SEATTLE — The big joke of the NFL playoffs had the last laugh Saturday.
The defending champs, on the other hand, are going home to the Big Easy.
After listening to a week of talk suggesting that they didn’t belong in the playoffs with a 7-9 record, the Seattle Seahawks stun
ned everyone but themselves, knocking off the New Orleans Saints 41-36 in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs.
In front of a rowdy crowd of 66,336 at Qwest Field, Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck threw four touchdown passes as the Seahawks beat the Saints at their own game, piling up
yards and points in bunches to win in their first trip to the postseason since the 2007 season.
Saturday’s performance was remarkable not just because it featured a team with a losing record knocking of the 11-5 Saints, but also because of just how far the Seahawk have come in the past two weeks. Just 13 days earlier, the Seahawks lost to Tampa Bay for their seventh loss in nine games, all of which came by double-digit margins. Heading into last week’s NFC West showdown against St. Louis, there was little reason to believe that the Seahawks could emerge from their two-month slump.
“Slumping?” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll joked. “I don’t even know if it was as good as slumping.”
But somehow, some way, the Seahawks turned a corner when the stakes were at their highest, and now they’re into the second round of the playoffs and will play at either Chicago or Atlanta depending on the outcome of today’s games.
“I don’t know,” Seattle safety Lawyer Milloy said when asked what changed. “We had a chance at the end. That’s it, we had a chance at the end, and in that week, something happened. Something clicked. What it is, I don’t know, but guys are starting to figure it out, and that’s very encouraging going into the rest of the playoffs.”
The slump ended with last week’s division-clinching win over the Rams, but even so, very few people gave the Seahawks a chance of hanging with the Saints, who beat Seattle by 15 points in New Orleans earlier this season.
Carroll, who inherited a team that had won nine games in the previous two seasons, never altered his belief in his team, however. Not after their prolonged slump, and not after they fell behind 10-0 and 17-7 to the Saints on Saturday.
“The whole game, it just felt like we were going to win,” Carroll said. “I know it didn’t look like that.”
Indeed it didn’t look that way early. The Saints kicked a field goal on their opening drive, then intercepted Matt Hasselbeck’s third throw of the game after a pass went off Ben Obomanu’s hands. That led to a touchdown and a 10-0 lead that momentarily silenced the crowd. The Seahawks quickly responded with a touchdown of their own — one of two touchdown passes to tight end John Carlson — but the Saints immediately answered back with another score.
At that point, it seemed that no matter what Hasselbeck and the offense were going to do, the Saints would just keep scoring at will and roll to another easy win.
“We were down 10-0 against the world champs,” Hasselbeck said. “My third pass of the game was intercepted. It was not exactly how you want to start the game, but that’s one of Pete’s messages. He has a few that he goes to all the time, and one is that you can’t win or lose the game in the first quarter, and you have to win it in the fourth.”
The Seahawks defense showed up after spotting New Orleans 17 early points, forcing a three and out, a fumble, and another three and out. Hasselbeck and the offense, meanwhile, kept rolling, and after a field goal and a 45-yard touchdown pass to Brandon Stokley, the Seahawks were suddenly the owners of a 24-17 lead minutes after being down 10 points.
“It was 10-nothing and that’s a tough crew over there, then it was 17-7,” Carroll said. “There were so many chances to just say, ‘OK, not today, we’re just lucky to be there,’ and all that kind of stuff.”
But the Seahawks never felt like they were just lucky to be there. Even as the rest of the country debated the playoff worthiness of a team with a losing record, they maintained that, now that the playoffs had started, none of that mattered. On Saturday they showed it.
“They did everything they needed to do early in the game, and we could have become that team that everyone was dictating us to be in the first place, but we fought against that,” Milloy said. “That’s the reason why you play the game, that’s the reason that you don’t let other people dictate who you are as a team. You step up to the challenge. Last week we were in a do-or-die situation and we accepted that challenge. We did the same thing today.”
The Seahawks lead grew to 11 points in the third quarter on Hasselbeck’s fourth touchdown of the game — he finished 22-of-35 for 272 yards, good for a quarterback rating of 113.0 — a 38-yard strike to wide receiver Mike Williams. Not surprisingly, however, quarterback Drew Brees and the Saints offense had a comeback in them. Brees, who finished with 404 passing yards, led his team on a pair of scoring drives to make it 34-30 in the fourth quarter, putting the Seahawks in real danger of blowing a golden opportunity.
Then, with the Seahawks needing to burn the clock, running back Marshawn Lynch did them one better. On a power running play that Hasselbeck said is usually lucky to gain four yards, Lynch shed one tackler, then another, and another, then there was a vicious stiff arm, and when the dust had settled, Lynch was diving into the end zone for a 67-yard touchdown that was even more unbelievable than the final score.
“That was the most unbelievable, unrealistic play I’ve ever seen in the history of football,” Seahawks linebacker Aaron Curry said. “It was just unreal. It seems just like a routine football play, then he takes it to another level.”
The Saints did add another touchdown to make it a one-score game — 41-36 — with 1:30 remaining, but Carlson recovered the ensuing onside kick, and the Seahawks were left to celebrate a most improbable victory.
And now, the Seahawks will head on the road a confident team, even if they are still a win away from .500.
“We’re still learning each other and how to play together,” Seahawks center Chris Spencer said. “We’re still learning how to play championship football. But now all of a sudden it’s starting to come together. You can feel it in the air. You can feel it in the locker room. You can definitely feel it. It’s starting to come together, what Pete has been talking about all along. And now here we are.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more Seahawks coverage, check out the Seahawks blog at heraldnet.com/seahawksblog
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