Aging Seahawks turn back clock
With NFC wild-card win against Detroit, seasoned Seattle squad shows flashes of younger self
There was a wave of nostalgia washing over the Seattle Seahawks in the aftermath of their win in the NFC wild-card round.
First and foremost, the running game was back with a vengeance with oft-injured feature back Thomas Rawls offering a convincing impersonation of his mentor, Marshawn Lynch. After a slow start, quarterback Russell Wilson sliced opened the Detroit Lions’ defence in the second half. On the other side of the ball, the Seahawks’ defence allowed two puny field goals by the Lions’ Matt Prater and didn’t let the Lions’ offence inside the 33-yard line.
“This felt like old times,” said cornerback Richard Sherman, who broke his two-day media boycott following the Hawks’ 26-6 win. “This felt great. The offence controlled the game with the run game. Explosive plays in the pass game. On defence we kept them out of the end zone. “It felt right and it felt correct.” It felt, in fact, like the way things were two years ago when the Seahawks were making their second straight Super Bowl appearance. Following their performance against the Lions, the question in Seattle is now: Can this team get back to the Royal Ball?
The answer depends on how much their core group has left.
While it’s erroneous to call the Seahawks an old team, the Seahawks’ brain trust is faced with the dilemma all championship organizations eventually confront. They’re trying to maintain loyalty to a core group that has brought the team great glory. But, slowly, that core group is starting to show its age.
The Seahawks, of course, don’t share that point of view and curse anyone who suggests they’re past their best-before date. But the calendar will have its say on this subject, and this season, the Seahawks started to show those telltale signs that time was catching up to them.
Maybe that’s why they were defiant after the win over the Lions. Maybe that’s why head coach Pete Carroll was so joyous.
“That one felt really good,” Carroll said. “That was the game we’ve been looking for, style-wise, fitwise, offence and defence. It was just a fantastic night. (We’re) really fired up about it.”
Carroll, of course, has championed the cause of his core group and that loyalty has been forged over five wildly successful years in the Emerald City. This is the Seahawks’ fifth straight playoff appearance since Wilson took over as the starting quarterback in 2012. Over that time, they have a Super Bowl ring, one brutal near-miss, 55 regular-season wins and eight more wins in the post-season.
But, to paraphrase Chaucer, time waits for no man, and that young core which rolled to back-to-back Super Bowl games in 2014 and 2015 isn’t as young anymore. Before their ill-fated meeting with the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX, Wilson, Sherman, wideout Doug Baldwin, safeties Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas, and linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright were all 26 or younger.
Now, the average age of the starters on defence is 28.4. The Seahawks, according to CBS Sports, also have the highest average salary per starter in the NFL at $5.589 million.
The core group, moreover, is here to stay. Sherman, Wilson, Wagner, Wright, Thomas, Baldwin, defensive ends Cliff Avril, Frank Clark, receivers Jermaine Kearse and Tyler Lockett, and Rawls are all signed through 2018 — and beyond in the case of Baldwin, Wagner and Wilson.
Last week defensive end Michael Bennett also signed a three-year extension, which takes him through 2020, when he’ll be 35.
So how much does this team have left? Well, if you go by their 3-3 finish to the regular season, including a home-field loss to Arizona that cost them a first-round bye, you’d have some concerns. But if you went by Saturday night, they looked like a championship-calibre team, largely because Rawls gave the Seahawks an element they’ve missed since Lynch ceased to be a factor last year.
Against the Lions, Rawls ran for 161 yards on 27 carries, breaking Lynch’s franchise post-season record. Along the way, the Seahawks held the ball for 36:39 compared to the Lions 23:21.
“I had my feet propped up on the sideline,” Wright said of his front-row seat for Rawls’ performance. “It was fun watching them melt the clock. I was thinking this game was going by fast.”
“It opens up everything for us,” said Baldwin. “Everything runs through our run game.”
The Seahawks now travel to Atlanta for next weekend’s divisional playoff game, and any chance of success there rests with Rawls and the running game. If they can control the line of scrimmage and the clock, they’re still a dangerous team and the age question will vanish.
If they can’t, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan and his explosive offence will make for a long afternoon and the age question reappears.
“It doesn’t matter where we go,” said Carroll. “We don’t care who we play, where it is or any of that. We’re of that mindset.”
Because for one week, at least, the swagger was back with the Seahawks.