Positive strides for Seahawks running game

Mike Holmgren attached a footnote to some of Seattle's plays on Sunday.

Two words he repeated to his quarterback every time the Seahawks were going to run the ball against Baltimore.

"He would say, 'Positive yards,' " Matt Hasselbeck said. " 'Positive yards.' "

It was as much a plea as it was a plan.

There haven't been nearly enough positive results running the football, from Holmgren's perspective. Not for a couple of months now. But on Sunday at Qwest Field, the Seahawks did exactly what a playoff-bound team is supposed to do to a team with the longest losing streak in the league: They ran over it.

Seattle rushed for 144 yards, its most in any game this season. Shaun Alexander gained 73 yards, his most in any game since September. And a running game that has functioned like a treadmill for so much of this season finally showed signs of putting one foot in front of the other in a productive manner.

"It was the best I've felt all year," Alexander said.

He gained more than 15 yards on three different carries and lost yardage only once. And in the second quarter, the receptionally challenged running back caught a screen pass and ran his way into the end zone for a 14-yard touchdown.

Alexander showed some of the downfield shiftiness that is his signature. He's not the fastest through the hole or the strongest after contact, but he's the guy with the vision to turn a small crack in the defense into a breakaway run.

"When the opening was there, he smoked that sucker," right tackle Sean Locklear said.

The Seahawks ran the ball pretty well in Philadelphia a few weeks back, but this was at home, where Alexander has been booed a carry or two into the game at times this season. He didn't start on Sunday, as the Seahawks began the game with their no-huddle offense that uses Maurice Morris.

The first two drives stalled not long after Seattle passed midfield, and then something altogether surprising happened. The running game that has been the anchor dragging behind Seattle's offense this season became the motor.

Alexander didn't carry the ball until Seattle's fourth possession. He ran four times that series and gained two first downs, and his 19-yarder on the third play of the second quarter was followed by a touchdown pass to Nate Burleson three plays later.

Of course, the Seahawks still managed to run into walls. Morris lost 2 yards on the third-and-one play that ended Seattle's first drive. He lost 4 yards on fourth-and-one at the Baltimore 9 in the fourth quarter.

The Ravens had the league's second-ranked rushing defense, and they hadn't allowed more than 111 yards rushing this season. But Sunday they were missing Ray Lewis, the linebacker who is both a ball magnet and a ballistic missile in the middle of that scheme. Baltimore's two starting corners were gone, too.

But the running game carried Seattle for so much of this game in which Hasselbeck passed for 199 yards, was picked off twice and didn't complete a pass longer than 23 yards.

This was the best Seattle's running game has performed at Qwest Field since the season opener against Tampa Bay. And with one regular-season game standing between the Seahawks and the playoffs, this is no time for the coach to go poking holes in the most significant progress of the run game this season.

"If it ever had to come, I'm glad it comes now," Holmgren said. "It's a good time of the year for us to hopefully get that thing going a little bit."

In a season full of stumbles and false starts in the ground game, this was as close as Seattle has gotten to full gallop.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com