Green with envy? No, the Seahawks are green with worry after blowing a winnable game

It felt like it would be a laughably good day at the start.

The Seahawks, apparently both eager for Halloween and jealous of the Sounders FC threads, wore lime green jerseys. They looked like oversized Skittles. One glance at those outfits, and it was easy to look past the injury drama and the desperate nature of this game because, well, the bright uniforms blinded you. How could it ever be a bad day when a team shows up dressed like human highlighter pens?

A swift Seahawks start led to a 13-0 lead, and it felt OK to breathe again. The Seahawks were injured, but unbowed. They looked like a good football team with a promising future again. They had the Chicago Bears flustered.

And then the heartbreak began.

Actually, it started with foolishness and ended with heartbreak. After the Bears walked out of Qwest Field with a 25-19 victory, the Seahawks were left to wallow in the disgust of missed opportunities, missed assignments, missed tackles, misguided logic and, of course, missed field goals.

A team expected to return to respectability this season is now 1-2 and scrambling to find the proper remedy. On Sunday, the hardest thing to accept wasn't the injuries, however. It was the fact that, no matter how hurt the Seahawks are, they just blew it. They weren't overmatched and ailing against the Bears. They just blew it.

The Seahawks blew it after they gained an early 13-point advantage. They blew it with some bad defense on Devin Hester's 36-yard touchdown reception late in the game. They blew it with quarterback Seneca Wallace's spurts of inaccuracy and odd decision making. They blew it with questionable play-calling on third-and-short and fourth-and-short in the final quarter.

And they blew it with Olindo Mare missing two field goals — a 43-yarder and then a 34-yarder — which made coach Jim Mora, normally measured during media sessions, seethe during a postgame interview.

"No excuses for those," Mora said. "If you're a kicker in the National Football League, you should make those kicks. Bottom line. End of story. Period. No excuses. No wind, it doesn't matter. You've got to make those kicks, especially in a game like this, where we're kicking and scratching and fighting and playing our tails off, and you miss those kicks. Not acceptable. Absolutely not acceptable."

In case you didn't sense his anger, Mora was then asked if he'd consider making a change at kicker. He responded by all but reserving a ticket for Mare on the next thing moving out of town plane, train, bus, boat, Vespa, bicycle, unicycle.

"We'll look at changes everywhere," Mora said. "We're not going to fight our ass off and have a field-goal kicker go out there and miss two field goals and lose the game. Not going to happen."

Emotions aside, the Seahawks' problems went far beyond Mare. Wallace played well for most of the game, but he fell in love with what I'll call the Scramble and Heave, and one of those ill-advised passes resulted in an interception by Bears linebacker Lance Briggs. The mistake led to a field goal that gave Chicago a 17-13 lead in the third quarter.

True to his nature, Wallace accepted blame for the mistake afterward and added his disappointment in missing tight end John Carlson on several throws and not being able to get the ball enough to lead receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh, who had only four catches for 35 yards.

"We just didn't finish, and I take a lot of responsibility in that," Wallace said.

Throw in that weird play from new offensive coordinator Greg Knapp on a reverse to Deion Branch on third and 1? as well as the incomplete pass attempt to Julius Jones on fourth and 2 on the Seahawks' final possession, and it was a frustrating afternoon for an offense that moved the ball well at times.

If only the lime green jerseys had possessed some magic. Instead, the Seahawks were the saddest team ever to have a glow about them.

"We had some chances at 13-0," said wide receiver Nate Burleson, who finished with nine receptions for 109 yards and often looked like the best player on the field. "It's like boxing. We hit the guy, and he started to wobble. We needed to swing for the head and knock him out. We've got to learn to take care of business in those moments.

"We swung. The Bears took it on the chin and regained their balance."

And then the Bears knocked out the Seahawks. It ruined a laughably good start and forced the Skittles into some September soul-searching.

Lime green is now the color of desperation.

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com, Twitter: @Jerry_Brewer