Dave Boling: Seahawks lopsided loss to the 49ers was an expected end to a surprising season

The 2022 season for the Seattle Seahawks wrapped up early in the fourth quarter of the wild-card playoff game against San Francisco.

The game was functionally decided by then, despite a strong first half in which the heavy underdog Hawks led 17-16.

The Niners cruised to a 41-23 win, proving that it is going to take a special team to keep them from winning it all.

Once the Niners assumed control, it felt fair if Seahawks fans had started looking forward to 2023, when all the gifted rookies will be more experienced, and a draft bonanza of top-shelf talent will be fighting for starting roles.

The mindset has to resemble the aftermath of the Seahawks’ divisional loss at Atlanta following the 2012 season, when most of the promising young players were already over the defeat by the time they got to the locker room and were eager to get to work on the next season.

Players can sense building momentum, and this group must feel it, too.

Everybody, however, foresaw a Niners win on Saturday, even Pollyanna Pete Carroll.

“Unfortunately, we’re playing the Niners … and they’re loaded,” the Seahawks coach said about this week’s challenge.

The nine-win Seahawks had been one of the NFL’s biggest surprises this season, but Carroll wasn’t satisfied by that, last week saying he is still tormented by the games he felt they had should have won.

Looking back, now, I’d point to four bad losses (Atlanta, New Orleans, Carolina and Las Vegas – three of them at home). Inconsistency and unpredictability is the norm for young teams, and the Seahawks had more starts out of rookies than any other team in the NFL.

But youthful mistakes weren’t really the common thread in the Hawks’ losses.

The culprit in those games was the inability to stop opponents’ rushing attack. In some cases, it was bad tackling, others missed assignments.

Or maybe it was the scheme, which had moved away from the previous 4-3 base look.

Most likely, opposing lines just had the manpower to dominate Seattle.

In those four losses, opponents averaged 230 yards rushing per game, and in three of them, backs picked up their season-high totals. Backs must have suffered from excessive drooling in the week leading to kickoff against the Hawks.

How bad is 230 yards rushing against a defense? Houston, the league’s worst rushing defense, surrendered 170 yards on the ground per game this season. Had the Hawks given up merely an average of 170, they might have at least split four of those bad losses. And suddenly, this young club would have had 11 wins and wouldn’t have had to play San Francisco in the first round.

That specific weakness should make solutions easier to come by – draft elite defenders.

Four picks in the first two rounds is the best draft positioning Carroll and GM John Schneider have ever enjoyed.

Yes, an obvious need is for manpower on the interior offensive line. And if they have enough faith to ride Geno Smith for a while at quarterback, they will have latitude to wait until the second day for a developmental project.

Everything else in the upper end of the draft must be invested in big run-stopping tackles and frantic edge rushers and hole-plugging linebackers.

And if they draft as effectively as they did last spring, the Hawks will be immediate division contenders.

It’s almost hard to believe that the Hawks have two players as challengers for top rookie honors on both sides of the ball – Kenneth Walker III on offense and Tariq Woolen on defense.

Both offensive tackles, Charles Cross and Abraham Lucas, were strong and steady most of the season, doing nothing to suggest they won’t be solid pillars on the line for years.

Defensive end Boye Mafe ripened with experience, as did corner Coby Bryant.

An axiom holds that NFL players improve more between their first and second years than at any other time in their careers.

That’s a lot of rising talent expected to take the field next fall.

The overachieving Seahawks teased everybody for long time on Saturday, but a San Francisco win seemed almost inevitable.

The best thing about the loss for Seattle was that it ushered in what should be an eventful and productive offseason.

The future is bright, and it starts today.