Seahawks consider NFC Championship just another step

SEATTLE – This is when you would think Seattle’s “every week is a championship opportunity” mantra might be tested most.

As tough as losing the Super Bowl is, some have said losing the game before it is even worse. If you lose the Super Bowl, at least you got there.

But the Seahawks say one of the lessons of a year ago was that every step of the way really did feel the same as the next, no matter if the stakes from the outside seemed to expand every week.

“As a kid growing up, you always hear how the intensity is amplified when you are in the playoffs, that it’s a completely different game, that it’s faster, blah, blah, blah,” Seattle receiver Doug Baldwin said this week. “But us going through this last year demonstrated that it isn’t really much different. It’s the same game. So that experience has us prepared mentally knowing that we don’t have to be worried about anything that we haven’t seen before. It’s all the same game.”

Even if from the outside what’s on the line indeed seems larger than ever as the Seahawks host Green Bay in the NFC Championship Game today at 12:05 p.m. at CenturyLink Field.

Seattle is attempting to become the eighth franchise in NFL history to repeat as Super Bowl champions (the Steelers repeated twice in the 1970s).

But the Seahawks have to get there first, something that hasn’t been much easier for a defending Super Bowl champ through the years. Just 11 times has a defending Super Bowl champ made it back to the big game the following year. The most recent was New England in 2004-05, which is also the last time a team won consecutive Super Bowls.

Since then, no defending Super Bowl champ has made it as far as Seattle already has.

Seattle’s players, though, say that history is lost on them.

“For us, we are in the now,” Seattle defensive end Cliff Avril said this week when asked if the team considers some of the uncharted territory it is entering. “We are going to ride this wave as much as possible and let you guys decide (what it means).”

To ride that wave all the way to Glendale, Arizona, and Super Bowl XLIX on Feb. 1, the Seahawks will have to again defeat a Green Bay team they handled easily on Sept. 4 in the season opener, the night they raised their Super Bowl XLVIII banner to the rafters of CenturyLink Field.

Seattle won that game by hemming in running back Eddie Lacy and containing Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, while using Marshawn Lynch to pound away at the Packers’ defense to open up some timely passing opportunities for Russell Wilson.

In other words, pretty much the same formula Seattle rode the rest of the season to get back to the NFC title game.

The teams, though, are far from the same as they were that night.

Percy Harvin, who had 110 yards from scrimmage for Seattle, is gone, while the Packers have developed a more varied receiving corps, solidified their offensive line and revamped their defense around a move of linebacker Clay Matthews to playing more on the inside against the run.

Asked this week if he thinks his team is better now than it was then, Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy said: “Oh yeah. Clearly. Game 1 is a difficult game to play in, especially going up there. … But we’ve played a lot of football since then, so we’re a different team.”

In fact, the Packers went on to lead the NFL in scoring this season at 30.4 points per game, creating a matchup against a Seahawks defense that allowed the fewest points in the NFL this season at 15.9 per game.

Rodgers, though, has a sore calf, and while some of the Seahawks spent the week debating how injured he really is, they also said a key will be to make that as much of a factor in this game as they can.

Avril said Seattle has to “put the game in his hands, especially with him having a limp in his walk, and try to pressure him as much as possible to try to make him make some bad decisions.”

Rodgers, meanwhile, said he’ll be as ready as he can to try to get to what would also be his second Super Bowl, the kind of achievement he acknowledged Friday would “really kind of cement your legacy.”

Indeed, the Packers had no qualms this week admitting that being on the doorstep of the Super Bowl makes this a game that means just a little bit more.

“I think everybody identifies how important this game is,” McCarthy said. “This is something you start talking about back in April when you start.”

Far from another day, even if that’s how the Seahawks will try to treat it.