RENTON — The Seattle Seahawks are familiar with what’s ahead.
But don’t say they are comfortable.
They play the Carolina Panthers (8-8-1) for the fourth time in three seasons Saturday night in the NFC divisional playoffs at CenturyLink Field. Seattle has won all three of the previous meetings.
Seattle (12-4) has played six games inside the NFC this season that weren’t against division opponents. Three of those six conference games were against the other teams remaining in the NFC playoffs — Dallas (13-4) is at Green Bay (12-4) Sunday in the other NFC semifinal.
Yet these Seahawks, who had a first-round bye last weekend and haven’t played since Dec. 28, say they are more keyed up than comfy.
“We are anxious to get back to the grind. We are anxious to get back to playing football because we know where we are at right now,” wide receiver Doug Baldwin said of the defending Super Bowl champions being two home playoffs wins from a return trip to the big game. “I wouldn’t say comfortable. I would say we are very anxious.”
On the NFL’s opening night, Sept. 4, in Seattle, the Seahawks limited Aaron Rodgers to just 189 passing yards — one of four times in 16 games he’s been held under 200 yards passing — and Green Bay had just 255 total yards, the second-lowest total this season for the NFL’s sixth-ranked offense. Seattle’s 36-16 win that night was its most complete game until December.
On Oct. 12, Dallas came to Seattle and pushed around the Seahawks like no other team has in two seasons. The Cowboys used their huge, athletic line of top draft picks to plow lanes for NFL rushing leader Demarco Murray late. Yet it took a remarkable third-down escape and throw by Tony Romo for an equally dazzling sideline reception by Terrence Williams for Dallas to take the lead in the fourth quarter of its 30-21 victory. That remains the second loss in Seattle’s past 26 home games.
Two weeks after that, the 3-3 Seahawks were down 9-6 late at Carolina. Russell Wilson entered Seattle’s offensive huddle to start a drive from his own 20 with 4:37 remaining and told his teammates: “There is no doubt. There is no doubt.”
Wilson ran for 21 yards and completed all four of his throws for 53 yards on the ensuing drive. His 23-yard pass to tight end Luke Willson with 47 seconds remaining rallied the Seahawks to a 13-9 victory that ended turned around their season. It launched a streak of nine wins in 10 games.
The only team that appears to be much the same now as then is Dallas. And that’s a potentially dangerous proposition for Seattle.
The Packers? They transformed from their 1-2 start and its prolific offense being ranked 28th. Rodgers was trying to assure curdled Cheeseheads everywhere. On Sept. 23 he said: “Five letters here just for everybody out there in Packer-land: R-E-L-A-X. Relax. We’re going to be OK.”
Rodgers was right.
The Packers won nine of their next 10 games, and 11 of 13 to win the NFC North. They went through six home games undefeated — including a win Nov. 30 over New England, the AFC’s top playoffs seed — while averaging 43 points per game.
Wonder if Rodgers would feel empowered to test All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman this time in the NFC title game, should the Packers and Seahawks win at home this weekend? He didn’t throw Sherman’s way once in September.
The Panthers have also turned themselves around since the Seahawks last saw them.
Carolina seemed to be angling for draft position after going 62 days between wins — from Oct. 5 when it beat Chicago 31-24 until Dec. 7 when the Panthers beat New Orleans 41-10. That was a 0-6-1 stretch in which they allowed an average of 30.1 points per game.
But, hey, there was always hope for everyone in the NFC South this season.
Carolina began getting healthier and more characteristically thumping on defense. Behind All-Pro middle linebacker Luke Kuechly, the Panthers have allowed 11.8 points per game in beating the Saints, Buccaneers, Browns, Falcons and Cardinals consecutively. A 34-3 win at Atlanta two weeks ago in the regular-season finale made the Panthers the second team in league history to win a division with a losing record. The first was the 2010 Seahawks, who went 7-9 yet won the NFC West.
Last weekend the Panthers dominated Arizona in the second half at home to win a wild-card playoff game 27-16 and advance to Saturday’s round in Seattle.
But Panthers dual-threat quarterback Cam Newton is 0-3 with a 54-percent completion rate and only one total touchdown pass in three career games against Seattle.
Carolina’s resurgence has coincided with a recommitment to the running game behind running back Jonathan Stewart from Timberline High School in Lacey. Stewart, who missed three games with injuries earlier this season, had 123 yards rushing last weekend. But the Panthers will be ramming into the Seahawks’ strength — Seattle is the league’s No. 1 rushing defense.
Dallas may be the team best-equipped to derail the Seahawks’ home march to another Super Bowl. The Cowboys are still playing like they did when they won in Seattle in October, with Murray running behind left tackle Tyron Smith — whom Seahawks coach Pete Carroll had in a camp at USC when Smith was 16 — and that at-times dominant offensive line.
“To me, the biggest difference is really the commitment to stay with the run,” Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn said in October when describing these Cowboys to previous ones that relied almost exclusively on quarterback Tony Romo’s decisions. “Even when they had some games where they were down and had to come from behind to win it, they stayed consistent in the run game.”
The Seahawks were ahead and had Murray bottled up at 64 yards through 31/2 quarters in October — before he romped for 51 yards over the final 8 minutes.
He finished the regular season with an NFL-best 1,845 yards rushing. That plowing formula often wins when the stakes soar and the temperatures plummet on the road in January.
All-Pro middle linebacker Bobby Wagner, perhaps the most valuable man to the Seahawks’ entire defense, is back now. He broke a bone in a tendon and tore a ligament in his foot in the second quarter of that game against Dallas in October. Pro Bowl safety Kam Chancellor was dragging a bad hip, sore groin and bone spurs on both ankles through that Cowboys’ game. Those were two large reasons why Dallas rolled up 23 first downs and 401 yards. The yards are the most Seattle’s allowed this season.
Even with Wagner and Chancellor healthy the Cowboys remain a huge threat to the Seahawks because of this: Dallas’ biggest weakness is its pass defense. It was 26th in the league allowing 251.9 yards passing per game during the regular season. But Seattle’s pass offense has been inconsistent and sometimes inert this season. Wilson completed just 14 of 28 throws for a season-low 126 yards and an interception against Dallas. His 47.6 passer rating that October day was the third-lowest of his career, and lowest since his rookie season of 2012.
The Seahawks do have one thing the other three teams left in the NFC playoffs do not: The experience of winning it all just last season, in this same, home-field-advantage scenario, too.
“I think it’s a positive factor, not a negative factor: We’ve been there before,” Carroll said. “We’ve been through this now, so hopefully it’ll make us stronger as we go forward.”
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