KIRKLAND – When Shaun Alexander stood at the podium during the presentation of the NFC championship trophy, not even head coach Mike Holmgren could get his attention.
“I’m on the stage with Shaun and I said, ‘This is pretty good, huh?’” Holmgren recalled Monday from his post-game experience the previous day. “And he said, ‘I just want to soak it in.’”
About 18 hours later, Alexander was just starting to grasp what his Seattle Seahawks had accomplished over the weekend. The Seahawks are actually going to the Super Bowl.
“I just can’t stop smiling,” Alexander said Monday, one day after the Seahawks beat the Carolina Panthers 34-14 in the NFC championship game. “This is just a great feeling.”
The day after the biggest win in this franchise’s history, the Seahawks were still coming to terms with what they had accomplished.
“Sometimes it doesn’t seem real,” quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said, “and then other times it feels very real. When you’re looking at a very good Pittsburgh Steelers team, that’s real.”
The Seahawks still have 12 days before they will take on the Steelers in Super Bowl XL, and they were trying to get their celebrating in Monday and today before heading back to work on Wednesday.
“This is all new to us,” Alexander said Monday. ” (Coach Mike Holmgren) tells us: ‘Enjoy the ride, but remember that there is only one thing that is important, and that is playing in 13 days.’”
Holmgren said he’s already gotten a lot of feedback from the public after the historic win.
“A lot of people feel good about that,” said Holmgren, who celebrated Sunday’s win by going out to dinner with his wife and four daughters. “It happened at dinner (Sunday) night. (Fans saying, ) ‘You know, I don’t watch much football, but this is pretty neat.’ Words to that effect. That’s pretty cool.”
Because next week will be filled with distractions, the Seahawks will spend this week preparing as if they have a game Sunday. They’ll run through a typical practice schedule at their Kirkland facility before heading to Detroit on Sunday.
“You can do some things there, but you have to have a good practice week this week,” Holmgren said. “We’ll practice once a day in Detroit, but here we practice twice a day. We get squeezed on time with the media obligations.”
Without much Super Bowl experience on the roster, the Seahawks will enter next week in uncharted territory.
“I think some of it we’re just going to have to do on our own,” Hasselbeck said. “There are definitely enough resources of people (within) the organization that have been there. Even (the five) guys on or team that have been there and played in this game; I guess you have to listen and try to learn what you can from those types of people.
“At the end of the day, after all the distractions and the national anthem, you just have to focus on playing a football game. Sixty minutes of the best football you could possibly play. That’s what it’s going to take.”
But the Seahawks are trying not to look that far ahead right now. With their typical Tuesday off, the players who have just won the first conference championship game ever played in Seattle will take some time to revel in their accomplishment.
“It’s just a humbling experience to know that, of all the teams that set out to play in this Super Bowl, we’re one of the teams that gets to play in it,” Hasselbeck said. “To have the opportunity to be called world champions is an incredible opportunity. We’ve worked so hard for it.”
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