Seahawks passing game almost out of air

Coach Mike Holmgren was near the beginning of his Seahawks tenure the last time the Seahawks struggled to pass the ball like this.

It was 2000, he was in his second season as Seahawks coach and Jon Kitna was still the starting quarterback. Four games into that season Seattle was averaging 160.3 yards passing.

And now, one-quarter of the way through Holmgren's final season as head coach, the Seahawks are averaging 169 yards passing, and the coach who spent a decade coaching under passing gurus like LaVell Edwards and Bill Walsh could become Holmg-run over the final three months as a Seahawk.

"A huge emphasis has to be on continuing to get better running the football," Holmgren said Monday. "It appears as though that is going to have to be a big part of success for us this year."

He's no longer a coach trying to mold his franchise for the future. He's a coach trying to MacGyver his way out of this 1-3 hole by cobbling together whatever offense on a team where four of the seven receivers weren't even on the team's 53-man roster when the year began. His job is to give his team the best chance to win, and four games into this season it appears the Seahawks are going to have to beat feet to defeat opponents.

"You have to do what you have to do," Holmgren said. "We have to score more points."

Seattle's only victory came against St. Louis when the Seahawks ran for their most yards in three years, and Julius Jones has rushed for more than 100 yards in two of Seattle's four games.

This won't be the first midstream adjustment Holmgren has made in Seattle. Just last year, Holmgren grew tired of watching his team run headlong into a brick wall on third-and-short, and halfway through the season he announced that Seattle's future would be up in the air the rest of the season. The Seahawks were going pass first, second and sometimes third.

"Last year was rather dramatic," Holmgren said. "I'd had it. ... There were different reasons. We weren't that injured. It just wasn't happening running the ball."

This year, it's a shortage of experienced hands in the passing game. Seattle has lost two of its top five returning receivers from last year to season-ending injuries. Deion Branch is out indefinitely because of a heel injury suffered at New York, and Courtney Taylor has been released.

Bobby Engram came back last week and caught eight passes against the Giants, but the rest of the team combined for only six receptions and it was clear that his return won't solve all the passing woes.

Necessity will push the Seahawks forward on the ground, but Seattle will need something else to be effective in that regard. It needs a defense strong enough to stand its ground because Holmgren conceded Monday his team doesn't have the firepower to measure up in a shootout.

That was evident in Seattle's two road games this season when Buffalo and New York established such large leads that Holmgren increasingly was forced to put the ball in the air to have any chance at a comeback. Against the Giants, Seattle averaged 3.9 yards per passing play, absolutely dreadful by any measure.

If Seattle is going to win on the ground, the defense has to be equal to the challenge of keeping the score down because the reality is the Seahawks don't have the weapons.

"That's the thing that we've got to fix because coming in I had very, very high expectations and I still do for this group," Holmgren said. "I still do. So when do we start here? When do we get it going? When do we play the way we think we're capable of playing?"

Receiver Taylor cut

Seattle released Taylor on Tuesday, according to the league's official transactions. Jordan Kent was promoted from the Seahawks' practice squad to take Taylor's place. The Seahawks did not announce the move, which was first reported by ESPN.com.

Taylor began the season as the Seahawks' starting flanker for the first two games. He caught four passes, but dropped at least two passes and under ran a route that could have led to a touchdown against San Francisco. He was demoted to a backup in Week 3 and was inactive last week against New York.

Taylor was drafted by the Seahawks in 2007 out of Auburn. Kent was also drafted that year. He played in the season opener in Buffalo, but was then demoted.

Note

• Indianapolis released Justin Forsett, the running back Seattle drafted this year and played well in the team's first two exhibition games.

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