It’s amazing how much difference one week can make.
People are no longer parading down Occidental Avenue carrying signs that read, “The end is near!”
Individuals in blue jerseys bearing the No. 12 are refraining from running in circles on street corners with heir hands raised to the heavens in a panic, doing their best Chicken Little impersonations.
Even the standard cynical discourse on Twitter, which has the tendency to bring out the Negative Nancy in all of us, has abated for a moment.
It seems the gloomy overcast hanging over Seattle Seahawks fans has lifted — at least a little — and given way to a faintest rays of playoff hope.
And it all turned in an instant.
All seemed lost following Seattle’s 39-32 home loss to the Arizona Cardinals two weekends ago. The game gave Arizona a three-game lead in the the NFC West standings, putting the division title seemingly beyond the Seahawks’ reach. It also represented what appeared to be that final bit of pressure that caused the dam to crack and the floodwaters to crash into CenturyLink Field, which had been an impenetrable fortress for Seattle — the two losses at home this season equalled the total home losses the previous three seasons combined.
At 4-5, the prevailing opinion was the Seahawks needed to win out to secure a playoff spot. The division title was gone, and the past two years it required 11 wins to earn an NFC wild-card spot. The prospect of a Seahawks team, which had showed little consistency this season, winning seven straight seemed about as likely as a week’s worth of sunshine in Seattle in the month of November.
But what appeared to be the beginning of the end for the Seahawks has, over the course of a single weekend, transformed into the seeds of hope. It began with an impressive performance at home against the San Francisco 49ers, a 29-13 decision that saw the defense continue to look like its old dominating self, while the struggling offense came around thanks to another breakthrough performance from rookie running back Thomas Rawls.
Seattle’s chance at winning the NFC West doesn’t look any better than it did a week ago. Arizona’s late victory over the Cincinnati Bengals last Sunday night kept the Seahawks three games back in the division race. Not only would the Seahawks need to make up a three-game deficit with just six games remaining, the amount of help Seattle can expect has dwindled after the Cardinals held off the AFC North-leading Bengals, one of the teams on Arizona’s schedule that could have helped the Seahawks’ cause.
But the wild card? Over the course of about five hours last Sunday the Seahawks suddenly found themselves right back in the middle of the dogfight:
— The Atlanta Falcons, who currently occupy the final wild-card spot in the NFC, lost their third straight, falling to the Indianapolis Colts to drop to 6-4, only one game ahead of Seattle.
— The Minnesota Vikings lost to the Green Bay Packers to fall into the second wild-card spot at 7-3. The Seahawks have the added advantage of facing the Vikings next week, giving them the chance to do their own dirty work with regards to gaining ground.
—- Of the five teams that were tied with Seattle at 4-5 going into the week, four of those lost — St. Louis, Washington, Philadelphia and Chicago. The only team that won to keep pace with Seattle, Tampa Bay, did so by knocking off one of the other 4-5 teams, Philadelphia.
Every result went the way the Seahawks needed.
Seattle even received potential help in the way of key injuries to future opponents. The Baltimore Ravens, the Seahawks’ opponent in Week 14, lost starting quarterback Joe Flacco to torn ACL and MCL ligaments in his knee. Think the trip to Baltimore in two weeks time will be less daunting with the prospect of facing Matt Schaub rather than Flacco? Minnesota saw starting quarterback Teddy Bridgewater go down with an injury to his non-throwing shoulder. Bridgewater later returned to the game, but his status bears watching.
No one could have expected Seattle’s prospects to take such a dramatic turn so quickly.
Now, it’s not enough for other results to fall the Seahawks’ way. They still have to do their part by regaining that consistency that’s eluded them this season.
“We have to keep coming back and doing it again,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll stressed. “The fact that we’ve played OK this week, and there’s been some steady improvement showing up in the areas that we need, that just needs to continue. The last game’s already done, so we’ve got to do it again. And then you look back and you say, ‘OK, we’re on a little bit of a direction here that we like.’ So it’s hard to tell that right now, but it feels like we’re making a good move in the right direction, and we’ve got to get going. There’s not that many games left now when you look at it.”
Seahawks supporters should probably use a measure of caution before jumping head-first back into the Seattle-to-the-playoffs bandwagon. The Seahawks still haven’t beaten a team with a winning record this season, either currently or at the time the teams played. A convincing performance against the 3-7 49ers isn’t the type true playoff teams place at the top of their resumes. And a 5-5 record after 10 games isn’t worth celebrating for a team that began the season with Super Bowl aspirations.
But at least now Seattle is back in the race. The sense of inevitable doom that blew the region like last week’s wind storm has abated just an inch, and those slightest rays of hope are once again peeking through.
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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