Hasselbeck Gets Rout Rolling

Flat doesn’t begin to describe the New York Giants’ start to their supposed showdown with Seattle.

Flattened is more like it.

Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck threw five touchdown passes -- four in a first half in which Eli Manning had three interceptions, and Seattle held on to beat New York, 42-30, on Sunday.

The Giants trailed, 42-3, before rallying in the fourth quarter.

“I don’t know what it is. But it’s not flat,” Coach Tom Coughlin said after the Giants followed a 17-point fourth-quarter deficit at Philadelphia last week with a 35-0 flop in the first half against the Seahawks.

“A team that does nothing but preach and talk about turnovers, we turn it over like nothing matters, nothing counts,” Coughlin said. “It cost us the game.”

That left New York’s Jeremy Shockey irate -- at his coach.

“We got outplayed and out-coached. Write that down,” the tight end said after he was told of Coughlin’s frustrated outburst.

Shockey had four catches for 58 yards.

When asked what he meant by “out-coached,” Shockey said, “You saw the game.”

The Seahawks (3-0) won their 12th consecutive regular-season home game and finally felt good about their previously sputtering offense, thanks to Deion Branch’s debut.

The former New England Patriot and Super Bowl most valuable player caught two passes for 23 yards and ran a reverse eight yards.

He was part of the Seahawks’ new, four-receiver scheme, an offensive makeover during the game’s relatively few important parts.

“There was no way for them to prepare for that ... we were running routes we’d never shown,” Hasselbeck said.

Whatever, Coughlin huffed.

“Our pass coverage was practically nonexistent.... Turn the ball over like that and not be able to stop them, not to get anything done until the second half,” he said. “Makes no sense to me.”

Made history, though.

New York (1-2) wanted to take Seattle’s roaring crowd out of the game early. The Giants did that by free-falling into the deepest first-half hole in their 82-year history.

“We just handed it to them,” Coughlin said.

Manning was two for seven for minus-one yard and the two interceptions in the first quarter, when Seattle led, 21-0. He was 20 for 26 for 238 yards after that.

“Yeah, it was hard to believe,” Manning said of the start.

The rout rendered the incessant roaring of a Qwest Field-record crowd of 68,161 moot -- but not mute. The fans were mostly mocking the Giants by the end of the third quarter, after Seattle completed a 17-play drive that ended with Darrell Jackson’s touchdown catch for a 42-3 lead.