For three quarters on Sunday, the Redskins rode a solid gameplan, gritty defense and a scintillating performance from Mark Brunell, taking a lead on the visiting Seattle Seahawks. In the end, however, it took some late-game heroics and a few lucky breaks to secure the win and remain undefeated as the team pulled out a 20-17 overtime win.
What’s to be done when your team has a peerless defensive side but an offense that’s struggled to move the ball for the past year? Approaching the second-best offense in the league in the Seattle Seahawks, Coach Gibbs had an answer: why not put the whole team on a defensive footing? The offense came out on Sunday bent and determined to hold the ball and grind the clock, keeping the ball out of the hands of Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander. The mindset worked, especially in the first half. Brunell played with poise and accuracy, capping one monster 16-play, 8 minute drive with a touchdown toss to Robert Royal that sent the Redskins to the locker room up 7-3. Seattle’s influence on the game barely registered in the first half: the Redskins held the ball of a crushing twenty-two minutes and change and the defense held Alexander to a paltry 12 yards rushing.
As Seattle’s offense seemed to be stirring to life at the start of the second half, the Redskins quickly moved to add to their lead. Aided by a phantom pass-interference call, the Skins worked their way down the field and found Mike Sellars on a goal-line playfake that looked like a carbon copy of the previous touchdown. But the ‘Hawks got it back on their ensuing drive. Alexander finally broke off a run to get his team to the Redskins 29 yard line, but from there, the drive stalled, leaving Seattle with a third and ten. In a move that’s surely not going to escape the attention of anti-blitz guru Gregg Easterbrook, his equally tastefully named counterpart Gregg Williams dialed up an eight-man blitz. This left Seahawk wideout Darrell Jackson so wide open that he was deep in negotiations with area real-estate developers by the time the ball got to him. Jackson took the rock to the three, and Alexander capped the drive with a wholly academic touchdown run.
