With the Seahawks visiting Minnesota this Sunday, Seahawks receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh will get an up-close look at the team he passed up to sign with Seattle as a free agent.
Well, not really. He’ll get a look at a team quarterbacked by Brett Favre, who wasn’t yet a member of the Vikings when Housh made his choice in March. Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, the wideout admitted that a big factor in his decision was his belief that playing with Matt Hasselbeck would serve him better than either Tarvaris Jackson or Sage Rosenfels. If Favre had been there, though, Housh hinted the decision might have been different.
“Had he [Favre] been there I don’t know what would have happened,” he said. “He wasn’t there, so I felt I had to do what was best for me. And if you look at both teams, yeah, I knew Minnesota was going to be good, but I thought we were going to be really good, too. So hindsight is better than foresight, you know? And like I say, nine games into it, it doesn’t look like I made a great decision, but it’s too early.”
Houshmandzadeh went on to say that you can’t judge a long-term decision based on the first year and that he thinks the Seahawks can run the table for the rest of the season if they can avoid the red-zone mistakes that contributed to their loss to the Cardinals last weekend. He’s certainly right about the former and will have a chance to help prove the latter in the coming weeks.
Hasselbeck, for his part, is pretty sure that he’d be on the opposite sideline from Houshmandzadeh this weekend if Favre had made an earlier decision.
“I’m just glad Brett didn’t come out of retirement around that time because he just probably would have picked Brett,” Hasselbeck said Wednesday.
Things have obviously worked out well for the Vikings. They’re 78-1, Sidney Rice has had a breakout season and they drafted Rookie of the Year contender Percy Harvin, something they might not have done if Housh was on board.