Face the grim reality of the 2008 Seahawks

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Get used to this. This isn't an illusion. These are the Seahawks.

Certainly they aren't as bad as they looked in this 44-6 loss to the defending Super Bowl-champion New York Giants. But this isn't a good football team. For the first time since the 2003 season, it doesn't look like a playoff team.

The lopsidedness of this loss wasn't some kind of freaky aberration. It was the truth. A sign of the times. A harbinger of the months ahead.

A team that looks as bad as Sunday's Seahawks doesn't suddenly get good. It doesn't quickly find answers in the Wednesday and Thursday practices that are translated into wins on Sunday.

Don't be fooled by the softness of the NFC West. Don't count on the pile of losses San Francisco, Arizona and St. Louis will stack. The Seahawks are a team in trouble.

At this point in this quietly desperate season, the 1-3 Hawks may not be as bad as the Rams, but they look a lot like the 'Niners. They look as bad as the Cardinals.

Anybody who is surprised by how poorly the Seahawks played against New York hasn't been paying attention.

"That was embarrassing," linebacker Lofa Tatupu said. "As one of the leaders of this defense I take that very personally. I shoulder that burden. We've got to find some answers and quick."

There may not be answers. A quarter of the way through the season, the Hawks don't look like they can stop anybody. They can't force momentum-changing turnovers and they are too small to stop the pounding from big running backs like the Giants' Brandon Jacobs.

This is a team in trouble.

No longer can it point to the injuries on the offense, the catastrophic pulls and pops and tears that ripped apart the receiving corps. All of the injuries have been on offense, but the bulk of the problems on Sunday were on defense.

This defense that was built two years ago to stop the big play is giving up bunches of big plays. In the first quarter, the Giants had three plays of 30 yards or longer.

"They got rollin' and we couldn't stop them," coach Mike Holmgren said.

The undefeated Giants averaged 8.3 yards per play, gaining 523 total yards. They're good, but they aren't that good. They're good, but weren't the Seahawks also supposed to be good? Weren't they supposed to challenge the Giants for the NFC championship?

That isn't going to happen.

Against the Giants, the Hawks defense didn't tackle. It didn't put pressure on Eli Manning. It got overrun by Jacobs and beat by anonymous wide receivers named Domenik Hixon and Sinorice Moss. Imagine what the Giants could have done if their star receiver, Plaxico Burress, wasn't suspended.

The Seahawks' safeties were late covering. The cornerbacks were filleted. The line couldn't pull down Jacobs, or his backups Derrick Ward or Ahmad Bradshaw.

"We're just speechless," Tatupu said. "When your run game is going like that, it's going to be a long day for any defense. And this was a long one. We definitely have some questions to answer. It wasn't pretty today."

The Hawks had two weeks to prepare for the Giants' offense, but they looked as if they were trying to defend some new, never-before-seen, space-age attack. It was as if the Giants had rewritten the NFL playbook in a language Seattle didn't understand.

It wasn't fancy, but for the Seahawks, it was as indecipherable as hieroglyphics, as unstoppable as a tank.

Today, the Hawks are a rambling wreck. The defense — this once-stout defense — is getting pushed up and down the field. It got bullied by the bigger, stronger Giants.

"It comes down to fundamentals, lapses on our side of the ball," defensive end Patrick Kerney said. "Poor tackling, poor coverage, poor rush, just poor everything and you get 44 [points] put up on you.

"From a scheme standpoint, it's hard to say what's wrong, but a big problem, I'd say, is poor tackling. They ran the ball well, but you help them when you don't tackle well."

No longer can the Seahawks rely on the weakness of their division to get them into the playoffs. The NFC West could be the Ivy League (meaning no disrespect to the Ivy League) but still couldn't mask how far and how quickly the Hawks have dropped.

"We have to be real honest about stuff," Holmgren said. "We can't sugarcoat this. I don't think much good happened ever [against the Giants]. Today we got pounded pretty good. This team, they banged us pretty good today."

Alarmingly, the Seahawks didn't bang back. They looked like cruiserweights trying to stop relentless heavyweights. They looked overmatched, and no amount of practice time can compensate for that.

These aren't your 2005 Seahawks. They have fallen to the level of their division, and Sunday's truths hurt as much as Jacobs' menacing shoulder pads.

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