Streaking Seattle earns legitimacy
With outside shot at division title, team seeks home edge in the playoffs.
RENTON, WAsH. — Former Longhorn Earl Thomas says there is no room on the Seattle Seahawks’ bandwagon. If you weren’t on the ride already, Thomas says it’s too late.
Even if the Seahawks are suddenly one of the teams people are trying to latch onto as they surge toward the postseason.
“Don’t jump on the bandwagon now,” Thomas said Sunday night. “We have a chip on our shoulder and we play with it, and showed it.”
Seattle won its fourth straight game by beating NFC West-leading San Francisco 42-13 on Sunday night before a national TV audience.
That clinched at least a wild-card berth for the Seahawks sending Pete Carroll to the postseason for the second time in his three seasons in Seattle.
The win also kept Seattle’s slim hopes of winning the division alive and with it exactly what no one else in the NFC wants: being forced to make a trip to Seattle for the playoffs.
Seattle needs to beat St. Louis in the season finale and get an Arizona win at San Francisco for the Seahawks to win the division.
“Now we’re there with the opportunity to still win a division championship which would be huge for us and that obviously takes a lot of work some- where else but we have to take care of our business first,” Carroll said.
Seattle (10-5) was already rolling toward the postseason with consecutive games reaching the 50-point mark, becoming the first team since 1950 to reach the half-century mark in back-to-back games. But those came against lesser competition in blowouts of Arizona and Buffalo.
The win over the 49ers legitimized what Seattle has been building. The Seahawks scored with ease on what was the top scoring defense in the NFL, led by rookie Russell Wilson’s four TD passes.
Seattle doesn’t hide that it plays with a feeling of being overlooked. The Seahawks’ most notable moment this season was the “Fail Mary” against Green Bay where the Seahawks were on the receiving end of a blown call that eventually helped settle a labor dispute with the officials.
The blowout of the 49ers grabbed the kind of attention the Seahawks have wanted.
“The chip on the shoulder? That’s not something we just manufactured for the sake of getting fired up. The guys in this room feel that. Almost every one of these guys has their reasons. I feel like that myself. We just kind of share in that chip and we don’t even have to pass it around,” Carroll said.
“We all have one. That’s just kind of how it’s been. Just look, we’re up here in the Northwest and they like talking about us after they talk about everybody else.