If the Seahawks are smart, Morris will start

By Chris Cluff  |   Sunday, November 11, 2007  |  Comments( 1 )

Seattle Seahawks
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If the Seattle Seahawks are smart, Shaun Alexander won't play tonight when the team tries to make it a season sweep of the 2-6 San Francisco 49ers.

If the Seahawks are smart, they will rest Alexander, who is battered and broken. He needs to take some time off.

If the Seahawks are smart, Maurice Morris will start and they will rely on his hard-running style to get some yards behind a line that has not blocked well for Alexander's patient style.

Alexander has taken a lot of heat for his tentative approach ever since he suffered a broken wrist in Week 1. And while he has obviously favored the injury, he also hasn't always had much room to run behind a quintet that is alternately too young, too old and too unhealthy.

Alexander is barely on pace to best his numbers from last season, when he played in only 10 games. With 492 rushing yards and two touchdowns, he is set to finish with 984 yards and four scores - he had 896 and seven last year. His average of 3.3 yards per carry is easily the worst of his career.

The last time Alexander was this bad was in 2002, when he battled through an assortment of injuries and still finished with 1,175 yards and 16 touchdowns. But by the end of the season, he was so beaten up that he couldn't finish the finale in San Diego.

Well, now he's so beaten -- broken wrist, sprained knee and ankle -- that he needs to rest so he can finish this season.

Coach Mike Holmgren already has grown so fed up with his meager rushing attack that he says he is planning to rely on quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and throw the ball more. But Holmgren should know that Morris offers what the Seahawks need right now: a pounding, workmanlike running approach. Morris takes what is there and tries to get a little more, fighting as hard for 3 yards as he does for 20.

In this season of disjointed running for the Seahawks, Morris actually is averaging 4.6 yards per carry. Granted, he has only 28 attempts, but it's worth letting him see if he can build on the progress he made in 2006, when he stepped in for the injured Alexander and steadily improved.

In his first four starts in '06, Morris gained 183 yards on 63 runs -- a pitiful average of under 3.0 per carry. But in his final two games, he busted off 100-yard efforts -- averaging 131. If he can pick up where he left off, using his nose-ahead style to grind out yards, the Seahawks could get something going on the ground.

Besides, Morris is a better receiver than Alexander, particularly while Alexander is still wearing his cast and dropping passes every game.

So if the Seahawks are smart, Morris will start.
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About Chris Cluff

Chris Cluff spent 10 years as an editor and sportswriter for The Seattle Times. He was a key figure in the newspaper's coverage of the Seahawks, particularly during their Super Bowl run in 2005. He also has written two books on the Seahawks: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Heart-Pounding, ...
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