Our own Dave Boling profiled defensive end Darryl Tapp and talked to him about his impressive start to the season. Tapp says that no matter what he’s smiling on the football field because he enjoys playing the game.
And hat type of attitude usually rubs off on his teammates.
“If I’m tired or beat up, he brings a smile to your face and he brings energy to our team on the field and in the locker room,” defensive tackle Craig Terrill said. “He’s one of the guys in the locker room who make me happy I share it with him.”
But Tapp also is getting it done on the football field. And with Tapp, Lawrence Jackson, and Nick Reed, along with veterans Patrick Kerney and Cory Redding, defensive end, once an issue for the team last season, is now one of the deepest positions on the roster.
Read the full story on Tapp by Boling here.
So who will start at left tackle on Sunday, Kyle Williams or Damion McIntosh? Although Seahawks head coach Jim Mora says he’s leaning toward Williams, Greg Johns at Seattlepi.com discusses the possibilities.
Gregg Bell of the Associated Press says the Seahawks are shedding their image as a soft football team.
Doug Farrar of Football Outsiders breaks down Hawks linebacker Aaron Curry’s performance against Jacksonville.
Clare Farnsworth offers this practice report from Wednesday.
Some interesting moments during the Jacksonville game, captured by photographer Rod Mar of Seahawks.com.
ESPN’s Mike Sando says Hawks QB Matt Hasselbeck and Cardinals safety Adrien Wilson will be central figures in this week’s game again. Wilson delivered a couple jarring blows to Hasselbeck in Arizona’s win at Qwest Field last season.
More Sando: He talks about the Arizona defense with Brock Huard and Mike Salk of ESPN 710 in this audio link.
DE Lawrence Jackson talks with KJR’s Ian Furness in this audio link.
And I talk with Furness about Wednesday’s practice and the upcoming matchup with Arizona in this audio link.
The Sando interview is pretty good. Mid way through he and Salk get into it a little bit about the injury situations.
Tapp with a little love here from someone other than me. Nice.
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I think back to our ’05 team and I don’t know how anyone could have thought that team was “soft.”
Our LT was the best in the NFL.
Our LG was the biggest, best, most PHYSICAL, most domint guard in the NFL.
Our C/RG/RT were a bit “soft” but they were a good soft.
Stevens may have been a “soft” TE, but Hannam and his blocking was anything but soft.
In my lifetime, I have never seen a better smash mouth run blocking WR than Joe Jurevicius.
And Mack Strong was, well, pretty damn strong and anything but “soft.”
Granted, our RB was a ballett dancer in all aspects of his game… except he was a damn good runner.
And Marcus Tubbs anchored the DL so well and he was ANYTHING but “soft.” He could dominate and not in a soft way. And Wistrom was pretty damn stout in the running game too.
If people want to describe each Mike Holmgren team as soft… that’s fine, but they are clueless mornons who don’t take pride in their jobs and throw crap out there b/c that’s what everyone says about a team.
Defensively, we’re anything but soft these days. I agree. But our decimated OL is anything but physical (except Ray Willis). Our “running game” is a symbol of being anything but being smash mouth.
We need our defense to be the smash mouth guys they are and for our offense to let Matt throw and for the receivers to catch. That’s our strength on offense and it has nothing to do with being tough.
AND Matt needs MAX protection when he does do more than a 3 step drop.
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Did you just inadvertently call Tobeck and Gray soft? Um, wow. Can’t get with you there.
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Dukeshire: “The Sando interview is pretty good. Mid way through he and Salk get into it a little bit about the injury situations.”
Thanks for pointing that out. I listened to it and enjoyed it immensely. I especially liked the “is it karma or just coincidence” debate at the end. Intellectually I’m on Salk’s side. Just because you’ve had a lot of injuries up to this point it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’re going to keep having them. On the other hand, deep down in my gut, I’m with Sando on this one. There’s a line in a Cheers episode where Sam Malone says, “You see the sun rise every morning and set every night and after a while you just trust it”. The injury plague seems to have become business as usual in Seattle. Eventually you just expect it.
Those guys were just talking about last year’s injury problems continuing into this year but this plague has been going on for a lot longer than that. 2006 was a horrible injury year for the Seahawks. 2007 was bad too but seemed light in comparison. Mike Holmgren was able to salvage both of those seasons but last year he didn’t have a chance. Even a veteran coach like Big Mike can’t fix a WCO offense that has no receivers whatsoever. I hated that. I really wanted to see him go out on a high note.
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BobbyK : “If people want to describe each Mike Holmgren team as soft… that’s fine, but they are clueless mornons who don’t take pride in their jobs and throw crap out there b/c that’s what everyone says about a team.”
Well, calling any NFL football team soft is kind of dumb, don’t you think? Teams play poorly for a lot of reasons. They have injury problems and they lack starters or they lack talent or continuity or synchronization or whatever. But it’s never because they’re less “tough” than the other guys.
Some teams are kind of dumbed down, beat em in the pits, ram it down their throats type teams. The other end of the spectrum features teams that are all about timing and precision, etc. Personally I prefer the second type (even though it’s more prone to break down) but there are pluses and minuses to both approaches. Nevertheless, people who start classifying the second type as “Soft” are wasting their time watching football and should switch to pro wrestling or something. Likewise people who call teams soft simply because they have a lot of injury problems. All NFL teams have injury problems. The extent of those problems is really just a matter of dumb luck.
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Duke – let me rephrase. Tough. Yes. But against the likes of Casey Hampton… they play tough and they try hard (i.e. not soft, you’re right)… but when it comes to Hampton blowing them up in a man-on-man situation, then they are soft… even though they don’t play soft. That’s what I meant. Not sure if that makes any sense?
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Eric…or anyone else? Do we know who will be starting at left guard? I haven’t heard anything on Wrotto and seem to remember hearing Sims is already ruled out. What is the update there? Any idea when Sims will be ready to go again? I thought he was playing very consistently at LG until he went down.
I’ll be curious to see how the line is handled if/when we actually get guys back to full strength. For all the injuries, they really haven’t done a bad job. Granted they aren’t blowing people away and the Indy game was poor, but given that we are playing 2nd, 3rd, now 4th string players at multiple spots the O-line has held their own. How do we incorporate Locklear, Sims, Jones (wishful thinking, but possible) bak into the lineup when they return? Any thoughts Eric? Others?
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Bobby – That makes sense. There were certainly more talented guys out there. But those two got everything out of what they had.
earther – No, you’re wrong… I’m kidding (:)). I enjoyed that interview as well. It’s an interesting debate. There is no denying that when the same players continue to get injured, even if the injuries are unrelated, it can’t simply be written off a coincidence.
mb23oly – I believe Williams wil get the nob at LT.
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*nod* lol
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Dukeshire: “There is no denying that when the same players continue to get injured, even if the injuries are unrelated, it can’t simply be written off a coincidence.”
Yeah, it’s a bit worrisome. Both Spencer and Sims are starting to look a lot like injury busts and after Tubbs and Womack it all seems a little bit too much for one team ot endure.
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Duke-I was asking about guard, any news I haven’t seen?
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The Seahawks just signed a guard, Mark Lewis, 6’4″ 314 to their practice squad. I think he is a rookie. Turned in a 5.38 40.
Does that mean that Williams will stay on the 53 active list?
McIntosh and Lewis are bigger guys. Does this mean Seattle wants to get away from the zone blocking smaller guys?
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Williams will be on the 53 man roster at least until
Jones, Wrotto, Sims, Locklear are all back.
Right now the team only has 7 healthy (or in Williams case healthy enough) linemen. they usually carry 9 OL on the 53 man roster.
So if/when the above 4 all come back then Williams just might be odd man out again. If all our unspoken fears come true and there is one particular name on that list of 4 that is really done for the year (or forever) then Williams would likely stick around.
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I’m going to repost something that I may have posted on a dead thread here because I really want to hear what people thought of Forsett’s pump fake on Sunday. So far I haven’t seen any mention of it in any articles or on any boards. Here it is:
By the way, as long as we’re talking about Forsett, didn’t you love that little pump fake he threw during that one run vs. Jacksonville last Sunday? What a move. It made me laugh. He sucked those guys who were closing on him in pursuit right out of their drawers.
I wonder if he can even throw a decent pass.
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Wrotto is back and supposedly practicing. I would imagine he’ll be at LG on Sunday.
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The seahawks didnt think seneca was small enough, so they sent forsett out to do that pass? Was that the question? That is what went thru my mind when I saw it.
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Oh Sando… I think we can beat Arizona in Arizona.
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bird_spit: “The seahawks didnt think seneca was small enough, so they sent forsett out to do that pass? Was that the question? That is what went thru my mind when I saw it. ”
Well, there really wasn’t any question there other than, “hey, what did you think of that pump fake?”.
If I was talking to Mora or Knapp I might ask if they seriously had a Justin Forsett pass option play in their arsenal. I probably wouldn’t believe them if they answered “Yes we do”. Nevertheless i would say, “show me”, because that’s something I’ve just gotta see.
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I think the softness label comes from (a) how much you rely on the run vs the pass, (b) whether you are mostly a between-the-tackles power running team, and (c) how well you are able to defend the run. In Alexander’s better years, we were actually running more than passing, but Sean’s style was anything but a power style: most of his success came from juking and cut-backs. Not exactly lower-your-head and smash-some-mouths. And on the D side, we were always vulnerable to the run in Holmgren years, even in 2005. Hence the label of being a soft team.
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Forsett threw an absolutely beautiful 35 – 40yd bomb to Burleson during training camp on 7 vs. 7 drills. He definitely showed the best throwing ability of all the people we had running trick plays.
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