Seahawks can’t afford another slow start against unbeaten Bengals

The Seahawks have taken some time to get going.

It’s as true for this season, which started 0-2, as it is for a Seattle offense that has reached the end zone once in the first half this season.

And that’s where improvement needs to start for Seattle. At least it does if the Seahawks want to avoid being buried up to their neck by an unbeaten Bengals team. Cincinnati has made a habit of jumping on top with a potent offense and then staying there. They have outscored opponents 66-18 in the first half and trailed an opponent for a total of 1 minute, 46 seconds over the four games they’ve played.

It’s just one more trend indicating the extreme difficulty of this week’s game. The Bengals have allowed the fewest sacks in the league, the Seahawks have given up the second-most. Cincinnati is averaging the second-most yards in the league, the Seahawks are tied with the 49ers for the fewest offensive touchdowns in the league with five. Throw in the fact that Marshawn Lynch is questionable and both of Seattle’s victories have come at home against two NFC North teams whose combined record is 1-7 and the forecast isn’t pretty for the Seahawks in Cincinnati.

If Seattle is going to give itself a chance in Sunday’s game, look to the beginning. The Seahawks have to get going earlier than they have in a season in which they’ve scored half as many points in the first half (29) as they have in the second (58).

“We’ve got them right where we want them,” coach Pete Carroll said of Seattle’s slow starts last week. “Maybe it’s the rope-a-dope approach.”

He was joking, right? Yes, he was joking. No team goes into a game with an offensive game plan designed to give the opponent into a false sense of security.

“We’re not trying to not make yards to lull them to sleep,” Carroll said. “That’s not the approach.”

But Carroll isn’t a coach who emphasizes fast starts, either. Finishing is what Carroll has always accentuated in his coaching, both in the way he wants his team to finish games and finish seasons, and it’s tempting to say the Seahawks are simply a second-half team given their physical playing style and desire to ground opponents down.

But that’s not necessarily the case. Seattle scored more points in the first half than they did in the second half in 2012 and again in 2013. In fact, the last time the scoring disparity between halves was this great was in the first half of the 2011 season. Seattle scored 55 first-half points over the first eight games that season compared to 89 in the second half.

It’s probably not a coincidence that was the same year that began with the Seahawks offensive line in a state of abject disarray, the Seahawks starting James Carpenter and John Moffitt as rookies on the right side with veteran Robert Gallery added to play left guard.

The Seahawks didn’t score a point in the first half of either of their first two games that season. The offense didn’t score a first-half touchdown until the fourth game of that season, same as this year.

The Seahawks rounded into a very competitive, almost postseason-worthy team by the second half of the 2011 season, going 5-3 in the final eight games. That wasn’t enough, however, to erase the way Seattle started that season by going 2-6.

The Seahawks still have a chance to avoid falling into that type of hole to start this season. That means starting quicker, however, beginning with Sunday’s game in Cincinnati.

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