Mora press conference: Apathy will not be tolerated
Posted By Eric Williams on November 1, 2009 at 4:43 pm
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With the Seattle Seahawks losing five of their last six, the same sort of questions keep cropping up each week.
Today after the game, Seattle head coach Jim Mora talked about the accountability aspect of the team, and guys remaining professional in dealing with the adversity the team is facing right now.
Mora said he talked to the players about guarding against developing an indifferent attitude with the losses mounting, appealing to them to remain professional.
“They’re professionals," Mora said. "And they’re paid a lot of money to compete at the highest level. And it will not be tolerated if somebody’s not doing that. It absolutely will not be tolerated. It will not be a part of our program, ever.”
Offensive guard Rob Sims echoed Mora's sentiments when we talked to the players in the locker room after his coach spoke.
“You got to,” Sims said. “This is our job. This is our family right now. We get upset with each other and try to stop all the pointing fingers and what not. But it’s an emotional game, so what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to keep going back to work and remember it takes all of us to win.”
Some tidbits from today's game.
* Dallas had four, different receivers score against the Seahawks, including Patrick Crayton on an 82-yard punt return. Dallas quarterback Tony Romo completed passes to 10 different receivers.
* Seattle had a couple big plays offensively, including a 36-yard reception by Nate Burleson and a 23-yard touchdown catch from Deion Branch, his first touchdown this season. Seattle’s longest run was an 11-yard run for Julius Jones. I thought Jones ran the ball OK, finishing with 56 yards on 15 carries.
* Edgerrin James rushed six times for 17 yards, passing Marcus Allen and vaulting into the top 10, all-time rushing list. James has 12,246 yards in his career. He needed 15 yards to pass Allen on Sunday.
* T.J. Houshmandzadeh finished with just four catches for 24 yards, his worst game statistically as a Seahawk.
* Linebacker David Hawthorne played solid in his return to Texas, finishing with eight tackles, two sacks and a forced fumble. Hawthorne played his college ball at Texas Christian, and hales from nearby Corsicana, about an hour south of Dallas.
* The Cowboys totaled 26 first downs and held a 34:45 to 25:15 time of possession advantage.
Cornerback Marcus Trufant did not make excuses for the three defensive penalties he was called for against Dallas. Trufant actually played a lot more than I thought he would heading into this game, with Seattle running a lot of nickel defensively. Trufant showed considerable rust.
"There is no explanation," Trufant said. "The referee made the call and you've got to live with it, and that's how it is. ... You just live with the call, and you move on and try to get better."
The only call I questioned was the one in the end zone against Roy Williams where it looked like the Dallas receiver ran the wrong route and the two just got tied up. I also didn't think the ball was catchable.
Left tackle Damion McIntosh actually played solid, giving up a sack late against DeMarcus Ware. Seattle had more problems containing the Cowboys' defensive front inside, as the interior of the defense had a couple plays where they looked confused as to how they would handled inside blitzes and stunts.
If we quit and don't even want to try winning for 3 years, then some are right that Matt has run his course. The team should also cut ways with many of their overpaid 30-something vets and take the cap hit NOW. Basically, just go young and suck even worse than we do now. And drastically lower ticket prices since the money won't actually be paid out and the product will be terrible.
There has obviously got to be change and we need to get younger, but I don't think trading a good QB who is something like 34 is the way to go when we see other good QBs play until they are 40. Too many good QBs have definitely played well into their late 30s. Unless we want to give up on the 2012 or 2013 season(s) too.
I support the release of the old guys like Kerney, but not our QB.
Forget about our record..Hey as bad as things have been so far just think about this. If we beat the Lions this week and the Cards lose in Chicago, the following week we play in Arizona for a chance to be tied atop the division.
I know im crazy but who cares, sports are suppose to be fun, so lets have some fun.
Does this mean Ruskell and Mora will both be quitting soon?
I think it's interesting that people here talk about how this team needs to "start rebuilding", this team is already in rebuild mode. One can only presume there is some long range plan they are working on. I'm having a very difficult time seeing what that plan is, but there has to be one. In any case just a couple random thoughts after a night sleeping on it:
How in God's name does Bruce DeHaven still have a job with the Seahawks?
David Hawthorn is twice the football player Aaron Curry is, at a fraction of the cost. Heater is a flat out stud.
Bradley continues to baffle with his schemes. They were eaten alive (AGAIN) by playing that soft zone, deep 2 (especially on some 3rd and obvious passing situations). They were effective when they brought pressure and pressed the receivers. After 7 games that has been a constant. I like his potential there and believe he will be a good coordinator for this team as he develops.
Edgerrin James: Why?
Spencer and Unger need to figure out their assignments before Matt gets killed. DTs simply cannot be allowed to spilt the A untouched. Multiple times. Wow.
Gregg Knapp should be let go at seasons end. Period.
I lIke the sounds of that. Holmgren and Dungy
Duke,
Agree with almost everything you just said, except the thought that Gus will be a good DC someday. What in heaven's name gives you even a glimmer of hope that he will be good? His defensive calls are horrible. Teams pass at will on our soft zones and he refuses to bring pressure on the downs that he should. We have been slowly blead to death on every loss. Beside that, he should have had those types of calls figured out BEFORE he gets a DC job. This isn't the position for on the job training for crying out loud.
We haven't had good special teams since Pete Rodriguez. Why we let him go I still don't understand. Our kicking game is horrendous, I have to cover my eyes on most coverages and returns. Don't tell me that you guys EXPECT a turnover on those plays too.
You're right on about our RB's. We have noone with any speed and power. Little Forsett is the closest thing that we have and he keeps putting it on the ground. Personally, even with the fumbles, I'd keep giving it to him because at least there is some upside and at least a chance to break something.
What I don't understand about Knapp is that on the first couple of games we were all excited to see the return of the screen game. Now when we need it the most where did it go? I only remember two or three yesterday and one of them was on that stupid 3rd and 18 and with geriatric Edge running it. Give me a break! I like the fact that they tried some trick plays, but the execution was piss poor.
The fact of the matter is that I have absolutely no confidence in this coaching staff anymore. They've used up my benefit of the doubt at this point. I mean we're only in week seven and there is virtually no hope of anything positive moving forward. I can't think of a single phase of our game that is going in the right direction. It's embarrassing, and more than that demoralizing.
My optimism for Bradley is this; aside from 3rd down zones which make me so angry my ears bleed, he has shown a creativeness that at time seems to baffle opposing QBs. And while I agree that on the job training can be painful to watch, I believe he will learn which Ds work best and when. He rotates in so many payers that refinement will come, in time. We're watching sloppy play too often right now, that is to be expected with any wholesale coaching and scheme changes. But there are those times when this D is the stifling monster we are all hoping for. He is a big reason why and those times will come far more often and become the norm in time with him as the DC, IMO. The corp of this D is very young and it's potential is terrific. They need to add a quality safety and DT (move Mebane back to LDT?) but next season at this time I feel sure we'll feel grateful he's here.
I don't see it, duke. GB seems to do okay getting to 3rd and long at times, but he seems to be running a low blitz or no blitz defense...even in obvious passing downs.
I haven't been overly impressed by Knapp, but he is extremely limited by the o-line. If I'd give any coach some leeway, it'd be Knapp. Bradley has a relatively healthy defense, and he still can't get off the field on 3rd and long.
I guess my thinking is, what film has he been watching for the past 8 weeks? I get he may be learning, but we all see what happens when we blitz curry and put pressure on the qb with a 5th man....and we see what happens when we play a soft zone on 2nd and 3rd and long. Where's the adjustment?? Next week we'll shut out the lions, then see a repeat of yesterday against the cards and vikings.
Dukeshire, I share your frustration with our defense.
After all the disruption to our O line, I expect our offense to still be finding its legs, but I expect more out of our defense. I like Bradley's aggressive schemes, and I cringe at his zone schemes. Our defensive players are too good to be giving up 38 points to anybody.
Who is the problem here, GM Ruskell and his staff of talent scouts? Or Mora and his staff of coaches?
In 2004, Ruskell inherited a team with a swiss-cheese defense. He came in promising to rebuild that defense for a team with a payroll lopsided with expensive contracts for its offensive stars. While rebuilding the defense, he patched a series of veterans and mid-round draft picks into the offense, but it has not been enough. While the offense is not as bad now as our defense was in 2004, it is lagging in its rebuilding.
Now it is up to Paul Allen whether TR be trusted to complete the rebuilding plan. Has TR's rebuild been slow, or slowed by an unprecedented run of injuries? To be considered successful, I believe their offensive rebuild must be completed before Tatupu, Trufant, and Hasselbeck retire.
The real question on Allen's mind: Is there another GM and scouting staff that could step in and do this better? Who is the unemployed GM and staff of scouts waiting out there who can rebuild our offense more quickly than Ruskell's staff can?
Allen currently employs TR to run all football operations. Successes and mistakes are not his alone. Ruston Webster is in charge of player personnel. Fitterer and Yowarsky are our Scouting Directors, each employing a team of scouts. Lewis manages Pro Personnel. They were tasked with rebuilding the defense and have recently turned their attention to the offense. Why not let them finish the job?
Me, I'm getting tired of blaming the General Manager for what happens on the field. We've blamed him for starters being injured, we've blamed him for not having an offensive line corps two deep at every position, we've blamed him for backups who play like backups. None of that was within his control.
Football games are won and lost by players and coaches. Mora's staff has somewhat revived a defense which last year looked demoralized under Holmgren's tutelage. At the same time, Mora has failed to light a fire under his offense. O line injuries played a big role, but I'm still expecting more out of our offensive players. I think it's on Mora to fix that.
Nine games from now, if our offense doesn't play with more fire and execute with more regularity than it did yesterday, then it is Mora's replacement I think we should be looking for.
Yeah, the Heater is a beast. That guy is a good/great football player.
This year's team may finish with a better record than last year's team due to the weak schedule but at least last year's team played contenders (Miami, Wash, NYJ, NE, Arizona) extremely close with the game often coming down to the final minutes.
This team is just lucky to keep it within 20 each and every week. That's 1992 pathetic.
Rather than assigning blame, I will look to the category of , "what now?". I will assign blame after the season. It will be more evident then.
Okay- what now? This team needs to figure out what it does well and do it, and come together in the process. By the end of this season the offensive line may turn out to be a strength. We already know that our QB is very good. is he elite? Probably not, but he is top third, no doubt. We keep him.
Running backs- I doubt we'll view any of them as elite come the end of the season.
Receivers- maybe by the end of the year there will be a chemistry between the QB and all of them. Where is Deon Butler?
Defense- all we know about this bunch is that they play better at home and that they miss too many tackles. This bunch does not successfully defend the pass and is not a threat to intercept the ball.
This team needs to just keep working to get better, have some fun and hopefully they can do something cool in the next two weeks that will bring them together. I'm not going to get wrapped up in the blame game- as far as I'm concerned everybody should be blamed for a loss. I thought this team would have come together sooner, but it hasn't. Perhaps the injuries prevented that from happening sooner? Hopefully we'll see it soon. This team will be much more fun to watch once it happens.
I look forward to seeing the Heater do more good things. It'll be interesting to see how we view the LB position at season's end.
Apparently, our fearless blogger is still hung. LOL
It sucks when the biggest improvement of the year is getting a new reporter running this blog. Thanks Eric for hanging in there with us.
Remember the close games...
3rd and 1 in the redzone. Alexander would follow Mack with Walt and Hutch clearing the way...destroying everyone in their way?! Everybody in the stadium knew what we were running, and we would just dare them to stop us. Hass wouldn't even bother with play action, because we knew that we would just run it right down their throats anyway? Instead of a first down, Alexander would pop it into the end zone from 15 yards out? It seems like so long ago. I guess football years are like dog years....and especially for this team. Sigh.
Norseman - What is GB? Green Bay? I'm confused how this relates to the Seahawks.
Question to the long-time Seahawks fans. Is Julius Jones the worse Seahawks starting RB since Sherman Smith? Not that Sherman Smith was bad, but everyone else has been so good:
2008-2009: Jones
2001-2007: Alexander
1998-2000: Watters
1992-1997: Warren
1990-1991: Fenner
1983-1989: Warner
1976-1982: Smith
Maybe Derek Fenner? Since the team is sinking to post-expansion franchise depths, I figured it would be fun to examine it in more detail.
Sorry, I get it now. Gus Bradley, goodness. Anyway, yes that is my point, exactly. Aggressive to get teams into 3rd and long then deep zone. It's only sightly less frustrating to watch than Marshall bringing the the house in those situations. That was the entire point that I had made.
I don't have a problem with J. Jones. He's not a long term answer to the position but he's not a liability either.
No Julius Jones isn't the worst but he'll never set the world on fire. You bring up an interesting topic, though. How about other players, positions, coaches?
Is Chris Spencer the worst center that we've had? How about Edge vs Franco Harris versus Alexander at the end? How about other positions? Do we have current Seahawks who are the worst ever at their positions?
It would be interesting to see the all-crap version of an all-star roster. An all-star roster would be fun too. How about if we could time travel into the past and bring in guys like Easely, Largent, Cortez Kennedy, Curt Warner, John L Williams, Brian Bozworth (just kidding, lol).
I'd say the Rob Sims of '07 was probably the worst starter we've ever had. And Spencer of any year can't be far behind.
NewJerseyMike, thank you for this:
"if we beat the Lions this week and the Cards lose in Chicago, the following week we play in Arizona for a chance to be tied atop the division."
Its true, and is helping me climb down off the wall today. Our division is still full of teams that can lose to anyone. 9-7 or 8-8 could win the NFC West and earn a home playoff game. We were not so pathetic against the Cowboys that we cannot improve a little each game and become a playoff team by week 16. Bizarre, but true.
But Mora and co. had better start getting in player's grills and demanding more, now.
How crazy would it be to end up winning the division at 8-8 and winning the Super Bowl?
Much of the respect the Cards gained from me with their win in New Jersey was lost yesterday with their pathetic home performance against the Panthers.
We may be stinking it up so far, but at least the tards and the 69ers are starting to crack around the seams and the lambs are in nfl hell, so it could always be worse.
I didn't realize that Mora gave these guys time off over the bye. Eric said coaches want them to rest their bodies for a long season....fine. But, how about studying game film, playbook, stuff like that? It's hard to understand why we lose almost every game after our bye. Did anyone notice some botches plays on offense yesterday? One play Branch and Burleson were at the same spot an nearly tripped over themselves. Stuff like that...how is that possible with an extra week to prepare?
How many hours are in an NFL player's work week? They practice for what a max of 15 hours per week? How about the rest of the time? It seems like they should also be spending at least 40 to 50 hours or more studying film, etc.
One more question...
How difficult is it for a center to make the correct line calls? Are we talking rocket science? Are the calls as complicated as play calling is for a QB? I really just don't get it. Is Spencer really that dumb that he can't pick it up in 3-4 years? Could someone who understands the game at a high level explain some of the intricasies of the position to help us understand what the problem is here?!
Audible, I'm not Mora fan at the moment, but I thought what he did over the bye made sense. Instead of their usual day off Tuesday, they practiced tues and wed, then took four days off to rest. The next week they had an extra practice again on tuesday. That's three extra practices over the bye, and some guys like McIntosh were working extra with the staff on film and drills. Mora also has all his practices early in the day, and this may have actually helped in the first half of that early Dallas game. I watched practices in camp, and I don't have any problem with Mora's practice regimen. He runs a fast and aggressive practice. I do, however, have some problems with the lack of aggression I see on the field sometimes.
I too would like to see a much more aggressive defensive gameplan, However I do realize that many people on this site are very big Hawthorn and he is a nice young player. However I watched him very closely yesterday and he seemed to be late on his reads (reading OG's through to the QB) causing him not to be able to scrap with his shoulders square. Most if his tackles if you watch are from the outside in, instead of the inside out. This happens when I MLB is slow on his reads so he has to almost turn and run to get to a hole so when the RB cuts straight up the field he has overran the cut back as has to come back inside to make the tackle. Now he is a good enough athlete to do that a lot of time, but there were 3 runs in the game where if he could have scrapped with his shoulders square he makes a tackle instead of giving up a 10 yard game.
Now here is where that matters with respect to defensive play calling. If you blitz most of the time you are going to play so form of man without a safety free in the middle and if your LB is late on his reads then you risk huge plays up the middle on simple run plays. The zone Defensive helps protect a young MLB.
Just a thought
Why would anyone want to "win" this craphole division and get humiliated in a playoff game they don't deserve to be in? Because that's what would happen to the Seahawks.
"I don't have a problem with J. Jones. He's not a long term answer to the position but he's not a liability either."
Are you really serious? Julius Jones sucks. He sucks completely, totally, absolutely and without redemption. The Blogmeister said he thought Jones ran "OK". Huh? 15 carries with 56 yards means 3.7 ypc and that sucks. The only thing that sucked more than Jones was Edgerrin James with his sub-3 ypc average and the guys who put the offensive in offensive line, i.e. Spencer and the interior. I saw MacIntosh get shoved 5 yards into the backfield at times, and yet we still didn't put the tight end over there to help him (I call this Cardinals disease, but you could call it Packers disease too since neither of those teams do that either).
Yes, Tim Ruskell IS to blame for this monstrosity. He created it, there are maybe half a dozen guys or less left from Holmgren's team. He let Hutchinson get away because he doesn't value offensive linemen and feels guards are a dime a dozen, and gave us crap for guards since. He didn't address the offensive tackle situation AT ALL during the off season. He gave us the crapola we have for running backs, at inflated prices (other than Forsett who was a 7th round pick). He gave us a lousy secondary, overpriced linebackers who can't stay healthy and underperforming defensive linemen. He also gave us this coaching staff apparently made up of Special Ed rejects, and kept the "strength and conditioning" coaches who can't keep anyone healthy. That guy in Canada who worked on Hasselbeck's back should get their wages because with the pounding he's taken he's still walking and playing.
Frankly, Ruskell needs to be thrown out the door when his contract expires at the end of this season, and so should everyone else in that "front office", from Tod Leiweke on down, and the coaching staff landing on top of them outside the front door. Someone asked who's better than Numbskull to replace him? I ask who isn't? Hell, maybe we can get Ron Wolf to come out of retirement, but there are good organizations like New England and Indy among others to look at for "front office" people. Just don't pick someone who's going to do what Ruskell did and make this Tampa/Atlanta north with all their cronies.