On Sunday the Seattle Seahawks have an opportunity to wipe the slate clean.
The first half of Seattle’s season has contained more angst than a 1980s John Hughes teen drama. The Seahawks entered the season with aspirations of making it to their third straight Super Bowl. But instead Seattle’s path has been littered with traumatic events that left the fan base hyperventilating. Among them:
n Strong safety Kam Chancellor’s holdout, which caused the Pro Bowler to miss all of training camp and the preseason, as well as the first two games of the regular season, both of which the Seahawks lost.
n Seattle’s repeated inability to finish out games, which climaxed with back-to-back weeks of watching large fourth-quarter leads slip away against Cincinnati and Carolina.
n The anxiety even extended beyond the field and spilled onto the roads, with fullback Derrick Coleman and running back Fred Jackson involved in high-profile car accidents less than a week apart.
No doubt, it’s been a stressful first half for the Seahawks. But a victory Sunday at Dallas presents Seattle with an opportunity. A win would put the Seahawks at 4-4 at the midpoint of the season and heading into their bye week. It would represent Seattle weathering the storm and give the Seahawks a chance to start fresh.
“It’s definitely one of those (weathering-the-storm) times, you have to kind of notice those moments and take advantage of them when you have them,” Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson acknowledged.
“At the same time you don’t want to think about it too much, you don’t want to think too far ahead because that’s our mission, that’s our goal, to go 1-0,” Wilson continued. “If you think too far ahead you kind of get lost in the shuffle at times. You maybe get too hopeful or whatever it may be, or think about things that aren’t even in your control. For us we just have to prepare at a high level.”
Few thought the Seahawks would find themselves in their current position. Many considered Seattle, which was able to retain almost all of its big pieces from the team that came one play away from repeating as Super Bowl champs last season, as one of the favorites to emerge once again from the NFC.
So reaching .500 is not something the Seahawks consider an achievement.
“It’s not like the it’s battle cry, like ‘Let’s get to .500,’” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. “That’s not really the way we talk.”
Yet Carroll also acknowledged the significance of this week’s game.
“In particular, just because it’s this week, it’s huge to win a game,” Carroll said. “This week is everything. But I think we’ll kind of utilize it as the midway point to keep going and keep moving ahead. I feel horrible about that we’re still there, we’re still trying to get (to .500). It’s too long into the season, but if we can turn it now and get that going, then we’ll try to make a big push and keep focusing. It’s one week at a time. None of these games are more important than the only one we’ve got right now. So we’re going to crank it up for that one and we’ll see where we are after that.”
There’s the added aspect of the timing of the bye week. Not only will Seattle reach the midpoint of its season following Sunday’s game, the Seahawks will have two full weeks to reflect on their position. A loss and Seattle will be left stewing on being 3-5 and worrying about its potential playoff fate. At 4-4 the Seahawks can reflect on how they regained their footing after stumbling early in the season, and remember how last season Seattle was 3-3 before it got into top gear.
“I think every game is important,” defensive end Cliff Avril said. “But to get a win before the bye week definitely makes the bye week a little sweeter. If you take an L it makes the bye week a little miserable because all you’re going to do is sit and think about the game. So I think the big thing for us is to just build off what we did last week, just play our ball and have fun, and I think we’ll be all right.”
Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett, who’s been a vocal opponent of all the hand-wringing being done by the fans and the local media with regards to Seattle’s stuttering start, views a possible win Sunday as an indication of the continuing evolution of this year’s version of the Seahawks.
“That 3-3 run (last season), we ended up with even more success at the end of the year,” Bennett said. “We just have to come back, and everything is evolution. Every year people are changing. … You have to re-learn how to be a great teammate again. I think you have to do that every year, and we’re learning that.”
The opportunity is there for the taking for Seattle. The Seahawks face a Cowboys team Sunday that’s something of a mess. Dallas remains without starting quarterback Tony Romo because of a broken collarbone, and in Romo’s absence Dallas has lost four straight.
So that slate is just waiting for the Seahawks to pick up a wet cloth and wipe it clean.
“It’s always a good matchup with these guys,” Carroll said. “They’re a great program and a great team, and it’s a great place to play and all. They’re a very hungry team, too, a team that really calls on us to play really solid football because they can run it like crazy, they pass protect well, they’re aggressive on defense, it’s a very well-balanced football team. So this is a good matchup for us. Hopefully we can play real well and go into the break. It’d be nice to get to the halfway point and get this thing evened up and get ready to go for the second half. So we’re looking forward to that.”
Check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at http://www.heraldnet.com/seattlesidelines, and follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.
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