Injured QB will sit awhile, but Hawks' sky isn't falling

KIRKLAND — Mike Holmgren began Monday's news conference with a suggestion that might as well have been a prayer.

"Let's start with Matt Hasselbeck," Holmgren said, which of course, is exactly what the coach won't be doing on Sunday in Kansas City.

Hasselbeck, the Seahawks' Pro Bowl quarterback, will miss at least three games, and quite possibly more, after spraining the medial collateral ligament in his right knee against Minnesota.

And, after four years of learning the offense, sporadically playing in August and mopping up in cameo appearances in lopsided wins or losses, Seneca Wallace will get the first start of his career.

He will quarterback a team that, on one Sunday afternoon, dropped like a rock to the middle of everybody's power ratings. On one sullen Sunday, the Hawks went from one of the Super Bowl favorites to an unlikely longshot.

Their quarterback went down. Their offensive line was overwhelmed. They lost their first home game in two seasons. The smooth luge run to the NFC West title, all of a sudden, got bumpy. And the sky felt like it was falling on the Hawks.

A lot happened in Sunday's loss to Minnesota. A lot of bad happened.

But the sky isn't falling. This is just some thick cloud cover that can pass.

"The thing Seneca gives us now is movement," offensive coordinator Gil Haskell said Monday. "That's the thing we didn't have with Matt. It will help us a little bit that way. And it's not like he's some guy coming off the street. Not like we got some 14-year veteran who's going to come in and play three games. That's not going to happen.

"Seneca's learned it. He just hasn't done it. When he went in the game [Sunday] he was erratic ... but then he relaxed and he read the plays right and he played. I'm very confident he can do the job and we can win the game against Kansas City."

Yes, this a team with problems, but the sky isn't falling.

Look at the Seahawks' November schedule: home games with Oakland, St. Louis and Green Bay and a game at San Francisco. Mike Wallace could quarterback and win a couple of those games.

Seneca Wallace can win all of them.

This is the chance he has been clamoring for. A restricted free agent at the end of the season, this is his three-to-five game audition. For a player like Wallace, who has something to prove in the last year of his contract, it doesn't get any better than this.

"We'll get through this, really," Holmgren said. "This is a good measure of what your team is really like down at its core. It will tell us a lot about what we are."

The sky isn't falling.

When Holmgren was an offensive coordinator with San Francisco in 1991, Steve Young was injured and the 49ers won their final six games with backup Steve Bono at quarterback. The Niners were 4-6 with Young starting and finished 6-0 with Bono.

"It helped get me my first head coaching job [at Green Bay], to be honest," Holmgren said. "[Then-Packers GM] Ron Wolf told me, 'I thought you were an OK coach, but you always had [Joe] Montana and Young. But you did that with Steve [Bono] and I thought maybe you knew what you were doing.' "

Holmgren likes Wallace, likes the fact he throws the ball well and likes his mobility. With Wallace, the game plan against Kansas City will include more sprint outs, more rollouts.

"But Seneca looks to pass first," Haskell said. "When you see him in the pocket and he's moving, he's looking to throw the ball. And once he breaks it out of the pocket, he's still not ready to run.

"He's looking to pass the ball. He's very different from [Atlanta's] Michael Vick. He can sit in the pocket and go, one-two-three-four, and make his reads."

But in this audition-of-a-lifetime, when the opportunities present themselves, Wallace has to run. He is the second-best running back on the team. He makes tacklers miss. He is a weapon on the run and, if there is room to run, he can't stubbornly stay in the pocket, like Philadelphia's Donovan McNabb often does.

"You've just got to be smart about it," Wallace said. "If it's second-and-3 and you're able to run and scramble and get a first down you can do it. You just don't want to be out there and have a guy wide open and just tuck it and run. You've got to give the receiver time to work. He [Holmgren] told me, 'If you have to do things with your legs, be smart about it. Don't put us in bad situations. Just move the ball for us.' "

The sky isn't falling.

Remember the 2001 Patriots? After Drew Bledsoe went down, the Patriots started untried Tom Brady. All of New England was in mourning, but the Pats went 11-3 with Brady and won the Super Bowl. Who knew?

The sky didn't fall on New England and it won't fall on Seattle with Wallace at quarterback.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com.