manny Pacquiao.
…Rob Johnson would be tending to a horse farm in Montana.
…Jack Wilson would be auditioning for the next installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
I was playing one-on-one with my good friend Josh on Saturday morning when I pulled up from 25 feet, called out “For the Sudan!” and knocked down a game-winning three-pointer. Anyone who has seen the movie White Men Can’t Jump likely gets the reference. For those who are completely in the dark on what shooting for the Sudan means, please see this UrbanDictionary entry for more information.
While calling out random things on the basketball court might irk some, I’ve found that eliciting non-sensical phrases in the flow of the game only boosts my confidence. I might be a 35-percent three-point shooter when silent. But when talking simultaneously? My average probably doubles.
I talked a lot of s**t this week about the Huskies. I’m not gonna lie. Nor am I gonna turn a blind eye to the things that I’ve said. I wouldn’t take back a word of it, either. It is what it is and there’s no amending the brashness that was spewed all over these pages, social networking sites, bathroom walls here and there, et cetera.
Face it, in spite of the hype, the University of Washington football team did very little to back up the uber-confidence displayed by their fans on Saturday. That’s not to judge the ballclub in any way. They played their hardest and they tried. They just didn’t get the job done. It happens. We need to take losses in stride because very few teams out there have ever won every game they participated in.
That said, one look at my Facebook news feed tells me everything I need to know about the buildup surrounding the 2010 Huskies. In short, fans drank the Kool-Aid, boasted pregame, and were absolutely let down around 7:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time on September 4th. Hey, I’m right there with you. The difference between you and me is that I made my opinions much more public. And for that, I need to face the music.
The game as it would happen in my dreams. Because my dreams are BANGIN!
Quarter 1
After winning the coin flip and deferring, the Huskies kick off to start the game. As Erik Folk tees up the football, a buzz emerges from the opposite end of the stadium. A streaker darts across the field. Play is momentarily halted as security guards chase after the streaker, who manages to avoid them while running 100 yards untouched to the opposite goal post. He continues running down a tunnel and out of sight. The streaker is later identified as Harvey Unga. Play resumes.
Folk kicks it away and the ball sails five yards deep into the end zone. The BYU return man brings the ball out and is subsequently flattened on the one-yard line by a gang of Huskies who comment on the return man’s sister while they have him pinned to the turf. The return man staggers to his feet, content to repress his anger for the time being.
Saw this hanging on the half-off rack at the Seattle Team Shop (literally, one of my favorite stores of all-time) and it took me and my buddy Chris a good thirty seconds to figure out why some dude named White had had his named slapped onto the back of Deon Grant’s old uniform.
Somewhere in that five-minute time frame between when LenDale Plumpy White was traded to the Seahawks and when he was subsequently cut by the Seahawks, the NFL seized the moment and ejaculated his replica jersey all over the Emerald City. Now the good folks who run a great store like the STS are stuck trying to pawn this worthless piece of crap off on unsuspecting Japanese tourists. How often does Gray Line roll down Occidental, anyways? It could take years to move these things.
Now if we could just get our hands on a Pokey Reese jersey, the dynamic duo would be complete.
Dear NFL: Epic, epic fail.
The thing about going to a Mariners game these days is that after a while, you just get bored. Fact is, you can only witness so many low-scoring affairs before you want to poke your own eyes out. Still, for lack of better things to do, I frequent Safeco Field in the summertime because a) I enjoy baseball, b) I like to chill on summer evenings, and c) I have the green hydro in my fantasy hydro league.
For the six or seven of you out there who happened to watch Wednesday night’s 4-2 slugfest between the M’s and the Angels, you know how insanely boring that game was. Aside from some good defense by Franklin Gutierrez in center field, there was literally nothing memorable from the contest. At one point, my buddy Chris said to me, “God, this is the type of game you want to go run on the field, just for something to do.” We then spent half an inning contemplating the best places to hop the fence and take off, taking special note of areas where the girthier security guards were stationed.
By the seventh inning, we had found our way down to the bullpen and were prepared to trade barbs with any relievers who might want to get witty with us. Instead, however, the first thing we saw was Angels’ setup man Scot Shields tossing a slew of baseballs to some young Mariner fans in the stands, out of the goodness of his heart. “I can’t heckle that guy,” I said to Chris, “he’s a saint.” To which Chris replied, “Neither can I.” So heckling was out.
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