Just wait ’til next year
Seahawks hope ’18 season was a springboard to success like in 2012
ARLINGTON, Texas — There was no escaping the pain of defeat and the sharp mix of emotions it brought for the Seattle Seahawks, following their season-ending loss Saturday night to the Dallas Cowboys.
“Sad. Confused. Frustrated,” eighth-year Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin said.
“Any time you’re in the playoffs, your mind is set. Like I told the guys last night, ‘Four more games. Four more games.’ You never think that it’s going to end. You believe with every ounce of your being that you’re going to be victorious. And when you don’t, you don’t expect that. And so, it being fresh, I’m still mourning it.”
Twice Seattle rallied from behind to take leads in the first of two weekend NFC wild-card playoff games, before running out of gas in the fourth quarter as the Cowboys won 24-22.
But Baldwin and seventh-year quarterback Russell Wilson were hardly despondent when looking at the year ahead. Indeed, they said this 2018 season — including Saturday’s loss — felt familiar. As in shades of 2012. That was Year 3 of the Pete Carroll era in Seattle. Coming off back-to-back 7-9 seasons, no one thought the Seahawks would be so competitive in 2012, let alone so good, especially with Wilson — a rookie deemed too short, drafted in the third round — at the helm.
“I remember getting an F grade to start off,” an upbeat Wilson said in an interview room off to the side of the Seahawks locker room, beneath AT&T Stadium. “(Experts) said, ‘They’re done.’”
Only they weren’t. The Seahawks finished 11-5, knocked off the Redskins in Washington in the wild-card playoff round, and the next week led the NFC’s top-seeded Falcons in Atlanta with 30 seconds left, before dropping a heartbreaker.
“Nobody really was expecting anything out of the Pacific Northwest, I guess,” Wilson said. “And what we were able to do, in (waking) up the world a little bit in terms of the Seattle Seahawks, in that sense was special. It was a collective effort, everybody buying in, working really hard. And we were really young. I think we were the youngest team in the NFL at the time. A lot of young guys playing.
“Very, very similar to this group — how much depth, and how much guys have stepped up this year, and how much talent we have, just looking at our roster, and how many great things (could be) in store.”
The 2013 Seahawks, of course, dominated the NFL with one of the great defences of the modern era, ultimately pulverizing Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII — then coming achingly close a year later to winning another Super Bowl.
“That doesn’t mean anything great’s gonna happen now,” Wilson said. “But we do have some belief that something great’s gonna happen, just because of how we played this year. And how you create that is by hard work, by having a great off-season, just believing in one another and coming back better as a player, as a man, and everything else. We’re looking forward to that.”
Expectations for this year’s Seahawks team probably were as low as they were for the 2012 team. So many big-name losses — to free agency, to injury, to trade, to the club merely choosing to move on from still good but perhaps too-jaded stars of the first great age of the Carroll era, if you will.
When Carroll and GM John Schneider decided to hit the reset button last winter, nearly everyone thought they were nuts. Instead, they did what they did from 2011-13: They gave a lot of promising, hungry and, in some cases, discarded young players a chance to show they belonged.
On defence, end Frank Clark (14.0) and tackle Jarran Reed (10.5) combined for 24.5 sacks, to rank fourth in the NFL among pass-rush duos and tops in the Carroll era in Seattle.
Longtooth linebackers Bobby Wagner (seventh year) and K.J. Wright (eighth year) remain as good as any linebacking duo in the league.
Five of the top eight defensive backers were first- or second-year NFLers, including starting rookie corner Trey Flowers.
On offence, second-year running back Chris Carson proved he’s a quality NFL starting running back, notwithstanding how the Cowboys completely shut him down on Saturday night.
The offensive line for the first time since 2014-15 no longer proved a liability and, if late-season injuries hadn’t disrupted their flow and timing, the Seahawks offence probably would have fared better against Dallas.
At wide receiver Tyler Lockett, especially on Saturday night with 120 yards on four catches, proved once and for all in 2018 he’s so much more than merely a breathtaking kick returner. He’s now a legit, versatile wide-receiver threat too to complement the 30-year-old Baldwin, a twotime Pro Bowler who battled injuries all season.
Finally, there’s Wilson, who was never better in 2018, and that’s saying something.
Do the Seahawks have the pieces, then, to make another shocking upgrade in 2019, a la 2013?
“Oh, absolutely,” Baldwin said. “Look out,”
What we were able to do, in (waking) up the world a little bit in terms of the Seattle Seahawks, in that sense was special. It was a collective effort, everybody buying in, working really hard.
Seahawks’ Russell Wilson