He really only touched the ball twice in Seattle’s 41-20 rout of the Vikings Sunday, but already Percy Harvin has Seahawks fans all hopped up like they’re swigging Starbucks from a jug.
”He’s an extraordinary football player, but he’s a better competitor,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll tells Yahoo! Sports. ”That’s what we love about him.”
And so it goes in the swap-meet that is the NFL. Harvin, of course, is a former Viking. Wide receiver Sidney Rice, a former Viking, did not play for the Seahawks yesterday. John Carlson, a former Seahawk, led the Vikings with five catches yesterday. And so on.
But Seattle’s thrilled enough with the home team to barely mention the Vikings, and why should they? Things are on fire in the Emerald City.
“We haven’t played our best ball yet at all,”defensive back Walter Thurmond tells the Seattle Times. “That’s the scary part for opposing teams, that we can still get better despite the fact we’re 10-1 right now.”
Ben Goessling of ESPN.com gets a quote from Harvin about his former team:
“I talked to all the guys,” he said. “(Safety Jamarca) Sanford, he’s one of my closest friends over there. (Linebacker Erin) Henderson, I was close to him. Of course, A.P. I talked to Jared Allen. I made sure I talked to all of the training staff. I talked to most of the managers. I tried to talk to everybody that I could. It was all good. There’s no love lost with them, so it was all good.”
NBC’s Pro Football Talk says the Seahawks “finally got WR Percy Harvin on the field and they liked what they saw.”
Okay, people, it was a fine punt return and a nifty catch, but that’s only two touches.
Another former Viking was Percy-happy too. “I was happy watching everybody responding to him and understanding that now, officially, he is a part of the team,” Tavaris Jackson, the Seahawks backup quarterback, who played with Harvin in Minnesota in 2009 and 2010, tells the Seattle paper. “Get ready to be amazed.”
Adrian Peterson, for his part, says his groin was bothering him during the game, in which he carried 21 time for a mere 65 yards.
“Playing in that first half, oh man, I knew if I was able to explode the way I normally do, I could have got some big chunks — even took it to the house,” Peterson tell’s ESPN’s Goessling. “But that second half, I tried to get it to loosen up for me, but we couldn’t create a drive.”
Closer to home, the Star Tribune’s Mark Craig offers this assessment:
“In a showdown of the two most powerful running backs in football, Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch scored three times, proved unstoppable in some short-yardage situations and broke a game-high 23-yard run on the touchdown drive that gave the Seahawks the lead for good at 17-10. The Vikings’ Adrian Peterson meanwhile, looked more like a guy whose groin injury caused him to miss practice on Thursday and Friday.”
Sports Illustrated.com notes the real story: Seattle QB Russell Wilson. Wilson had two touchdown passes, each showing off his unique skills, while Lynch had two touchdowns running and one receiving. Coming off consecutive games rushing for more than 100 yards, Lynch was held to 54 yards on 17 carries.
The Star Tribune’s Jim Souhan says Harvin might break Vikings’ fans heart with Seattle. It’s already happened, Jim. Already happened.
And Sid Hartman brings it all back home for us, as he always does: “Pete Carroll, the Seattle Seahawks coach who was on the Vikings staff from 1985 to 1989, said he confers with Bud Grant on a regular basis,” writes Sir Sidney.
“Grant was the Vikings coach in 1985 before Jerry Burns took over the following year. Grant and Carroll became what you might call father and son during that time.”
