KIRKLAND – While keeping in mind that no one named Nitschke, Hornung or Starr will be in uniform this weekend, the Seattle Seahawks will face a franchise that is their historical opposite.
The Green Bay Packers have won 12 NFL championships, while the Seahawks have played a meager eight playoff games.
When it comes to playoff history, this is like a karaoke contest between Paul McCartney and Vanilla Ice.
“The history in Green Bay is magnificent because of all the football past,” said Seahawks assistant coach Jim Zorn, a former quarterback for both Seattle and Green Bay. “When you walk around, at least when I was there, every single hallway had flags everywhere talking about all the championships they’ve won. Here, we haven’t begun any kind of tradition like that.”
Seattle’s unfortunate tradition has already been bucked, as the playoff-deprived Seahawks are on the verge of their second postseason appearance in 15 years. They play the Packers this Sunday at Lambeau Field, which marks Seattle’s first playoff game since 1999.
“I’m sure we’re the underdogs,” said Seahawks fullback Mack Strong, who has played in one playoff game during an 11-year NFL career. “Most people aren’t giving us a chance to win this game, so we can let it all hang out.”
This time of year, there is no Cinderella story like the Seahawks. They are the Cleveland State Vikings to Green Bay’s Indiana Hoosiers.
It’s a situation the Seahawks have been in before, dating back to their first playoff appearance in 1983.
Seattle barely squeaked into the postseason that year, riding first-year coach Chuck Knox, rookie running back Curt Warner and backup quarterback Dave Krieg to an improbable playoff run.
The Seahawks knocked off Denver in an AFC wild card game the opening weekend, then went into Miami as a 15-point underdog and stunned the Dolphins 27-20 to advance to the AFC Championship game. Although the Los Angeles Raiders beat Seattle 30-14 to earn the right to play in Super Bowl XVIII, the seven-year-old Seahawks franchise proved itself to be a force to be reckoned with.
Or at least it looked like that. Seattle has been back just four times, with one more win to show for it.
“There are a lot of things that go into that,” said Knox, whose trio of playoff victories remain the only three in team history. “I’m proud of the record we had and that we were there. (Current coach) Mike Holmgren has done a nice job, and I think he has them headed in the right direction.”
Holmgren’s current team has its share of playoff-tested veterans, but they are few and far between. As could be expected from a franchise without much playoff history, the Seahawks aren’t exactly overstocked in the experience department.
The 53-man roster includes 34 players making their playoff debut and only 10 who have appeared in more than one postseason game.
Seattle’s 22 starters have a combined 27 playoff games – or just 10 more than Packers quarterback Brett Favre.
Asked what he expects this weekend to be like, rookie safety Ken Hamlin said: “We’ll see. I really don’t know. We’ve got guys who are really ready to play.”
Knox, who coached the Seahawks from 1983 to ‘91, doesn’t believe in the experience factor. That might explain why he was able to take a bunch of players with little to no playoff experience and carry it to the AFC title game.
“Experience doesn’t really mean a lot,” he said. “My definition of experience is this: experience is not what happens to a man, but what a man does with what happens.”
The 1983 team had just five starters with any playoff experience.
“We were just young and excited about continuing to play,” said Zorn, who started the first eight games of that season before giving way to Krieg.
Some of the ex-Seahawks see a little bit of the 1983 team in this year’s unit. They hope that the latest squad can match the success of 20 years ago, but with more of a carryover.
“I think they’re headed in the right direction,” said former wide receiver Steve Largent, who played in seven of the Seahawks’ eight playoff games and had 23 postseason receptions. “What you have to develop is an expectation of a winning franchise. The fans have to expect to be there every year, and from top to bottom the organization has to have those expectations. When that happens, you’ll see the Seahawks start making the playoffs every year.”
Before anyone can think that far ahead, the 2003 Seahawks are just looking to extend this season one more week in 2004.
“Hopefully it will be the start of a new era here in Seattle, where we become one of the mainstays in the playoffs every year and you’ll just understand that every year Seattle’s going to be there,” Strong said. “This is a team, we’re not content to just get in the playoffs. We want to make some noise and see what we can do.”
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