Impact Of The Percy Harvin Trade On Green Bay Packers
By Kenn Korb
Oct 12, 2014; Seattle, WA, USA; Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch (24) rushes against the Dallas Cowboys during the third quarter of a 26-20 Dallas victory at CenturyLink Field. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports
What does it mean for Seattle?
It means they get to go back to their comfortable gameplan on offense, which is the power-run game.
When you have a player like Harvin, his talents are so tantalizing that you can become entranced. A coordinator can easily fall in love with his speed and get too focused on dreaming up new ways to put the ball in his hands to use that dynamic ability.
That’s great if it is in fact your best player and it fits with the style you want to play … but if it doesn’t and he isn’t, then that could do more harm than good and ruin the flow of your team.
A great test of this at this highest level would have been if Harvin hadn’t been injured during his last Minnesota season – and therefore challenging Peterson for touches in Minnesota during his MVP season – but that Seattle-Dallas game gives a glimpse at it; in a game where Seattle was still able to move the ball decently on the ground against a still-suspect Cowboys’ defense, they were content with moving toward passing the ball more even with the early lead.
As it stands now, Marshawn Lynch is still one of the best RBs in the game and highly effective at busting through defenses, and resorting to using him more often again will mean good things for the offense, especially with the play-action game.
They still have receiving options that are dynamic (Doug Baldwin, Jermaine Kearse) too, so perhaps can recapture their previous form that terrorized defenses last season.
Even if they don’t get all the way back to that level, they will be fine going forward.