Jayson Jenks: Seahawks tend to show their best when chips are down

RENTON, Wash. – There’s a scene in the movie “Gravity” when the protagonist is hurtling toward Earth in a rickety spaceship, leaving behind that familiar trail of flames. The ship rips into pieces, the control panel overheats, and the whole thing comes so dangerously close to falling apart that the fact the craft is even intact by the end is a major success.

There is something about the scene that calls to mind the NFL, and the Seattle Seahawks in particular, because most seasons are defined by what didn’t go wrong more than what ultimately went right. The Seahawks have lived in that fire the past few seasons. The flames got so intense when they were 3-3 last season – and again when they were 6-4 – that you could smell the smoke rising from the control panel.

They sit at 0-2 this season, and history tells us that teams that begin a season 0-2 face long odds to make the playoffs. The Seahawks have heard those odds and dismissed them, but the flames are rising.

“We’ve been in the same footsteps that we’re in right now,” safety Earl Thomas said, “and the good thing about it is we’re starting to get back to our competitive nature.”

The Seahawks have thrived the past few years because they have entered perilous moments of uncertainty and emerged better for it.

It has been one of coach Pete Carroll’s greatest accomplishments: At the moment the ship looks like it is falling apart, he has guided it safely to the ground.

This is impossible to prove, but it’s entirely possible the Seahawks wouldn’t have been as successful if it weren’t for those moments of unease.

That they find themselves in another tenuous environment is expected, but the crossroads came earlier this year compared to the ones before it and therefore is different and more alarming.

“It’s staying true to the core beliefs we have until they show up and take over,” Carroll said. “That’s exactly what happened last year. It’s happened in every season that I can ever remember when you have a good year. And when you don’t have a good year, you didn’t find it. That’s basically what happens. That challenge is always out there.”

This is the cruel reality of the NFL. Forces always are trying to rip teams apart. Good players leave because of the salary cap. Contracts are structured in ways that leave teams vulnerable to locker-room dissatisfaction. The schedule is designed so good teams from the year before face each other the next season.

“The road to a championship is never paved smoothly but with peaks and valleys,” Hall of Fame receiver and NFL Network analyst Michael Irvin said last year. “A football team goes into the valley and they pull apart. That’s why they never win. But football families? They go in the valley and get closer. They come out better than they went in, and it propels them to a championship.”

It is easy to look back and see the Seahawks’ turnaround last season as inevitable, but that’s not the way it felt in the moment. The defense hadn’t played up to standard. The locker room had tension. The Seahawks had to find themselves all over again, even with so many players back from a championship team.

When they finally got rolling, they pointed to small gestures as much as the obvious ones: They celebrated for each other. They danced before a big series. The way it looked, the way it felt, mattered.

The Seahawks are searching for their identity, for their soul, and it is too simplistic to say their problems rest solely with strong safety Kam Chancellor’s holdout. No matter how many times they’ve found themselves in the past, the challenge of trying to do so once again will define their season.