When the Seahawks opened training camp almost six weeks ago, 
But not Thursday, when the topics he tackled were strictly football.
“That’s the way I like,” Hasselbeck said after his weekly Q&A session.
It’s also the way his team needs it as the Seahawks complete their final preparations for Sunday’s regular-season opener against the St. Louis Rams at Qwest Field.
Hasselbeck has performed so well during training camp and the preseason that there is no need to revisit his injured-shortened 2008 season.
“It’s exciting,” Hasselbeck said when asked about the opener. “It’s exciting to finally have the regular season here. We’ve been looking forward to it for a while.
“I think the thing that’s most exciting is just the energy that comes with the regular season. The season kicks off tonight for the league (Tennessee at Pittsburgh), and just the buzz around the city. We definitely feel that energy.”
And the Seahawks are feeling pretty good about the prospects of bouncing back from their 4-12 record last season because Hasselbeck is looking more like the QB who passes for 3,330-plus yards and 22-plus touchdowns in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007.
Yes, there has been a new offense to digest, a new zone-blocking scheme for the running game, a shuffled offensive line and two new receivers. But there’s also an experienced quarterback who is playing more like that good ol’ Matt Hasselbeck.
Just look at what he was able to accomplish in four-plus quarters of the second and third preseason games. Hasselbeck completed 73 percent of his passes (35 of 48) for 387 yards, with four touchdowns and one interception – on a pass that was tipped.
“We have a lot of respect for that offense,” Steve Spagnuolo, the Rams’ first-year coach, said this week. “Matt Hasselbeck really makes the whole thing go because he’s so smart and very talented.
“They certainly look like a well-oiled machine to me. They have been efficient offensively and it doesn’t matter who has been in there at the offensive line, those guys have been doing a nice job.”
Spagnuolo is no stranger to Hasselbeck, either. He was the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants last season – when the Giants beat the Seahawks 44-6 at the Meadowlands, Hasselbeck’s last start before sitting out five games.
Asked how much the Seahawks have looked at the video from that game to try and determine what the Rams are now trying to do defensively, the usually effusive Hasselbeck went cryptic.
“A lot,” he said. “That’s a real important part of our game plan.”
Asked about Spagnuolo specifically, Hasselbeck was much more detailed and descriptive.
“It’s not necessarily just the blitz packages, he does a nice job with coverages,” Hasselbeck said of Spagnuolo, who got his advanced degree in blitzing coaching under the late Jim Johnson while an assistant coach with the Philadelphia Eagles from 2001-06.
“And he does a nice job of coaching up his defensive players to be instinctive. You look at the guys that they’ve had in New York and also the young guys that they have in St. Louis and they just have good instincts.”
Plus, there’s the element of surprise that comes from a former coordinator taking over his first team.
“We’re not really sure what we’re going to see,” Hasselbeck said. “We’re going to see a lot of un-scouted looks and things that we’ll see for the first time on Sunday, and we’ll have to adjust on the fly.”
That’s why the Seahawks’ mantra has been, as first-year Jim Mora put it, “We prepare for our opponent, but we’re going to play to the Seattle Seahawks championship standard.”
Along with that theme comes a fine focus.
“For us right now, I think coach Mora said it best the other day, we’re trying to win one game and that’s all we care about,” Hasselbeck said. “That’s all we have to do. We don’t have to go out and try to win the division this week.
“We just have to go out and win one game. If we narrow our focus and just look at it that way, I think it makes the task at hand much easier to accomplish. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
“We’re probably worried more about us than we are about them, because there’s so much unknown about them,” Hasselbeck said. “We don’t know what their game plan is going to be, but we know what ours is and if we focus on that it will give us a good way to start.”
