Seahawks snap losing streak

ST. LOUIS — At halftime of Sunday’s game against the St. Louis Rams, mild-mannered Seattle Seahawks quarterback Seneca Wallace was so livid that he undressed his teammates with words.

A couple hours later, before undressing in the locker room, Wallace was overcome by tears.

While a battle between two teams with matching 2-11 records might not have brought out much passion for a typical football fan, it carried plenty of emotion for the struggling Seahawks. After ending a six-game losing streak with a last-second victory, 23-20 over the St. Louis Rams, the Seahawks were bursting with relief.

“Losing is kind of contagious, and we wanted to get that off our back,” said wide receiver Courtney Taylor, who sprinted across the field to embrace teammate Deion Branch after Branch made the biggest play of the day with a 45-yard reception to set up Olindo Mare’s game-winning field goal. “Today, I felt like we finally got that (losing) off our back.”

The most emotional player was Wallace, who broke down into tears after a game that saw him endure plenty of physical punishment while rallying the Seahawks back from a 10-point halftime deficit.

Afterward, Wallace said that the afternoon was special because he kept thinking of his mother, Linda, who died following a two-year battle with cancer in 2006.

“We had some big plays down the stretch, and I know that without her being an inspiration in my life, and without God, those plays don’t happen,” the Seahawks’ quarterback said after Sunday’s win. “I felt like she was there spiritually. … She was watching down on us.”

Wallace survived a physical first half, dished out a passionate halftime speech, and closed out the game with two of the best drives of his NFL career. After completing five consecutive passes on a 10-play, 80-yard drive that resulted in the tying touchdown with 2:47 remaining, Wallace completed the 45-yard pass to Branch to set up the game-winning field goal.

“I can’t say enough about him,” coach Mike Holmgren said of Wallace, who completed 15 of 25 passes for 226 yards Sunday. “He gives you everything he’s got all the time. … I’ve never seen him cry like that before. They were kind of happy tears.”

The Seahawks opened the game in a sleep-walk, allowing St. Louis to march 77 yards in nine plays before taking a 7-0 lead on Torry Holt’s 31-yard touchdown reception. A Seahawks drive that sputtered near midfield gave the Rams the ball back before Seattle defensive back Jordan Babineaux picked up a fumble and ran it back 24 yard for the Seahawks’ only points of the first half.

St. Louis scored 10 unanswered points in the second quarter and went into halftime with a 17-7 lead.

Wallace, who had spent most of the first two quarters running for his life and got the wind knocked out of him on a blind-side hit in the waning seconds of the first half, entered the locker room with anger in his eyes and venom on his lips.

“I’ve never seen that type of fire from Seneca,” Taylor said of Wallace’s halftime tirade. “Sen’s a very laid-back guy; he’s just cool under pressure. When he came in here at halftime, I’ve never seen him like that — never. But I think that picked up this team.”

Wallace wasn’t the only person unleashing frustration in the locker room at halftime. Holmgren gave a pretty passionate speech of his own.

“He chewed us out pretty good, but he had a right to,” receiver Bobby Engram said of the Seahawks’ 60-year-old coach. “We were playing hard, but I don’t know that we were playing extremely excited.”

The Seahawks responded with scoring drives on their first two possessions of the second half. A pair of Mare field goals in the third quarter pulled Seattle within 17-13 as the final period began.

A field goal put the Rams up 20-13 with 11 minutes remaining, but that would be the final points the Rams would score. Wallace and the Seattle offense responded with the 10-play drive, and T.J. Duckett’s 1-yard touchdown — the 254-pound halfback got into the end zone because of second effort and some push-from-behind assists from guard Mansfield Wrotto and wide receiver Koren Robinson — helped the Seahawks even the score for the first time since it was 7-7.

The Rams (2-12) used up just 18 seconds of game clock on their next possession, a three-and-out that was followed by a punt and a 17-yard return from Justin Forsett. The Seahawks started their final drive at the Seattle 32-yard line with 2:11 remaining and closed the deal.

Wallace made a key audible call on third-and-4, changing from a pass to a run in the face of a St. Louis blitz, then watched fullback Leonard Weaver go for 8 yards.

On the next play, Branch exposed a hole in the St. Louis coverage and found himself wide open along the right sideline. Wallace hit him for a 45-yard reception to the St. Louis 9.

Fifty-four seconds later, Mare’s 27-yard field goal sailed through the uprights as time expired.

And with it, the Seahawks’ losing streak was killed.

“It’s like a horse off our shoulders,” Branch said.

Exhausted linebacker D.D. Lewis sat in the Seahawks’ locker room after the win and laughed off a question about getting some weight off his shoulders.

“You call it a weight, but I call it the world,” he said. “We did want to get a win in there somewhere.”

A few feet away, teammate Lofa Tatupu stood at the next locker and smirked before delivering the most apropos perspective of the day.

“C’mon, man,” he said. “We’re still 3-11.”