Perhaps I need to diversify my movie viewership.
When the Seattle Seahawks’ 2015 season ended with their 31-24 loss to the Carolina Panthers in the divisional playoffs, I invoked the name of the fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, comparing Seattle’s second-half comeback attempt to Rocky’s determination to always get back up, no matter how many times he was knocked down.
Now we’ve arrived at the start of the 2016 season, and I’m going to use another Rocky analogy to describe the Seahawks. But this time it’s about having the eye of the tiger.
In the movie series, Rocky becomes the heavyweight champ, but his success and the trappings that come along with it cause him to lose the edge that carried him to the championship in the first place. He needed to get back that hunger — recapture the eye of the tiger — in order to overcome Mr. T’s Clubber Lang.
So if the 2016 Seahawks were to transport themselves into the Rocky series, they’d find themselves about two-thirds of the way through Rocky III: no longer the champ, but ready to reclaim their title.
That edge was missing at the beginning of the 2015 season.
The Seahawks were coming off back-to-back Super Bowl appearances, having blown out Denver 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII, then losing to New England 28-24 on that infamous last-minute goal-line interception by Malcolm Butler. The expectation entering 2015, with the core of the team returning intact, was that Seattle was a favorite to become the first team since the Miami Dolphins from 1972-74 to reach three straight Super Bowls.
But just like Rocky, success bred contentment. By the time 2015 started most of Seattle’s stars had signed their lucrative contracts, earned their endorsements. The season started in sluggish fashion, with the vaunted Seahawks defense uncharacteristically giving up late leads, making a mockery of coach Pete Carroll’s mantra of, “Finish!” At one point Seattle was 2-4 and whispers began about whether the team would even make it back to the playoffs, let alone the Super Bowl.
Perhaps not a knockdown, but certainly a standing eight count.
“Coming off the Super Bowl, it’s big factor,” Carroll explained during training camp. “Win or lose, it is a huge factor and that’s why you see teams struggle so much because it is so difficult to do, and there’s an aftermath of that either way and our guys know what that’s all about.”
The edge finally returned during the second half of last season, but by then it was too late. Seattle rallied to make the playoffs, but was forced to go on the road in the postseason, and the Seahawks eventually bowed out in that slugfest at Carolina.
The Seahawks may have missed out on their chance to make history as just the second team to reach three straight Super Bowls. However, in the process they seem to have rediscovered the eye of the tiger. The talk throughout training camp and the preseason was about having that hunger back. By falling short of their goals in 2015, it made them that much more determined to achieve them in 2016.
“It feels like the (Super Bowl) XLVIII year, it feels like everybody’s bringing that intensity,” strong safety Kam Chancellor remarked. “It feels like everybody is out to prove something — which it may be or may not be, it just feels that way. The brotherhood, it gets even tighter. Guys are just out here having fun, not thinking about a lot.”
Carroll felt it, too.
“It feels similar to coming off the Atlanta loss in the (2012) playoffs,” Carroll said.
“(The players) are very determined, they are very tuned in to what the opportunity is and they don’t want to miss it,” Carroll added. “I think it’s the maturity that comes from all those experiences that’s helping. I like the outlook right now, we can all see it, we can all feel it. That is why we are so excited about it, and you could ask anyone out here and they will tell you they feel like that.”
The Seahawks have all the pieces for another shot at the championship belt.
They have an offense led by quarterback Russell Wilson, who achieved MVP-level during the second half of last season as he finished with the 15th-best single-season passer rating in NFL history. They have weapons in the passing game like receiver Doug Baldwin, who reached elite status, and tight end Jimmy Graham, who’s returning from his knee injury. They no longer have Marshawn Lynch to carry the ball, but they do have two young and talented backs in Thomas Rawls and Christine Michael prepared to fill the void.
They have a defense that retains the core of the unit that led the NFL in fewest points allowed in each of the past four seasons. They still have three founding members of the Legion of Boom secondary in Chancellor, Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas. They have Pro Bowl linebacker Bobby Wagner patrolling the middle and defensive ends Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril providing the pass rush.
But most importantly, just like Rocky, Seattle once again has the eye of the tiger. And should the Seahawks return to the Super Bowl, that will be why they got there.
For more on the Seattle sports scene, check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at www.heraldnet.com/tag/seattle-sidelines, or follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.
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