Seahawks also defeat 30 years of team history
SEATTLE – Dan McGwire? Gone. Mike Blatt? Never heard of him.
Andre Hines too gassed to make it up the berm at training camp in Cheney? Didn’t happen.
The touchstones of professional football in Seattle have been smudged by fingerprints of failure and fiasco. So how long does it take to exorcise 30 years of not quite and not even close? Thirty years of 8-8 mediocrity and 6-10 misery? Thirty years of gunning the engine axle-deep in gumbo?
Thirty years of fan devotion – OK, minus a few years of indifference when it was simply unavoidable – never fully requited?
Well, it took the Seattle Seahawks maybe 15 minutes on the clock Sunday afternoon to punch their tickets to their first Super Bowl.
This part of the journey’s been going on for weeks, of course – building to the crazy crescendo that shook Qwest Field even before the Seahawks had put even one hat into the collective gizzle of the Carolina Panthers. It’s a million steps to the peak of any Everest; it’s the last one that gets remembered.
And the Seahawks got there early Sunday, so there was plenty of time on top for a party.
The last three quarters of the NFC championship game amounted to waiting for the petty details. Like the final score (Seattle 34, Carolina 14). Like who would overturn the Gatorade bucket on Mike Holmgren (no one, as it turned out). Like whether another blunder by the NFL’s hobbyist officials would change the tenor of the game (nope). Like whether that No. 12 guy – there were 67,837 of him and this morning he is incapable of speech – would ever shut up (nope again).
The only important detail was a done deal.
“We’re going to the Super Bowl,” giggled fullback Mack Strong. “How do you think it feels?”
He’s asking us? What would anyone here know about it?
What defines the football fan of the Northwest is a perpetual refill of hope and an embarrassing virginity with all things Super. Which is why Sunday’s victim wasn’t Carolina, necessarily, but history.
Brian Bosworth being perforated by Bo Jackson’s cleats. Kelly Stouffer at quarterback. The moving trucks Ken Behring backed up to the team’s headquarters in the dead of night. Stan Gelbaugh at quarterback. Lamar Smith crashing into the median in Kirkland and Mike Frier coming out of it paralyzed. Jeff Kemp at quarterback. Joe Nash faking injury to stop the clock. Rick Mirer at quarterback.
All those vibes – whether evil or tragic or just hopeless – wafted out between the matching overhangs of Qwest, pushed out by a relentless din and something more meaningful than SoDo Mojo.
Potential fulfilled.
“Everybody always expected more of our team than what we had,” said running back Shaun Alexander, who for a time was the poster child for that condition. “We had talent but we weren’t a great team.
“Now we’re a great team.”
Well, whoa. Greatness will be validated by a bigger ring, but you get the idea.
“When we bring the trophy home,” offered tight end Jerramy Stevens, “it’ll be even better.”
Really? It’s hard to imagine it will be that much better than this.
This happened in front of all the Seahawks beloved, whose adoration has never been more manifest. This happened after a week of pounding by the professional doubters who characterized the Seahawks as a team gifted with membership in a sad-sack division, with a soft-touch schedule and with an undeserved home-field advantage. This unfolded as a merciless, and nearly flawless, beating of a quality team, albeit one with a flat-tire running game. And this was accomplished by turning the newly anointed “best player in football” – Carolina receiver Steve Smith – into a cipher.
Five catches, 33 yards. There’s your best player.
Yes, there was that 59-yard punt return for a touchdown – at least it counted for six once the officials picked up the flags that they’d thrown for an illegal block in the back – but any impact Smith might have had at the line of scrimmage was undone by the bumping, crowding and pushing of Seattle’s single-minded defense.
“He’s a great guy,” said Seattle free safety Marquand Manuel. “He’s a great football player. You saw what he did on the punt return. He gets the ball in his hands, he’s electrifying. What we tried to do is not let him get the ball – that’s all we kept saying all week.”
And to do that?
“If it took two guys – or more,” cornerback Marcus Trufant said, “so be it.”
Because with the Seahawks, it takes a lot of guys. Thirty-one different starters this season, not counting the receivers and fullbacks swapped to accommodate certain formations. Sunday’s most effective receiver was Stevens, usually a bit player. Backup quarterback Seneca Wallace had just as many catches as Smith midway through the second quarter. Manuel, not even a starter at the beginning of the season, came up with the game-turning interception.
This in addition to the usual stars – Alexander, quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu.
And, of course, the 12th man.
“I can’t say enough about Seahawks fans,” owner Paul Allen said. “They’ve been waiting so long for a victory like today, and like all of them, I share in the joy of thinking about the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks.”
It was Allen, who purchased the franchise in 1996, rescuing Seattle from the whims of the pernicious Behring, that had the honor of hoisting the 12th Man flag in the west deck before kickoff. He was visibly moved by the reception from the fans around him – millionaires being mostly unused to being thanked by the guy who hands them money for tickets.
“That kind of got to me, actually,” he admitted.
And the past kind of got to these Seahawks – before the season’s first down.
“I think after last year’s playoff loss, there was a certain focus coming into this year,” center Robbie Tobeck said. “Guys thought, ‘We’re good enough to get this done, so why aren’t we getting it done?’ Essentially, it was now or never for us 35-plus guys and we felt, ‘You know what? Enough with the negative stuff being written, enough of the “you’re-a-good-team-but” stuff.’
“I think we wanted to eliminate that ‘but.’ “
Consider it eliminated. Consider it history.