Seahawks, Bears enter Sunday with different moods
RENTON, Wash. – Despite having a lot in common, the Chicago Bears and Seattle Seahawks are teams trending in opposite directions heading into today’s game.
Both teams are still clinging to playoff hopes, and both hope to win today by running the ball, making plays on special teams and relying on a stingy defense, but the Seahawks and Bears differ in a big way in one area: momentum.
In the Seahawks’ locker room, spirits are high after a fourth win in five games. A fan base that wondered just how low the team could go after a 2-6 start is daring to dream about the possibility of the Seahawks winning their final three games to finish 9-7, which could result in a wild-card berth.
“The spirits are real high up here,” rookie linebacker K.J. Wright said. “We’re on this little win streak, the season is starting to turn around for us.”
The Bears, meanwhile, are trying desperately to salvage a season that by all indications is spiraling down the drain. Less than a month ago, Chicago looked like one of the NFC’s best teams after winning five straight, but since then the Bears have lost quarterback Jay Cutler to a thumb injury and star running back Matt Forte to a knee injury. Chicago has lost three in a row, including a heartbreaking overtime loss to Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos last weekend.
Chicago isn’t exactly known as a forgiving fan base, and while he hasn’t wandered the city to take the pulse of the city’s fans, Caleb Hanie, Cutler’s replacement, has an idea of the mood of Bears fans.
“I’ve been locked up in a hole trying to study and get ready for Seattle, really,” Hanie said. “It’s not like I’ve been hittin’ the streets. I assume it’s not very good. The fans want to win games more than anybody, so we need to get some wins for these guys.”
Further complicating matters this week for the Bears is a rather large off-field distraction. In a week that the Bears are preparing for a must-win game, backup receiver Sam Hurd was arrested Wednesday after attempting to arrange the purchase from an undercover federal agent of five to 10 kilograms of cocaine and 1,000 pounds of marijuana a week to distribute in the Chicago area. Hurd’s arrest has become a national story, but the Bears insist it is business as usual.
“We know about it; the players know about it,” Bears coach Lovie Smith told reporters in Chicago. “But beyond that, it was business as usual around here. We will not let this become a distraction for us.”
Conversely in Seattle, it’s good times as the Seahawks try to win a third straight game for the first time since 2007. The team isn’t just winning, it is winning with a formula that players believe they can repeat on a weekly basis.
“At the beginning we were basically just trying to find ourselves,” quarterback Tarvaris Jackson said. “We didn’t really understand exactly what we were going to do. Earlier in the year when we first got to camp it was about running the football and trying to run the football, and then we got into the (up-tempo offense) thing and it was working – it was probably our best way of moving the football. Now, we’re able to establish the run and it’s kind of got us going.”