The Seahawks defense looked awesome for a third week in a row! The offense wasn’t stellar but in the second half, they finally got the better of the Eagles strong defense and started pushing them around. I’m feeling much better about the playoff picture than I was 5 weeks ago, especially with the unbelievable loss by the 49ers to the hapless Raiders. While the Raiders are definitely rejoicing in their victory, they probably cost themselves the first draft pick. (Though if you’ve read Scorecasting you know that early draft picks are way overrated.)
We finished the regular season with our highest average team score: 141.29! Both Austin and I set our own personal bests and we both could have topped 200 with an optimal roster. Congrats to Luke for starting a perfect roster.
The playoff picture is now set. Defending league champion, Logan, will not be repeating as he lost his game and fell to fifth place. Even if he had won he would have lost out on total points for the tiebreaker. After a season of very close standings, things finally spread out a bit at the end.
The power rankings are holding pretty steady for a second week in a row. The only change is that Logan and Jim swapped places. These are also the four teams that are in the playoffs. I’m sticking with my prediction that Austin is going to take it all. He’s averaging over 150 in the last four games! Unfortunately for me, I go up against him first while Tim takes on Jim. I think Austin and Jim will win round one and then Austin beats Jim in a central Indiana championship battle royale. But hey, as the Raiders will tell you, you never know what’s going to happen until you play the game.
- Austin (–)
- Ben (–)
- Jim (
2) - Tim (–)
Now on to the weekly awards.
- Highest Team Score
- This Week: Austin had 187.41
- Season: Previous record was in week 10, Tim had 184.06
- All-Time: In 2013, Tim had 195.50
- Lowest Team Score
- This Week: Andy had 118.56
- Season: In Week 3, Luke had 55.04
- All-Time: In 2011, Luke had 47.01
- Biggest Blowout
- This Week: Austin beat Luke by 67.16
- Season: In week 8, Austin beat Dad by 103.48
- All-Time: In 2010, Luke beat Andy by 113.02
- Closest Win
- This Week: Dad beat Logan by 4.4
- Season: In Week 2, Austin beat Ben by 1.7
- All-Time: In 2012, Jim beat Ben by 0.12
- Highest Scoring Player
- This Week: Le’Veon Bell had 44.50 points for Austin.
- Season: In Week 8, Ben Roethlisberger had 56.78 for Dad
- All-Time: In 2013, Peyton Manning scored 60.28 for Andy
- Longest Winning Streaks:
- Active: Ben has a 6 game winning streak.
- Season: Jim, Tim and Ben had a 5 game winning streak
- All-Time: In 2011, Micah had an 8 game winning streak
- Longest Losing Streaks:
- Active: Andy has a 4 game losing streaks
- Season: Dad, Andy and Luke had 4 game losing streaks
- All-Time: In 2011, Kyle had a 14 game losing streak
Seahawks! Two excellent defensive games in a row with enough offense to win. I’ll take it. The road doesn’t get any easier but these last two wins were critical and they now control their own destiny. This weekend they will be on the road in Philly. I’ve been making big points off the Philly defense this season so we’ll see how the “meh” Seahawks offense stacks up.
The Seahawks defense finally looked good for a solid 60 minutes. And look what happened… a victory against a tough opponent! The secondary is back and healthy and it’s a good start to a grueling end to their season. Just making the playoffs is going to take some luck so let’s start with that goal and see where they go.
3) 
We had a big crowd at the house to watch the Seahawks take on the Giants. The Seahawks fought hard for the whole game and were finally able to coast at the end of a game. Beating the Giants isn’t a huge accomplishment, but it felt like a pretty solid win. That’s good because the upcoming schedule for the Seahawks is brutal. They play the Cardinals and the 49ers twice with the Chiefs, Eagles and Rams thrown in.
Ok, maybe I need to clarify this for the Seahawks. Last week I said they needed to play the first half of the game like they have been playing the second half. They played the first half quite well this week including a bunch of takeaways, but then seemed to almost give the game away in the second half. So here’s my new request: play a solid 60 minutes.
The Seahawks finally won, but their first half still looked pretty bad. They picked it up towards the end of the game, but it was almost too late at that point. A win is a win. If they win the next 2-3 then I’ll start to feel a little better about their chances. The big concern for me right now is their turnover ratio. Last year they led the league with +22. This year they are a mediocre +4 and they are almost halfway through their schedule. That’s a huge change.
Yuck. I said the Seahawks wouldn’t make it to the Super Bowl. Now I’m just hoping they can make the playoffs. They got pushed around in the first half but had a better second half. That non-review call at the end of the game seems insane to me, but it still would have been a stretch to win from that point and they never should have been there in the first place. The fake punt was an incredibly gutsy call, and the misdirection on the punt return earlier in the game was one of the coolest special teams plays that I’ve seen in a long time. Too bad they were performed against the Seahawks and not BY the Seahawks.
The Seahawks faltered again this week. In five games, they have yet to regain their dominance from last season. Forget about the Super Bowl repeat. Let’s make it through the first round of the playoffs. Here are some of the big changes I see from last season:
The Seahawks came off their Monday Night east coast showdown with a win, but it wasn’t very pretty. They seemed to struggle against the injury-ridden Redskins. The Seahawks were their own worst enemy with 13 penalties for 90 yards, including three Percy Harvin touchdowns that all got called back for unrelated penalties. While I’d love to see the Seahawks win another Super Bowl, I don’t think they’re on that path right now. Last season they were unstoppable with endless interceptions. This year they look a lot more mortal. Only three teams in the league have fewer interceptions, seven have fewer sacks, and six have fewer fumbles forced. That’s a far cry from the dominating defense they had last year. In fairness that does include a bye week that most other teams haven’t had yet, but still…