At age 36, Duane Brown feels Seahawks opportunities lost. ‘These are all winnable games’
Duane Brown didn’t come back for this.
It was after 1 a.m. The 36-year-old Pro Bowl veteran left tackle who staged a “hold in” the summer during the Seahawks’ preseason wanting a new contract was frustrated. He’d already been angry.
He stood outside the visitor’s locker room in a concrete tunnel beneath Heinz Field shaking his head over another opportunity, and game, lost. Seattle’s best offensive lineman is proud. But on this early morning, he was what he and his team have been four times in six games to begin their season that’s already on the brink.
Defeated.
“It’s difficult,” Brown said on his way to the team bus and long flight back to Seattle Monday morning following Seattle’s 23-20 overtime loss at the Pittsburgh Steelers. “The guys that have been here a couple years, they are used to success.”
They aren’t used to failing in overtime in defeats at home to Tennessee in week two and in Pittsburgh Sunday night. They aren’t used to scoring zero points in the second half in losing at Minnesota, and to looking like a broken high-school team on offense as they did in a scoreless first half against the Steelers.
They absolutely aren’t accustomed to losing seemingly indestructible quarterback Russell Wilson to injury, as they did while losing again to the rival Los Angeles Rams.
This is not how Brown expected his contract year to go.
He didn’t say it, and the respected team leader probably never would. But Brown could have kept on holding in instead of playing through this.
“I think these are all winnable games. That’s the hard part,” he said. “You get four or five plays and, you know, we are looking at a different record.
“That’s the hardest part to deal with — and just knowing we are not putting our best effort out, you know what I mean?”
Brown wanted a new contract for security beyond this season, what he feels he’s earned with 14 years of excellence in the NFL.
Seattle coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider didn’t want to give a left tackle a huge, multiyear extension past his 37th and 38th birthdays. They chose to have Brown play out the final year of his contract then perhaps re-visit a new deal following the season, if Brown still wants one then.
The Seahawks eventually gave Brown a $2 million more guaranteed for this year. He returned to practicing in time to play the season opener Sept. 12 at Indianapolis.
Now, he’s an older left tackle who got beaten off the edge for sacks of fill-in quarterback Geno Smith by the Steelers, on a team with the NFC’s third-worst record that is already four games out of the division lead and whose futures are as cloudy October in Seattle.
All was relatively well for Brown — until the Seahawks’ first half in 10 years without Wilson at quarterback Sunday night.
It was even uglier than expected.
How ugly?
Eleven-plays, six-net-yards-in-the-second-quarter ugly. Zero points and starters yelling at each other ugly.
The Seahawks were going nowhere, down 14-0 late in the second quarter Sunday night. On a third and 10 in Seattle’s own end, Steelers edge pass rusher Alex Highsmith beat Brown at the snap with a quicker jump off the ball. Highsmith sped around the left tackle for a straight-line sack of Smith and another Seattle punt.
As soon as his quarterback hit the turf, Brown was yelling at center Kyle Fuller. The Seahawks’ best offensive lineman continued barking at the first-year, full-time starter and offensive-line signal caller on the sideline, yelling across a seated teammate at the bench following Michael Dickson’s punt.
Brown and Fuller then walked about 20 yards to their right to continue Brown’s mostly one-sided, pointed conversation with Smith and Wilson.
“A communication issue with cadence,” Brown said. “Play clock was running down. Thought we had more time. Ball was snapped. I was late. It was a miscommunication.
“I gave up a sack, which I don’t ever like to do. That was it.
“We just weren’t moving the ball effectively. Got a better game plan after halftime.”
That better game plan? Run the ball.
Carroll ordered first-year play caller Shane Waldron to call runs upon runs on Seattle’s first possession of the third quarter. Nine runs in 10 plays, in fact. Alex Collins had zero carries after the 6-minute mark of the first quarter. Collins ran eight times on the first drive after halftime. The light-footed Collins cut, stepped and romped for 53 yards, more than half his game total of 101, on the march to the Seahawks’ first points.
Collins’ 2-yard run for a touchdown reaching across the goal line while falling put his previously flat-lining offense and team back in the game, down only 14-7.
“It was just a commitment we made at half(time) to rely on the guys up front,” Carroll said Monday of Brown and the offensive line.
The game was on from there. Collins kept romping. The Seahawks kept scoring, eventually tying the game at 17 in the fourth quarter and then at 20 on drives to field goals by Jason Myers, his second one as time expired in regulation sent the game to overtime.
“We were a different team the second half,” Brown said.
Problem for the Seahawks is, games are two halves.
It’s easy to say Wilson missing his first game after 165 consecutive starts dating to the start of the 2012 season to begin his career with Seattle was the reason the offense looked like a electric football game with the buzzer switch turned off in the first half.
Brown didn’t see that as the reason.
“Not so much,” Brown said.
He cites the 20 points the Seahawks scored after halftime in Pittsburgh when he and the offensive line redeemed themselves by opening wide, cut-back lanes through which Collins galloped. That is, until Collins injured his hip and glute muscle and missed overtime, becoming Seattle’s third running back to get hurt in six games.
Lead back Chris Carson will, like Wilson, miss at least two more games entering the team’s bye Nov. 7: next Monday at home against the New Orleans Saints (3-2) and Oct. 31 hosting the Jacksonville Jaguars (1-5). Carson, Wilson and number-two running back Rashaad Penny are on injured reserve.
DeeJay Dallas and Travis Homer are the only remaining healthy running backs. That’s who Seattle had to run with in overtime in Pittsburgh, which is how the Seahawks ended up having to rely on Smith to throw. He lost a fumble in overtime on a drop back that handed the Steelers the winning field goal.
That imbalance on offense is leading to an imbalance in games.
“We are having a tale of two halves, most weeks,” Brown said.
With and without Wilson.
“We’ve just got to find a way to put it all together for four quarters,” Brown said.
He says he believes in the team’s experienced leadership, on Wilson — even with only one good hand, for now — plus Bobby Wagner and himself — to U-turn this season.
Brown was asked what the mood is in the Seahawks’ locker at 2-4.
The huge man sighed.
“You know, it’s difficult. It’s difficult,” he said. “You know, guys fought their hearts out, man. And to come out on the losing end this night, we got a long flight back ... but this is a resilient group.
“It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt (into Tuesday). And it should, you know what I mean? You’ve got to sit with it. But then we’ve got to move on. We’ve got another tough challenge next week. We are back at home.
“We’ve just got to get on the right side of things from there.”
This story was originally published October 19, 2021 at 7:54 AM.
