THE VAUDEVILLIAN said, famously if not quite accurately, that after you get out of New York, every town is Bridgeport. He could have substituted Green Bay, Wis. Many who have been there say it’s a good thing Green Bay has the Packers, because without them the advantages would be cheese, beer, sausage, and the vague hope of going to New York some day.
Instead, as another vaudevillian would have said, the Packers would rather be in Philadelphia, which is where the team plays the Eagles next weekend after having been literally handed a first-round playoff victory Sunday. The 33-27 win over the Seahawks ended Seattle’s season, true, but many are the Puget Sound locals who know that life scarcely ceases with the National Football League slate (as it surely does in Green Bay, unless you really like lots of cheese, beer, and sausage). The Packers might in fact play in the Super Bowl Feb. 1, but by then we who follow sports in our own Bridgeport will be but a few weeks from baseball spring training, with our NBA team still at midseason and, maybe best of all, with the promise of a Husky football program minus Rick Neuheisel.
MORE TO THE POINT where football is concerned: Despite “receivers” dropping balls as though they’d just been touched by SARS patients, the Seahawks for the most part comported themselves like playoff-worthy representatives this week. There’s little point in enumerating the reasons for the Seattle loss. It mostly got back to the number 8, and not the one worn by quarterback Matt Hasselbeck. He came to full maturation Sundayin fact, he was still smiling late in the game, despite seeing at least eight of his catchable balls boink, plonk, and ka-flong off the hands and pads of teammates. Hasselbeck also watched with what must have been horrified fascination as his former Packer mentor and sudden peer, Brett Favre, threw successfully into a Seattle pass “coverage” softer than a question from Larry King. Ball control late in the game was astonishing. Starting with 2:44 left in regulation, the Packers had possession for about 13 minutes, creeping ahead by seven during a stretch when Seattle ran four plays and used a mere 31 seconds.
Under the circumstances, it was a wonder that the game even went into overtime, which happened because of a late Seahawk scoring drive that in another era could have been engineered by John Elway or Joe Montana. The Seahawks had been up by seven going into the fourth quarter, and the Packers might have long since succumbed had three Hasselbeck “touchdown passes” been finished properly. (Maurice Morris neglected to drag a toe in the end zone, for example, and Koren Robinson couldn’t grab a perfect shot at his numbers near the goal line.)
The Seahawks were lucky to be playing in January, what with all that had to happen during the final regular-season weekend. Next season such luck might not be required, assuming the Seattle club really is on the ascent. Off-month chores will include drafting and/or trading for pass rushers and aggressive guys in the secondary. But the team is set in some key positions: offensive line (Steve Hutchinson, one Fox commentator half-facetiously opined after the guard grabbed a third-quarter tipped ball, has the best hands on the team); running back (Shaun Alexander and Morris), and, of course, quarterback.
As usual, the Seahawks had several extra opponents in addition to the traditional adversary of Favre, et al. They had to battle that bundled gang of apparent South Park extras, aka the Green Bay crowd. They also were visited by their season-long nemesis, the officiating corps (coach Mike Holmgren had to give away a valuable challenge call when the refs got a first-half decision wrong). Then there was the seven-point betting spread, which proved to be the only game Seattle won. Finally, and predictably, they had to keep from defeating themselves. Casual observers will say that happened when Hasselbeck guessed wrong on a sideline throw that was picked off for the win. Anybody who watched the whole game knows there were plenty of screwups by Seahawk players who should know better.
IT’S HARD TO TELL just now, because of year-to-year changing NFL-team fortunes, whether next season’s schedule will pose more difficulties than the campaign that ended Sunday. But Holmgren and general manager Bob Ferguson at least know that they can count on their field leader in big games. Hasselbeck, facing a homebound opponent with much of the world watching and listening, summoned his skill and bravado. He damn near pulled off the W when everybody but Terry “Kiss of Death” Bradshaw predicted he wouldn’t. And even though he’d no doubt rather be in Philadelphia next Sunday, for the longer haul Hasselbeck seems destined to help see to it that this NFL-smitten Bridgeport is a great pro-football town again.
