Hawk Talk highlights: Seahawks’ disappearing late-game offense

Danny O’Neil hosted a live Seahawks chat Tuesday, as he does each week during the season. The full transcript can be found here. Highlights are below.

mediocre compared the Seahawks performance late in the fourth quarter vs. the Vikings to losses from earlier in the year when the offense struggled to get first downs.

O’Neil: I’m glad you phrased it that way as opposed to say it was like other games in which the defense couldn’t shut the door. I think the similarities to previous games are two-fold: Seattle’s offense froze up on the final two possessions, couldn’t even get a first down, and Seattle’s defense had been left out on the field and put in tough positions throughout the first three quarters.

SeeJay asked who the Seahawks’ No. 1 priority to re-sign this offseason should be.

O’Neil: Here are the top five unrestricted free agents to be (in my opinion) – Russell Okung, J.R. Sweezy, Jeremy Lane, Jermaine Kearse and Bruce Irvin.

T asked if Marshawn Lynch’s decision to not travel to Minnesota last week was purely about how he feels physically or something else.

O’Neil: Well, it’s partially physical. Mostly physical, even. I don’t believe that he was totally healthy and capable of playing and he opted not to. I don’t think he felt right. Now, the question is how it went from him practicing all week – first-team reps – and then at the last minute pulled himself from the trip.

AKJester asked if there was any disappointment from the other Seahawks players for the way that Lynch handled last week.

O’Neil: I don’t think so. I tried my best to kind of take the temperature, and most guys had the attitude of, “He’ll play when he’s able to play. Until then, I don’t really care about the particulars of how he recovers/practices/travels.” Not one person expressed a desire to see Lynch on the sideline if he couldn’t play.

Bud Grant asked if Pete Carroll would ever get NFL Coach of the Year award consideration.

O’Neil: What Seattle has done over the past four seasons without winning a major individual award (MVP, Comeback, Coach of the Year, Executive of the Year) is remarkable.

Gantiz asked if Pete Carroll is one of the most honest head coaches in the NFL.

O’Neil: Yes. I can’t think of a time where he has tried to knowingly mislead. He won’t always tell you everything. And he will coat what he does tell you in flowery adjectives, but he doesn’t actively mislead. That’s unusual.

Tom Page asked if Danny agreed that J.R. Sweezy didn’t play as good at right guard as Mark Glowinski did filling in for him a week before.

O’Neil: I don’t know if I would say “better” but I think that Mark Glowinski showed he’s already a well-rounded blocker and will be a huge contributor down the road. He doesn’t flat-out miss as often as Sweezy can tend to.

IAmTheWalRuskell asked why the Seahawks have seemed to struggle on offense and defense closing out tight games.

O’Neil: I think one of the overlooked elements of Seattle’s fourth-quarter fades this season is the fact that the offense has been rendered entirely inert on its last couple of possessions of the game. And if Sunday’s game hadn’t turned into the Blair Shank Redemption, there would have been plenty of people that said that game was a microcosm of the season with the strong statistical performance by the defense overshadowed by an inability to close the door in the final period. But Minnesota got three different tries at a game-winning field-goal drive, the last one starting at the Vikings 46. That’s not exactly getting pushed around.

Tom Page asked if Sunday’s playoff opponent, the Carolina Panthers, is overrated.

O’Neil: I think the Panthers are the most flawed 15-1 team I’ve seen in the NFL. I think their record is padded by the fact that they played the worst two divisions in the NFL this year, getting four games vs. NFC East and four vs. AFC South. I also think that win on the road against Seattle showed that this is absolutely a formidable playoff team.