Remember the tight ones

ST. LOUIS – With the first big game of the 2005 season a few days away, Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren sat back in a comfortable chair inside his spacious Kirkland, Wash., office last Tuesday and hit the play button.

Just the requisite act of re-living last year’s three games against the St. Louis Rams sent Holmgren into a tailspin.

“I went into (a meeting with) the offensive staff, and I was afraid I was going to break furniture and throw the monitor out the window,” he said last week, shortly after watching the video.

Make no bones about it: The Seahawks are angry about what happened last season. Three losses to the Rams have sat in their stomachs for far too long, and they’re finally ready to do something about it.

So if anyone believes that Week 5 of the 2005 season is too early for a so-called Big Game, maybe a few broken chairs and flying television monitors will snap them out of that delusion.

“There are a lot of reasons this is an important game,” said Holmgren, whose team will try to end a four-game, head-to-head losing streak against the Rams today at the Edward Jones Dome. “You don’t want to have a losing streak against anybody, against any team. All those games were really close games. I watched them all (last week); very painful again.”

In addition to the temporary prize of being in sole possession of first place in the division, the winner of today’s game will be saddled with the title of the team to beat in the NFC West. Beyond that, a Seahawks victory would exorcise some demons against St. Louis, while another loss could play mental tricks on the team that just can’t seem beat the Rams.

“It’s hard beating a team once,” Rams running back Steven Jackson told St. Louis reporters last week. “But to beat them three times, for them to feel like they can just come out and beat us at home? I think that’s even tougher for them to think about.

“You have to think about, we were able to knock them off in a big comeback in the beginning of (last) season. I don’t think they fully got over that yet.”

If a common thread ran among the three games last season – all Rams victories – it’s that the Seahawks came into each meeting on a roll, while St. Louis was at a crossroads.

St. Louis had lost two of three before an October meeting with the Seahawks, which resulted in the Rams’ memorable comeback victory from a 17-point, fourth-quarter deficit.

The Rams were in the midst of a two-game slide before the November rematch, yet St. Louis looked like a Super Bowl contender during the first half and hung on for a 23-12 win.

Then came the playoff game. The 8-8 Rams needed help – a Carolina Panthers loss to New Orleans was especially cooperative – just to get into the playoffs, and their 4-6 record down the stretch that included two wins against disinterested teams that had already clinched postseason berths. Yet the Rams used that meeting with Seattle to right themselves for the third time in as many tries.

This year’s game has similar stakes for St. Louis, which is just trying to keep its head above water. Last Sunday’s 44-24 loss to the New York Giants was such a sloppy display that Rams coach Mike Martz gathered his players for a team meeting later that night at the team headquarters.

“There were a lot of distractions, and I just wanted to make sure we were refocused,” said Martz, who missed two days of practices last week because of a medical condition but is expected to be on the sidelines for today’s game. “… There are just some things that we have got to do. We have to get better. (The meeting) was just trying to refocus everybody more than anything else.”

Unlike last season, the Seahawks aren’t coming into the game with momentum. All three meetings in 2004 came after Seattle victories, yet this time around the Seahawks (2-2) are hoping to rebound from a disappointing overtime loss at Washington.

“We expect to win,” offensive lineman Robbie Tobeck said of the importance of today’s game, “and we’d like to get back on the winning track.”

What better way than against the opponent that has caused the Seahawks so much heartbreak?

“There’s no secret about what happened last year,” Seahawks fullback Mack Strong said. “Even though this is a new year and a different team, we have a lot of incentive to go in there and put our best foot forward.”

Most Seahawks were doing their best to play down the importance of this game. Several shrugged off the possibility of a budding rivalry, saying that the two teams couldn’t be seen as rivals until the results become more balanced.

But the atmosphere was noticeably more energetic during the week of preparations for today’s game. After all, if Holmgren has to watch another video of his team losing to the Rams, he might run out of furniture to break.