SEATTLE — It calls for a metaphor, for something clever and witty and insightful enough to capture the improbability of it all.
Maybe a line about flying pigs. Or maybe simply something about snowballs in Hell. Either one would work, because we’ve never met a cliché we couldn’t beat into the ground.
Yet when the Seattle Seahawks beat the New Orleans Saints 41-36 Saturday, when they defeated the heavily favored Super Bowl champions in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs, they left the assembled searching for words.
How do you explain a victory by a team that went 7-9 in the regular season, whose appearance in the postseason was greeted by derision? How do you explain the fact that a 10½-point underdog stared down one of the league’s marquee franchises?
Maybe we’ll leave that to Pete Carroll.
“This was a day to remember,” the Seahawks’ coach said. “It was just an unbelievably energetic, electric day in the stadium.
“It came out of an attitude. It came out of a belief in each other.”
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Tell us more, coach.
“I think what’s clear to me is we have a bunch of guys who are really together on what they think.”
Sounds like a pretty good formula. But it also sounds like something a coach says only after a victory, when effusive accolades come easily. And it can’t change the fact that Seattle was the first nine-loss team in playoff history.
So maybe that’s the angle that was missing. Perhaps those who dismissed Seattle’s chances Saturday were overlooking one immutable fact: No nine-loss team has ever lost a playoff game.
That one works, doesn’t it? But it still can’t explain how the Seahawks overcame a 17-7 deficit, ripping off a 27-3 run that left them holding a comfortable lead. It still can’t explain Matt Hasselbeck, who missed last week’s game with a bad hip and was playing with a left hand bandaged until it resembled a club.
Hasselbeck stepped into the juvenation machine and delivered perhaps the signature performance of his career, throwing for four touchdowns and leading an offense that racked up 415 yards.
How about it, Matt? What was the secret?
“The last two years, we didn’t win a lot of games, and it was a lot of work,” he said. “We didn’t have the teamwork or the camaraderie.
“I know guys have bought in because if you didn’t buy in, you were gone..”
Which might explain why the Seahawks have made 281 roster moves in the past year, leading to a combination that all came together Saturday.
In the annals of Seattle sports, it was akin to an unknown Mariners pitcher named Bob Wolcott shutting down the powerhouse Cleveland Indians in the 1995 ALCS. Or maybe it was like a 47-win SuperSonics team reaching the NBA Finals in 1978.
In other words, it was remarkable and unexpected. Well, at least by most of us.
“The underdog role, I think we cherished it and kind of took it to heart,” cornerback Marcus Trufant said. “Nobody gave us a chance, and we just kind of shrugged our shoulders.”
And yet we are still searching for our metaphor, a quest that brings us to the fans.
For there they were, waving the white towels that were handed out before the game, making the stadium look as though it had been invaded by fireflies. They waved them before kickoff. They waved them during timeouts. The waved them whenever the Seahawks were on defense.
But they never had to throw those white towels into the ring, and that might have been the most surprising outcome of the day.
Greg Jayne is Sports editor of The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jaynecolumbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbian.com/weblogs/GregJayne
