Brunell, Portis Look for Bright Side

Mark Brunell is corralled for an eight-yard loss by defensive tackle Chuck Darby of the Seahawks, who led the league in sacks during the regular season. (By Toni L. Sandys -- The Washington Post)

SEATTLE, Jan. 14 -- They spoke as if they had played two separate seasons, and Mark Brunell and Clinton Portis only wanted to remember the first one.

After all, they said, the first 15 games they played this season meant more to the Washington Redskins organization than the last three. So why focus, they wondered, squarely on the Redskins' offensive combustion that fizzled to a low point in Saturday's 20-10 loss to the Seattle Seahawks?

"We're done now, so I'm going to lean toward the positive," Brunell said. "I'm not looking at what strides we need to make, but what strides we did make."

On Saturday, though, the duo's lackluster performance left Redskins fans with an offseason to make the same choice: Remember the two pillars of the Washington offense for their ability to propel the Redskins to the playoffs?

Or remember their lack of production once they made it there?

For the second playoff game in a row, Portis and Brunell failed to ignite the Washington offense. The Seahawks stuffed eight players near the line of scrimmage, overwhelming Washington's offensive line and limiting Portis to 41 yards on 17 carries. Without a running threat to support him, Brunell never found a rhythm until it was too late.

In two postseason games, Portis managed only 94 yards. Brunell threw for just one touchdown -- and a lucky one, at that.

"Obviously, we wanted to be more productive than this in the playoffs," Coach Joe Gibbs said. "That's one of those things that we'll look real hard at. Offensively, how could we do a better job?"

Portis and Brunell both said the Redskins' problems Saturday started with a few poor possessions in the first quarter and then snowballed quickly. Washington ran its first 15 plays, both players said, under some of the worst possible circumstances: buried inside the 22-yard line with deafening crowd noise that made communication difficult.

Five times in a row, the offense ran onto the field, then ran off three plays later. Portis ran his first six carries for a total of 10 yards; Brunell failed to complete his first three passes.

"The field position really hurt us," Brunell said. "They had us pinned down there, and it was tough with the noise. Many times you have to weather through that and it's a tough way to start a football game. You don't establish any momentum or really get anything going. I think that hurt us."

The Redskins wondered later if they had never recovered from those first five possessions. Filled with confidence, Seattle brought more players to the line of scrimmage, Portis said. Seattle's fierce, consistent run defense was compounded by Washington's weakened offensive line. Ray Brown, the starting right guard in place of injured Randy Thomas, missed large portions of the second and third quarter with cramps. His replacement, Cory Raymer -- the backup center -- struggled in run-blocking schemes.

Portis sometimes found himself holding the ball and wondering where he should go. He never broke a run longer than five yards to the outside. When Portis ran up the middle, he often did little more than dive a few yards forward, as if resigned to his fate.

"We couldn't really give him anywhere to go," Brown said. "I give the Seahawks a lot of credit, because they did a great job. But we didn't do our part. They dominated."

Said Portis: "Anytime a team stacks the box, it's going to be hard to run anywhere. They played the run. They didn't do a lot of blitzing. It was a really good game plan for them."

The mastery of the Seattle game plan, the Redskins said, was that by stopping the running, they stopped the passing game, too. Brunell said he rarely found open receivers until a hectic, desperation drive late in the fourth quarter -- fleeting success he attributed to little more than circumstance.

Even Brunell's one touchdown pass hardly made the Washington offense look proficient. The quarterback tried to throw a tight pass to Santana Moss, but Andre Dyson dived and deflected it. The ball ricocheted off Moss's chest and then dropped into the wide receiver's arms. He then held it up like a winning lottery ticket.

"Offensively, we just never did it," Brunell said. "They just stuffed us when we ran. They shut us down. That's our M.O., and we didn't do it.

"Absolutely we're frustrated right now. We lost the game, and especially with the numbers we've had, that's frustrating. You need your best games in the playoffs, and obviously that wasn't the case. There's no question."

The only question left, then, was just how much this playoff spiral would cost Brunell and Portis -- two players who, just a few weeks ago, had watermarked the 2005 season with their resurgences.

Portis broke the team's single-season rushing record and, in his second season in Washington, looked like the running back for whom the Redskins had traded.

Brunell overcame a difficult 2004 season and made himself into a reliable starter, igniting Washington's offense with both his arm and his legs. The two players both felt they had enjoyed great seasons, they said Saturday.

Except, of course, for the last few games.

"You have to look at the positives, because we came a long way," Portis said. "This isn't how we wanted it to end, but this doesn't overshadow our whole year."