SEATTLE – The typical Saturday night routine of watching highlights from the previous week’s game had the Seattle Seahawks lingering somewhere between boredom and sleep. The video showed all the big plays from the win over Houston six days earlier, but most of the Seahawks were just ready to turn their attention toward the next day’s game against Dallas.
Jennifer buchanan / The Herald
And then an image flashed on the screen that snapped everyone to attention.
It was Ken Hamlin’s face. He was still in a hospital room, telling his teammates to keep on fighting.
“I think that kind of choked everybody up,” Seahawks defensive end Grant Wistrom said a day later, after Seattle came back to beat the Dallas Cowboys 13-10. “I know that the main thing was, Ken was on our minds and this was a football game we had to go in and win.”
Thanks to a defense that hasn’t always been the team’s strength, the Seahawks got their win. Seattle’s defense held the NFL’s seventh-ranked offense to just 275 yards and 10 points.
And it couldn’t have come at a better time. The Seahawks’ offense struggled most of the day, so any defensive mistake could have cost them the game.
“We just kept fighting, no matter what,” linebacker Jamie Sharper said. “That’s what a good defense does.”
Just like Hamlin asked them to.
Almost a week after the Seahawks’ safety had been seriously injured in a brawl outside of a Pioneer Square nightclub, his teammates found inspiration in his message.
“It just made you realize that you can go out here every day and fight together on the football field, but you never know what might happen,” Sharper said of seeing Hamlin’s videotaped message. “You just have to keep things going.”
Had the Seahawks let the emotional toll of the last week get to them, fans probably would have understood. Video images of Hamlin just before the incident that left him hospitalized were leading newscasts all week, so his teammates had plenty of distraction leading into the game against the Cowboys.
But their play answered any questions about whether the Seahawks would be ready.
“We were thinking about Ken the whole game,” defensive tackle Marcus Tubbs said. “We knew this was the kind of game he loves. We wanted to win it for him.”
Hamlin’s replacement in the starting lineup, free safety Marquand Manuel, did his part. Manuel had eight tackles, three of which came in a four-play sequence at the beginning of the second half. While the Seahawks may have missed Hamlin’s presence, Manuel made sure there wasn’t much of a void in terms of play.
“I just thank God that I prepare every week,” Manuel said. “From that standpoint, getting in the game, that was the biggest thing. My teammates had confidence that I could do the job. I couldn’t waver or anything like that. I had to go out there and do what I always do.”
The defense overcame two Seahawks turnovers deep in Seattle territory, holding Dallas to a total of three points on two drives that started at the 12- and 9-yard lines. But the most important play came with 10 seconds left, when cornerback Jordan Babineaux stepped in front of a Drew Bledsoe pass and returned the interception 25 yards to set up the game-winning field goal.
“It’s an emotional win for a lot of us,” Babineaux said. “We have Hamlin on our heart and on our mind. Definitely, we did this for him.”
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