Seahawks vs Rams - breakdown

Since the Seahawks was one of my Super Bowl picks, I was curious. It took five weeks, but I finally get a chance to see them play in a televised game. I was both impressed and disappointed with their play.

The impressiveness of the 1st half:
Basically the Seahawks dominated offensively and defensively. The Seahawks' balanced run-pass offense tore the St. Louis defense to shreds. The young defense kept St. Louis off balance with various blitzes, fake blitzes, and zone blitzes. The only knocks on Seattle in the 1st half was the long run they gave up, and a few dropped balls. After one half, Seattle was up 24 - 7 over St. Louis.

The disappointment of the 2nd half:
Okay, where's the killer instict? If you got a team down, you have to put them away! Seattle didn't, and payed the price. The playcalling inexplicably turned conservative. Between the consevative playcalling (run, run, run) and the dropped balls (inconvenient in the 1st half, drive killers in the 2nd half), Seattle failed to score more than 3 points in the 2nd half. Seattle's defense stopped blitzing. Why? To the Rams credit, they ran the ball a lot in the 2nd half to keep the Seahawks' defense off balance. But you see this all the time in the NFL. You blitz, the opponent's QB struggles. You stop blitzing, and the opponent's QB gets into a rhythym and plays well. Then you finally blitz again, and it's too late because Bulger knows you're blitzing and confidently throws a perfect pass for a touchdown in overtime. Rams win 33 - 27 in overtime.

I think in this game you can see both the good and the bad of the Seahawks. They are obviously talented enough to compete with anybody. But they seem to lack a killer instinct, and they make mistakes that cost them in the close games (ie dropped balls). I'm not jumping off the Seahawk bandwagon yet, since only the Eagles are clearly better in the NFC. But if they are to make a run in the playoffs, they need to iron out these mistakes. If you're up 10 points late in the 4th quarter, you cannot be beaten over the top like they were in the game (especially since you didn't blitz). The coach's time management late in the game was questionable (passing the ball, when running it for 3 downs would have milked the clock down to 30 seconds in the last drive). These need to improve. We'll see if they can.