The Seahawks' QB met with the media today, and it was relatively non-revelatory. It was, however, funny. He was meeting with the media right outside the auditorium where Holmgren has his news conferences, and in the middle of it the special teams units' meeting had broken up, and about 30 guys come rolling out of the auditorium. Since there are so many cameras and reporters, the players have to squeeze past the group one by one -- each of whom made a remark to Hasselbeck as he passed. "I love bald guys," somebody yelled. Hasselbeck actually blushed for well over a minute, until everybody passed through.

As for anything newsy, well, not much luck there. He said DeMarcus Ware is his biggest concern, and that Dallas' front seven if very good. He is looking to atone for his two interceptions at the end of the last two games. He doesn't pay much attention to rumors so had no idea about Adam Schefter's NFL.com report. He considers this season an aberration that has explanations for their 2-9 record.

He also was asked about his state of mind after the Arizona game, which Holmgren discussed. Matt said, "If you are the guy who is dinged, how would I know? I don't have a good answer."

(On the final interception…) It was my fault. I misread the route by Koren. I think he did everything he was supposed to do. We had run similar routes earlier in the game; they had covered it a certain way, and I was obviously anticipating something else. It was very very costly mistake; huge mistake and it ended our chances. Our defense gave us a great chance to come back and tie or win the game, and I made a poor decision and ended that chance. Ended the game, really. When I threw it, he had his back to me, but I really didn’t foresee that ending that way. It was a poor decision with the football. I am trusted with the ball, and I am trusted in those situations, and I am definitely kicking myself right now. It was sloppy.

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Q. How are you?

A. I think I’m alright, I think I’m ok. I dodged a bullet, I think, so I’m not overly concerned with that.

Q. At first it looked worse than it was. Coach said it was just a tweak.

A. I hyperextended my knee. As I was hyperextending, I was able to twist with it. And so I don’t know exactly what’s wrong. The doctors didn’t seem too concerned. I think were going to do the normal scans. But I’m not too concerned about it.

Q. Did the guy hit you late?

A. No, it was a bang bang play. I think it was that I let the ball go kind of early and it’s just a football thing. Stuff like that happens. I feel kind of fortunate that I was able to walk off the field and play a little bit after that.

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QB MATT HASSELBECK

(On “the block”…) It wasn’t that big of a deal, I don’t think. We had audibles on the play, and then Julius made a great run and second effort or third effort or whatever it was, and I just try to help. It was a little bit like bowling. You get one pin, and the other one goes down, and you act like you did it on purpose. Usually, as a quarterback, you don’t get to do stuff like that, so it was fun.

(On what Holmgren said about the block…) I think everyone was happy except him. He kind of gave me this look, like, don’t do that again. I can’t tell if people are really congratulating me right now, or making fun of me. [laughter] I think expectations are real low, so it’s OK. It’s a good feeling anytime you score a touchdown, and our wide receivers, they take a lot of pride in blocking downfield. I think that helped us today. I get to feel what that feels like myself, and it’s a good feeling.

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QB MATT HASSELBECK

(On where the team goes from this point…) “Well, we’ve been 0-2 before, and there’s still 14 games left, so mathematically it doesn’t really mean too much. But you can’t give games away. They played well but we played bad, and we expect to win at home. I don’t know what to say. We’re a little surprised. I’m a little surprised, a little stunned, a little upset. I think we’ll probably feel that way all day today and until we watch the film tomorrow and then take Tuesday to try to transition and then Wednesday it’s time to get ready to play another game.”

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On today’s game:
I think for the most part we will be able to watch this film and learn a lot of things. Our mistakes today I think are nothing hard work can’t fix.

On lack of preseason playing time:
I didn’t feel that way. I guess I could leave that to my coaches to say what they thought, but I didn’t feel that way at all. I’ve felt really good for a long time. I didn’t think it was that at all.

On national reports of back problems:
That is not really what was hurting, my back. From what I was told is that 85% of the world would look the same if they MRI’ed it, and it was probably 5, 6 years old. That is not really why my back was hurt.

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Matt Hasselbeck met with the media on this final day of mini-camp. Here were some of his quotes:

Hasselbeck on Bobby Engram: "I feel like I can throw to Bobby with my eyes closed. When Bobby comes back, he'll be the same Bobby we know and love. We know he works hard when he's not here. He'll be a playmaker for us like he was last year.

Disappointed in Engram for taking a stand like this? "You know, in Bobby's case not really. He's one of those guys I almost put him in the same category as Walt, Chris Gray. They've been doing it so long they know exactly what it takes to get ready. A lot of the plays that we run are for them. If you watch the cut-up and we run that play 100 times, 97 of them have gone to Bobby -- that kind of thing. So it's an opportunity for the Logan Paynes and the Jordan Kents and the Ben Obomanus, it's a chance for them to run Bobby's plays.

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I caught up with Matt after the Pro Bowl press conference he did with Ben Roethlisberger and Larry Fitzgerald. It was funny because both Roethlisberger and Fitzgerald show up dressed very nicely, and Matt shows up in basketball shorts and a sweat top. He said he was late coming from the Jim Rome show and then got stuck in traffic. In any case, here is the transcript of the interview:

What are your thoughts about Jim Zorn leaving? "It was one of those things that was leaked out that he might be leaving. I didn’t think he would go but when he decided to go, I have been with him a long time and he has meant a lot to me. In the one sense I was happy for him, but it is a bit of a loss for us and for me."

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I’m OK. I banged my wrist a little bit early in the second quarter. Got x-rays. Negative. Iced it. Threw some tape on there. Probably throw some tape on there on the flight home so it doesn’t swell. But I’m fine.

How he got injured: “I was throwing the ball away and I hit the ground. I don’t know if I landed on it or somebody else landed on it. But I fell awkwardly. It happened early in the second quarter. It was the first drive.”

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(On the success of the rushing game…) It’s great. Going into this game, we knew that it was tough to run on these guys. They’re ranked very, very high against the run. We knew that our opportunities to run against them would probably be when they tried to blitz us. That is when you really have the opportunity to gash them. They are a little bit of an overload blitz team. They’re moving around, they’re very active. I thought the coaches did a nice job of giving me the leeway to quick count them a bunch, so it makes them tougher to disguise when you change your tempo. We went No Huddle to start it, and that was a pretty good thing for us running the ball. I thought it was a decent thing. Like we did a couple of years ago, on Third and 7, they’re overloading blitz, we ran right up them, right up the gut to Leonard Weaver and got about 7 or 8 yards. Those are opportunities that we had, and we had big plays that way and it helped. When you play these guys, they’re never lined up where you expect them to line up. They just walk around. They are confident in their coverages and their scheme. They have some really good players who know where they need to fit. There were times today where they were calling out our play, and we would still gash them. That’s just guys up front saying, hey I know who my guy is and I’m just going to go hard. I know the quarterback is not going to change the play, or if I had changed the play, then they knew where it was coming. OK, who cares. We’re just going to go hard, we’re going to play hard, and our running backs ran hard, they ran downhill, and that’s good. But it is tough to play against these guys defensively. They are well coached, they have a good defensive coordinator. When you think about the great defenses around the league, I mean Baltimore is always, always up there.

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RE: The reason behind the loss
They kind of dominated third down today, that’s obviously a pretty big statistic. We went into this game focusing on not turning the ball over. We felt like if we didn’t turn the ball over we’d have a pretty good chance to win. The other quarterback had a great game, they had good success converting on third down and that was a big part of it.

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QB MATT HASSELBECK

(On the win today…) Our guys played really well. We had to prepare very hard for this game. It’s a tough team to prepare for, they’ve had some injuries on defense that, believe it or not, have made it a little bit harder for us. We had to figure out who was going to be playing where and what there plan was going to be. They played us many different ways over they years, and Clancy [Pendergast] does a nice job. But guys made plays, and made big catches. Our equipment staff did a phenomenal job of rubbing down the footballs for us. They used a new technique, and that was really big. I think everyone felt good, and I think everything was kind of going our way a little bit.

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