Studio711.com – Ben Martens

The 49ers and the Seahawks came into the game with the same record, but the Seahawks played like the dominant team. It was nice to see the offense working and Lynch getting some good carries. Both defenses put on a clinic showing how to rush through porous front lines. The win didn’t inspire a ton of confidence, but there was no fourth quarter collapse so that’s something. Here are some stats which further my belief that they won’t make the playoffs:

• The Seahawks rank 30th in drives that result in first downs or touchdowns.
• They rank dead last in touchdowns per red zone appearance.
• They are last in offensive line pass protection.

All of these stats come from footballoutsiders.com. They have tons of statistics and you can lose a lot of time digging through them and having fun.

In our league, my streak was almost ended by Andy. It came down to the final plays of Monday night, but I eeked out another win. Next week I have a tough game against Dad to tie Micah’s 8 game winning streak record. Dad and Logan won their games this week too and kept their tie for second place. For a while it was looking like the surprise late scratch of Jeremy Maclin from Austin’s roster might lose the game for him but Logan had enough points that Austin would have needed more than just that one change to win. After last year’s massively tied leaderboard, we have a pretty stretched out set of teams this year. We’re only halfway to the cutoff for the playoffs so a lot can still happen.

In this week’s power rankings, Andy jumped up an impressive three spots to claim the fourth slot. In weeks 5 and 6 he was in last place so he’s making a strong comeback.

1. Ben
2. Logan
3. Dad (+1)
4. Andy (+3)

Now on to the weekly awards.

The Seahawks. Bleh. I hope they finish above 0.500. The first half looked ok but then things fell apart in the second half and ended with four consecutive punts. I just don’t see how they can plan around their non-existing offensive line for an entire game.

Our league got a little more spread out but we still have four teams tied at 2-3. Luke continues to look for his first win, but take heart Luke. You’re not the lowest average score and your average score is almost exactly the same as Dad’s and he is 3-2. Luke also has had the second toughest schedule to this point. I think the game of the week was Andy and Tim. Going into Monday night, Tim had a reasonable chance of winning his match with less than 70 points!

There are a ton of high profile injuries floating around right now so please make sure you’re checking your rosters. I won’t call deadbeat on anyone yet but there have been a few situations that surprised me that a player was started despite the reports. I’ve got the league checker robot running again to send out notifications on Thursday and Saturday mornings. You’ll get notified if you have anybody in a worse than Probable state. Every year total points end up deciding the final spot in the playoffs so every game counts!

The power rankings have shifted a bit. Austin dropped out and Jim jumped onto the list. I’m still inexplicably on a good run that I expect to end any week. Jamaal Charles is out now so maybe that’s the start of the end for me.

1. Ben
2. Logan (+1)
3. Jim (+2)
4. Tim (-2)

Now on to the weekly awards.

0-2. It’s a rough start to a Seahawks team that has one of the toughest schedules in the league. (For examples, they face more teams coming off bye weeks than anyone else and have fewer opponents on a multi-game road trip than anyone else.) Was Kam the reason? No. Fine him. Dump him. Or better yet, find some way to make him holdout past the point later in the season when he loses his pension and any benefit he had from being in the players union. Penalties were a big killer in the game. As Cris Collinsworth pointed out 572 times during the game, Aaron Rodgers invented the free play and the Seahawks gave him plenty of opportunities to show it off. We’ll see what happens with the home opener, but though the Seahawks haven’t looked terrible, they’re not hitting the ground running.

In our league, the winners from last week continued their winning except for Tim. There are still three people tied at the top (Logan, Austin and me.) Luke, Jim and Andy are still looking for their first wins.

Now on to the weekly awards. I’ll put the new season records in bold.