Matt Hasselbeck
Matt Hasselbeck
Matthew Michael Hasselbeck is a former American football quarterback and current analyst for ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown. He was drafted in the sixth round of the 1998 NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers. After a season on the practice squad and two seasons backing up Brett Favre, he was traded to the Seattle Seahawks in 2001. Hasselbeck led Seattle to six playoff appearances and a Super Bowl. He was selected to three Pro Bowls and was an All-Pro in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFootball Player
Date of Birth25 September 1975
CityBoulder, CO
CountryUnited States of America
At the end of the day, after all the distractions, after the national anthem, after the planes fly over - well, I guess there will be no flyover because it's in a dome. But after all that stuff, you just have to focus on playing a football game. Sixty minutes of the best football you could possibly play. That's what it's going to take.
That's unfortunate because, in the biggest game of your life, you want to play with the balls you've been playing with all season.
Obviously, when those guys are playing well, it makes my job easier. The system that we have here, it's just able to click when those guys are doing their jobs.
We have been in the newspaper for playing football and not other stuff. That wasn't always the case last year.
For Darrell, the next step will be taking on a real leadership role with the younger guys, ... He's playing about as good as anyone can play.
That sounds like a question that a bunch of sports writers sitting around a desk should discuss. I don't really have the answer to that question. I don't know. What I do know is that the more I focus on playing football the better I play. The better I play, the better I'll do in those kind of discussions down the road.
It obviously helps playing at home with our crowd into it the way they were today.
The Pro Bowl. But I don't feel like playing right now.
I think the biggest thing was how well our defense was playing and how our crowd was into (the game).
We just had opportunities to score touchdowns, but we didn't score touchdowns. We were moving the ball fine, rhythm, time of possession, first downs, yards...we just couldn't score touchdowns.
We were really focused on the task at hand rather than, 'Oh, my gosh, we're in this big game.
We went 8-0. We were the team that never punted. You can go back and see the trophy. It's printed on there.
It was tough. There was a lot of stuff I'd never been through. I'd never really been the guy. I'd never had to play through injury. I really had never played in the NFL.
It was a one game deal here. We were talking about this game and this game only...I have learned this week that people dogged the Seahawks because they don't think there is history, but there is history here.