O’Neil: Seahawks’ most dire injury situation yet comes at worst time
Sep 17, 2018, 9:07 AM
(AP)
The season-opening loss in Denver wasn’t bad, but an 0-2 start would be awful.
Bobby Wagner joins Wright, Baldwin as Seahawks out vs Bears
Combine the importance of Monday’s game in Chicago with the absence of three of Seattle’s five best football players and you’ve got some idea of what’s at stake.
It’s awfully hard to see Seattle coming back from an 0-2 start to make the playoffs. It’s almost as hard to see the Seahawks beating even the Bears without receiver Doug Baldwin and linebackers K.J. Wright and Bobby Wagner. The absences of Baldwin and Wright were expected, the injury to Wagner was a late hit due to a groin injury that he first felt in last week’s game, but initially thought was a cramp. Throw in the fact that rookie cornerback Tre Flowers is unlikely to play because of a sore hamstring.
In other words, Seattle will be missing three of the five starters it has left from the 2013 Super Bowl team in addition to the rookie who was starting because Byron Maxwell never got healthy and veteran Dontae Johnson got hurt.
It’s as dire an injury report as the Seahawks have had in Pete Carroll’s nine years as a head coach, and it comes at a point when Seattle is more vulnerable than it has been in years. The defense lost five former Pro Bowlers in the offseason. The offense watched two of the top three receivers leave in free agency.
Now, Seattle’s top receiver is injured, and of the three players on Seattle’s defense who’ve ever been named to a Pro Bowl, only Earl Thomas will be in uniform against the Bears. None of the linebackers Seattle will have available were with the team prior to this season, and one of them – Mychal Kendricks – joined the team Thursday.
Now the Bears aren’t anyone’s idea of a good team. They haven’t won more than six games in any of the previous four seasons. They haven’t had a winning record since 2012 and haven’t made the playoffs since 2010.
But the Bears are better. They have a first-year coach Matt Nagy, a well-regarded offensive coordinator, a promising second-year quarterback Mitchell Trubisky and freshly acquired pass-rushing terror Khalil Mack. Chicago is also playing at home, and with young running backs Jordan Howard and Tarik Cohen the Bears may very well be on the upswing while the Seahawks are already in danger of withering.
They are certainly undermanned and on the road in Chicago tonight. Maybe Russell Wilson will be able to summon some of the magic he found there in 2012 when he was so good he led two straight game-winning touchdown drives. Perhaps the running game that has been an oxymoron for more than a year now will gain some traction on the grass there.
Or maybe this season that started with a hope that Seattle would be able to fill in behind the stars it lost is going to win up in an 0-2 hole. From 2007 through 2017, only 10 of the 91 teams that started out 0-2 made the playoffs.
So it’s not impossible for Seattle to reach the postseason were the Seahawks to lose in Chicago, but it would be unlikely.
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