SEATTLE — The Seattle Seahawks won’t be overlooking the winless Oakland Raiders when today’s game kicks off. Thanks to the 21-0 deficit they faced a year ago when hosting then-winless Tampa Bay, the Seahawks know that nothing is automatic in the NFL, not even for the best teams playing at home.
But with all due respect to everyone’s favorite NFL cliché (and perhaps favorite Al Pacino movie) let’s shelve the “any given Sunday” talk for this game.
Yes, the Seahawks will get the Raiders’ best shot, which as they’ve discovered this season, comes with the territory when you’re the defending champs. And yes, last year’s Tampa Bay game was a reminder that even the NFL’s worst teams can compete with a championship-caliber squad on, well, any given Sunday. But if the Seahawks want to show that they are contenders this year, despite an up-and-down start, and if they want to show that all is well in the locker room, that the recent distractions are indeed a media creation, as they would have you believe, then this would be a great time to not just win but do so convincingly.
With two consecutive games at home against a pair of struggling teams, now is the time for the Seahawks to not just win, but to win convincingly. It’s time for the Seahawks to get their turnover-creating, quarterback-sacking, Marshawn Lynch-rumbling, smack-talking swagger back.
“That was a wakeup call,” linebacker Bruce Irvin said of the Tampa game a year ago. “I don’t think anybody in here wants to be in that situation again. We’ve got to come out fast, man. We’ve got to punch them in the mouth early, let them know how it’s going to be, and just continue to put it on them all game.”
Winning a close, low-scoring game three time zones away last week was progress for the Seahawks, and especially for the defense that looked a bit more like the 2013 version of Seattle’s defense. The Seahawks pressured Carolina quarterback Cam Newton, they got turnovers, and they were stingy in the red zone, all hallmarks of the 2013 defense. For a team facing questions both about their play on the field and their chemistry in the locker room, it was an important result, style points be damned.
“I told a lot of the guys that I believe that was a game we needed,” said safety Kam Chancellor. “We’ve been battling all season, it’s been close games, and I think a game like that is what creates the tight niche we have, the bond we have, and it gets us through the adversity. I definitely believe that was a game we needed.”
But now the game the Seahawks need isn’t a gut-check victory; it’s time for the Seahawks to come out and, as Irvin put it, “let them know how it’s going to be, and just continue to put it on them all game.”
Doing that won’t be easy. Despite their 0-7 record, the Raiders aren’t a terrible team. They only lost by seven at New England. They lost by three to San Diego, a team that beat the Seahawks. Last week, they lost by 10 at Cleveland despite a minus-three turnover ratio.
“We know that just because a team hasn’t gotten a win, that doesn’t mean they’re going to lay down,” linebacker K.J. Wright said. “Teams are coming after us, trying to get a win against the Seahawks, so they’re going to come in ready to play, and we’ve got to be ready to go a whole four quarters.”
But if the Seahawks are really going to turn those early-season losses into a minor hiccup on the way to another successful season, and not a sign of a Super Bowl hangover, they need to, as Wright says, put a four-quarter performance together, which would mean beating up on an inferior team. Of course, the Seahawks couldn’t spend the past week talking about a blowout, even if that should be their goal. As the Tampa Bay game showed last year, every opponent must be taken seriously.
“The lesson that we learned from the Tampa Bay game last year is that it’s the National Football League — everybody is good,” quarterback Russell Wilson said. “… We know that it’s going to be a battle. They’ve lost some close games and they played the Chargers really well. They played so many other teams really well, they played the Patriots well — it’s going to be a good game.”
Sorry, Russell, but this one shouldn’t be a good game, not if the Seahawks are going to get their swagger back and start looking like a championship-caliber team once again.
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
