Just a little something to get you excited about Marshawn Lynch’s return for the playoffs. It’s a simulcast of the Beast Quake vs. the Saints in January 2011 and the Desert Storm vs. the Cardinals last season:
Monthly Archives: January 2016
A tale of two 10-win Seattle teams
As stunning as it still is to consider, this is the best all-around team in the history of the Seattle Seahawks. That’s odd to say about a 10-win team — and it would be odder yet if this team had not made the playoffs.
Thirty years ago, it wouldn’t have. Thirty years ago, in fact, a red-hot 10-6 Seahawks team did not make the postseason.
These Seahawks, who have won six of seven and have averaged 32 points over the past eight games, are the team no one wants to play in the playoffs (even if Arizona GM Steve Keim says he does).
Marshawn Lynch is back with the Seahawks and will practice Wednesday with an eye toward playing in Minnesota.
In other personnel updates, Pete Carroll said the Hawks could get back almost everyone who missed the last game or two — Kam Chancellor, Russell Okung, J.R. Sweezy, Luke Willson.
Bob Condotta takes a look at the NFC North champion Vikings.
The temperature is expected to be in the single digits. That would be the Seahawks’ coldest game ever.
Carroll said the Super Bowl (i.e., his mistake) lingered in players’ minds for too long this season.
Carroll also shared the story of his vision to Win Forever: It started in Buffalo, where he won his first game as a coach.
Hawks GM John Schneider and others talk about Russell Wilson’s stellar season.
Seahawks will play Panthers at 10 a.m., too
Plenty of Seahawks fans seemed to be annoyed that the NFL put the Seahawks down for a 10 a.m. playoff game (noon Minnesota time) next Sunday, and some even went so far as to scream bloody conspiracy.
If you were one of those unreasonably irked fans, you are going to be even more upset when you learn the Seahawks — assuming they win — will play another 10 a.m. game the next Sunday in Carolina. (As the No. 6 seed, Seattle would play at the No. 1 seed in the divisional round.)
In fact, it wouldn’t be until the NFC title game that the Seahawks would play an afternoon game. On Jan. 24, the NFC game will kick off at 3:40 p.m. — after the AFC Super Bowl team is determined.
Fans have gotten used to the Seahawks playing 1 p.m. or later games because the team has been the NFC’s No. 1 seed the past two years — and thus has had home-field advantage. In fact, the last time the Hawks played a 10 a.m. playoff game was in January 2013, when they went to Atlanta and lost 30-28 in the final seconds.
The Seahawks have gone 7-5 in 10 a.m. games the past three years. They were 2-2 this year, losing at St. Louis in the opener (in overtime) and blowing a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter in Cincinnati.
However, all of those worry warts need to recall also that the Hawks blew out Minnesota 38-7 in a 10 a.m. game in Week 13 (and also Baltimore the next week). Oh, and Seattle also beat Carolina in 10 a.m. kickoffs during both Super Bowl seasons.
Why would anyone be concerned about a 10 a.m. game at this point?
Carroll’s historic defense trumps Grant’s Purple People Eaters
It’s fitting that Pete Carroll gets to take Seattle’s No. 1 scoring defense back to Bud Grant’s house next week.
As we all know by now, Grant was Carroll’s most significant mentor — the architect of the Purple People Eaters defense that was the league’s stingiest unit from 1969 to 1971.
Carroll’s crew just capped off a four-year run as the No. 1 scoring defense — a feat that had not been accomplished since the dominant 1950s Cleveland Browns, who did it five straight years in a 12-team league. Clearly, this is a much more significant accomplishment — coming in a 32-team league during an era in which the rules heavily favor offense.
Carroll was fired up about holding the league’s No. 1 offense to six points and finishing two points better than Cincinnati.
“I don’t know if there is a record that I could be more proud of than to see our guys go for four straight years and lead the league in scoring defense,” he said. “I think that is a remarkable accomplishment by a bunch of guys dedicated to the program and what we are doing. It’s hard to do things over a long period of time that well, and that is something about outlasting the opportunity and making sure that you get it done.
“Steven Terrell makes a knockdown at the goal line and to ice it (DeShawn) Shead makes an interception right there,” Carroll said, reliving Arizona’s last drive, which threatened to ruin the streak. “We knew what was going on on the sidelines. The guys were having a ball, trying to get it done, and the offense was trying to keep the football to let that happen. That’s a really cool accomplishment, so we take great pride in that one.”
Carroll got to see Grant, his 88-year-old mentor, when the Seahawks destroyed the Vikings 38-7 in Week 13. And now he will go back to Minnesota having done something Grant’s stellar Vikings defenses never did.
“Of all of the stats, that is the one that takes the most and demonstrates the most,” Carroll said. “We are really proud of that.”
Seahawks will face Packers again next year
The Minnesota-Green Bay game on Sunday night did more than settle Seattle’s playoff destination: It determined which NFC North team the Seahawks will face in 2016.
The Seahawks will play a second-place schedule next season, which means they will once again face the Green Bay Packers, who finished second to the Vikings in the North.
The Packers and Philadelphia Eagles were the only unknowns entering Week 17. The Hawks already were set to face the NFC South, AFC East and, of course, NFC West.
The Seahawks and Packers will face off for the fifth time in five years (assuming the teams don’t meet in the NFC title game again this season — a safe assumption considering how pathetic the Packers have become). Like this year, that game will be in Green Bay.
The Seahawks return to the scene of the Super crime this week, back in Glendale, Ariz., and Russell Wilson revisited the most infamous interception in Super Bowl history.
Wilson credits his durability partly to swimming and advice from NFL veterans such as Vinny Testaverde and Leon Washington.
Mark Glowinski is No. 1 on Bob Condotta’s list of players to watch vs. Arizona.
The Seahawks will see an old friend, Red Bryant.
Here are Seattle’s playoff scenarios.
Here’s a preview of the game from AP.
Will battered Hawks be up for challenge?
It turns out this big Seattle-Arizona clash might not be a very good gauge of where the Seahawks stand vs. the Cardinals, who are Seattle’s biggest hurdle to reaching the Super Bowl.
Half of Seattle’s key offensive players won’t be in the game, with J.R. Sweezy and Luke Willson (concussions) ruled out Friday — joining Marshawn Lynch, Jimmy Graham, Thomas Rawls, Paul Richardson and probably Russell Okung. That means the Hawks are down to second- or third-stringers at four positions.
CHAWK TALK: Everything being said about the Seahawks 