Seattle Seahawks: The dud and stud of game 6 – Oakland
By Ed Stein
Duds of the week
In a 24 point win it’s hard to find many duds.
2nd dishonorable mention – Austin Calitro. I love the guy, he’s the type of heart and soul player teams need. Unfortunately, he was mostly invisible as the starting outside linebacker
1st dishonorable mention – Marshawn Lynch. He’s on the other team, sure. It still would have been nice to see Beast Mode have one big run.
Dud of the Week – Offensive line penalties. The offensive line totaled four penalties for 35 total yards. Penalties happen. If they wanted to, referees could throw a yellow flag on every play. That’s why holding calls on the line are most usually obvious and affected the play somehow.
The problem is Oakland isn’t very good, to begin with, and they had injuries among their defensive linemen. Again there will be penalties, but four against this team is excessive. RW3 proved he could get away from most of the pressure the Raiders put on him.
Aside from the yardage, the timing of the penalties was bad as well. We can start with the opening drive. The Seahawks have first and goal from the one yard, they handoff to Chris Carson for a score, but the play was whistled dead because of movement on the right side. Seattle scored two plays later, but good teams don’t shoot themselves in the foot like that.
Let’s jump to the next series. Seattle has great field position on their own 46 after a horrible Raiders punt. Carson goes for five yards, but the play is called back for an illegal block by center Justin Britt. It’s now first and 20 from the 36. Carson makes an even better run and gets 17 yards. Another flag, another penalty, holding on Duane Brown. That call killed the drive at a time when the Seahawks had a chance to go for the jugular.