Optimizing Optimism

Everyone got their hearts ripped out Sunday.

The Seahawks lost a really tough game.

I’ll admit, I thought the game was at one o’clock in my time zone. I didn’t realize it was on until I saw a tweet about “a nice throw” by Russell Wilson. A couple minutes and choice-y swear words later I turned on the TV to see Wilson score on a rushing touchdown to cut it to a 13-point game. Obviously you know the rest. We lost to Atlanta, but there are a ton of things to take from this. Maybe it isn’t the end of the world.

• Atlanta was the number-one seed in the playoffs folks. They lost three games by an average of six points, and two of those losses were by only four. Only one loss was at home. Atlanta is really good (offensively.) This is a huge step up from the team’s last playoff appearance. Chicago was a two seed, and we had as much of a chance of winning as the Kings do of staying in Sacramento. A long shot. We did make it close with the Bears, but that was never our game to win. This was different. Yeah, we didn’t play up to par in the first half, but we killed the Falcons in the second half. If the Seahawks had played with half that much gusto and what not in the first half we would be trash talking the 49ers this week. (Inevitably we still are. How ridiculous is Kapernicking? So ridiculous that it’s a rip off.)
• Yes, it probably hurt more knowing that we had a legitimate shot at the Super Bowl to lose this game than if we lost it as a Cinderella-Wild Card, but the point is that we were a legitimate Super Bowl contender who took the number-one seed in our conference (who, by the way, easily could have been 16-0) to the last second and went on a three-week scoring rampage with a rookie quarterback. I know Russell Wilson is more than most and/or all rookies, but the fact that this is his basement, imagine what his ceiling is. More so, this team’s ceiling could be very, very high. Chris Clemons, 31, and Marcus Trufant, 32, are the only non-specialists, major contributors over 30. In fact, Heath Farewell, who in his own right is a fantastic special teams player, defensive end Patrick Chukwurah, punter Jon Ryan and stand-in kicker Ryan Longwell are the only guys over 30 on the entire roster. This team has a very high ceiling, and to put it in Pete Carroll’s words, “Can be really cool for us in the future.”
• Did I mention how good Russell Wilson is? Not only did he set a franchise and NFL record for passing yards in a playoff game with 385 (WHATTTT!?!?!), but he also threw for 3,118 as a rookie as well as running for 489 yards. I can’t stress enough, he is a rookie. Imagine him in three years. (I believe, if this were twitter,  #scary would be appropriate.)
• Pete Carroll had 15 wins (counting the playoffs) in his first two years. He had 13 this year (again counting playoffs) alone. He had 19 losses over that span (first two years) and less than a third of that number (six, again, counting playoffs) this year. This is a tremendous step up for Carroll and the team. It finally seems like he has the personnel he wants to run the kind of team he needs to win. And he is winning.

The Seahawks have nothing to be ashamed about this year. Yes, they lost and that was heart breaking, but I think most people thought this would be another 7-9 transition year with Matt Flynn as Tavaris Jackson 2.0 in terms of place-holding for the TBD “franchise QB.” But we found Wilson; we found an elite defense (Seriously, best in the league. Period.) We found a lot of things to be proud of this year that might not have shown themselves in a few more years instead. The Seahawks are completely ahead of the curve, and they should be a Super Bowl contender for at least a decade. Count on it.

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