Saints / Seahawks

[Raji]

New Orleans Saints at Seattle Seahawks (-6 1/2, 43)

Branching out

The Seahawks will be without wide receiver Deion Branch Sunday night against the Saints. Branch sprained his ankle in Seattle’s 21-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers last Sunday and will miss the next two games.

“It is tough when you lose a starter, especially when he is the caliber of Deion,” Bobby Engram told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “At the same time the rest of us have to step up and make plays.”

Branch leads the Seahawks with over 340 receiving yards and one touchdown and has compiled over 120 yards receiving in two games this season and is averaging 15.6 yards per catch.

Engram will replace Branch in the starting lineup and will move to the slot when Seattle goes to a three-receiver formation. The veteran WR has over 250 receiving yards with two TDs this season.

That’s a Mare

The New Orleans Saints will stick with place kicker Orlando Mare for Sunday’s game against the Seattle Seahawks. The Saints auditioned seven free-agent kickers this week as potential replacements for Mare.

The veteran kicker is battling a groin injury that he suffered during practice on Oct. 4. The injury has caused him to convert just three of seven field goal attempts this season with the longest coming from 34 yards.

“I felt OK,” Mare told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “I won't be able to hit any 60-yard field goals or kick off, but I don't think they're expecting that.”

Mare, acquired from the Miami Dolphins in a trade this spring, has converted 248 of 310 field goal tries and 319 of 324 extra point attempts, for 1,063 points in his 11-year NFL career.

Here today, gone tomorrow

The sudden retirement of veteran fullback Mack Strong came as a surprise to the Seahawks’ organization and it also creates a major issue for Seattle’s ground attack. Strong, a two-time pro-Bowl selection, paved the way for three running backs that have rushed for at least 1,000 yards in a season.

Third-year FB Leonard Weaver will replace Strong in the starting lineup Sunday against the Saints. The former tight-end at Carson-Newman has played in five games this season and has benefited from Strong’s leadership since joining the Seahawks in 2005.

“I have the utmost confidence in Leonard Weaver,” Strong told reporters. “I think he will make people forget about Mack Strong around here. He can have that type of impact because he has that type of ability. He’s just a great guy to be around.”

Mo rushing

Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren will give backup running back Maurice Morris more carries this Sunday, and it has nothing to with Shaun Alexander’s injured hand.

“Sitting Shaun for his hand, that's not going to speed up anything, so I wouldn't do that,” Holmgren told the Seattle Times. “But Mo practices hard ... I was planning to get him some carries in the game but we had the ball so few times in the second half, it was kind of funny how it worked out.”

Morris has played in two games this season, after injuring his hip in the opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The perennial backup has 28 rushing yards, 38 passing yards and a TD this season.

Holmgren makes the change after the Seahawks’ loss to the Steelers last Sunday. Alexander ran for a meager 25 yards and caught three passes for seven yards and not TDs in Seattle’s 21-0 loss.

“I'm not doing anything different, I'm just doing it the way that we used to do it before Mo got hurt,” Holmgren added.

Crunching the numbers

The Seahawks are tied with the Arizona Cardinals for first-place in the NFC West and there next opponents are the winless Saints and the winless St. Louis Rams.

On the New Orleans side of the ball, things don’t look as peachy. Only one team, the 1992 San Diego Chargers, has comeback from a 0-4 start to reach the postseason since the league changed postseason formats in 1990.

"If we continue to make the dumb mistakes, drop as many passes, penalize ourselves on big plays, not take advantage of our field position, then it’s hard for the result to change,” said the Saints’ Sean Payton.

New Orleans is 0-4 against the spread (ATS) in its last five games against NFC opponents and is 0-7 ATS in their last seven overall.

Seattle, on the other hand, is 5-1 ATS in its last six games following a straight up (SU) loss of more than 14 points and has topped the Saints in three consecutive meetings. They outscored the Saints 68-27 in those losses.

The Seahawks lead the all-time series 5-4 SU and 7-2 ATS, with the under cashing in five of their eight meetings.

Raji