Seahawks’ rally shows their incredible resolve, toughness – Seattle Times After being stifled by their own mistakes, the Seahawks put together a rally that defined their spirit and their season. And we’ll see you all in the Super Bowl.” The Seahawks were down 16-0 at halftime. The deficit was still 12 with less than three minutes remaining. And then the miracles started happening. Or rather, the Seahawks were rewarded for refusing to quit. “No matter what you do to us, no matter how hard the pressure gets, no matter what you throw at us — no matter what happens — we bend, but we don’t break,” Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor said. [sic] “I had the teammates’ support to just keep pushing through,” he said, crying, “keep pushing through.” They didn’t score until a fake field goal turned into a 19-yard touchdown pass from Ryan to Gilliam. They didn’t score again until Wilson’s 1-yard touchdown run made the score 19-14 with 2:09 left in regulation. The Seahawks were down 16-0 at halftime. The deficit was still 12 with less than three minutes remaining. And then the miracles started happening. Or rather, the Seahawks were rewarded for refusing to quit. “No matter what you do to us, no matter how hard the pressure gets, no matter what you throw at us — no matter what happens — we bend, but we don’t break,” Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor said. “The toughness of this team surprises me every week,” defensive tackle Tony McDaniel said. “I’m still in shock. Its like some of those things were happening in a dream.” Seahawks Rally Past Packers in Overtime to Return to Super Bowl – NYT SEATTLE — The Seahawks huddled on their sideline Sunday afternoon, and inside the circle, their coach, Pete Carroll, pointed and shouted and waved. Above the din, in a stadium that two hours earlier had been stunned into silence, many players nodded along as he spoke. “This is where you’re supposed to be,” Carroll told them, even as logic and good sense — as well as the first 58 minutes of the N.F.C. title game — suggested otherwise. In their locker room, perhaps, sulking over the five turnovers and the missed tackles and the dropped passes and one of the worst first quarters, if not first halves, that many of them had ever experienced. Or in their cars, their windshields streaked with tears of a grieving city. Then overtime began, and then came the perfect catch of a perfect throw, and then Michael Bennett commandeered a bicycle from a police officer and started riding around the field. “When you win a Super Bowl,” Bennett said, “you can do whatever you want.” The Seahawks are in position to defend that championship because of an improbable confluence of events — improbable to anyone not scampering around their locker room afterward, dispensing and accepting hugs after a 28-22 victory over the Green Bay Packers. A 35-yard touchdown pass from Russell Wilson to Jermaine Kearse clinched the win in front of the largest announced crowd, 68,538, in CenturyLink Field’s history. Some of those fans left the premises late in the fourth quarter, although in their retelling of a game described as “ridiculous” and “destiny” by the Seahawks and “sad” and “devastating” by the Packers, they will surely say that they stayed until the end, when the turf transformed into a navy blue mosh pit and the press box felt as if it would detach and fall onto the heaving crowd below. “God blessed us with a few bounces,” said cornerback Richard Sherman, who had played much of the second half with one good arm after injuring his left elbow. All around Sherman, his teammates paused from recapping what he called the wildest, craziest game he had played in, and they posed for photos with the George Halas trophy, awarded to the N.F.C. champion. In one corner stood the reserve offensive tackle Garry Gilliam, whom Carroll had told all week to be ready for a fake field goal. Gilliam caught a 19-yard pass from punter Jon Ryan, the holder, that precipitated Seattle’s comeback from a 16-0 halftime deficit. “I’m pretty sure I blacked out,” Gilliam said. Across the way, Chris Matthews explained how he had recovered the muffed onside kick that put the Seahawks in position to score the go-ahead touchdown, their second touchdown in 44 seconds, with 1 minute 25 seconds remaining in regulation. “Listen,” Matthews said. “I was going out there not trying to mess up.” A few steps over, Luke Willson shared his reaction to the 2-point conversion on a rainbow pass from Wilson, which proved pivotal when Mason Crosby’s 48-yard field goal with 14 seconds left sent the game into overtime. Willson saw the ball spiraling toward him, he said and figured that something had gone wrong. “I bet if we ran that 100 times, one time I would get the ball,” Willson said, “and that was today.” There were other critical plays — Sherman’s late tackle of Jordy Nelson that prevented a first down, the Packers’ decisions to kick field goals instead of going for touchdowns on two fourth-and-goals from the Seattle 1 in the first quarter — but calling one more important than another would be like removing a piece from a Jenga tower. All of them taken together resembled a boulder accelerating down a mountain, rolling right into the Packers. It will take them until the first snap of next season, if not longer, to process that Seattle, not they, will face the New England Patriots on Feb. 1 in Glendale, Ariz. We gave it away,” Packers receiver Randall Cobb said. How that happened, the abridged version: After a 1-yard touchdown run by Wilson cut the Seahawks’ deficit to 19-14 with 2:09 left in the fourth quarter, after Matthews fell on the ball, after Marshawn Lynch scored from 24 yards out to put Seattle ahead, and after Crosby made his fifth field goal of the game to force overtime, Seattle won the coin toss, and that was that. Wilson drove the Seahawks 87 yards in six plays, the final 70 coming on consecutive deep throws. The first pass, down the near sideline, landed in Doug Baldwin’s arms. The second, deep down the middle, after an audible at the line of scrimmage, found Kearse, who had been the intended receiver on two of Wilson’s first-half interceptions. “That’s Jermaine Kearse in a bottle,” Baldwin said. “It doesn’t matter what he’s done in the first three quarters of a game, the first four quarters of a game. When you need him in a crucial situation, he’s going to come up with it.” Wilson, in his third season, has played 10 times against Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks. He has won all 10 games. In some of those, he has outplayed his counterpart. Not on Sunday, when he completed 14 of 29 passes for 209 yards, with four interceptions and a 44.3 passer rating, while being pummeled by Julius Peppers and Clay Matthews. But no matter how poorly he played for much of the game, Wilson did not doubt himself or his teammates. He likes to say that he is always prepared, that he visualizes every potential situation before it happens. Wilson, in all likelihood, did not account for the possibility that the Packers would outgain Seattle, 137 yards to 3, in the first quarter, or that the Seahawks would not notch their initial first down until more than half of the second quarter had elapsed, or that he would not complete his first pass — to a member of his team — until four minutes remained in the first half. “If we’re going to go down, I’m going to go down swinging; that’s for sure,” Wilson said. “Just to find a way, there’s no excuse for me.” That also encapsulated the attitude of Aaron Rodgers, who, hobbled by a strained left calf, threw for 178 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions. In their last eight games, all victories, the Seahawks have outscored their opponents by 130-26 after halftime, and by 83-13 in the fourth quarter and overtime. In Seattle’s kingdom, uttering the word “repeat” might as well be a finable offense. It contradicts the culture that Carroll has cultivated: that if some games mean more, then others mean less. This one did mean more, though, and about 30 minutes after the game, the door to the Seahawks’ locker room swung open, and out stepped Baldwin. He ranted at anyone who had doubted his team — when the Seahawks were 3-3 and 6-4, playing for themselves and not one another, and again on Sunday, when they ran off the field, the crowd hushed, trailing by 16-0. “You don’t win the game in the first half; you win the game in the second half,” Baldwin said. “What did we do? We come out and we do what we do. We played Seahawks football. We got an opportunity to do what we love. And we’ll see you all in the Super Bowl.” COMMENTS: 1. As a Seahawks fan, I am washing my mouth out with soap for all the profanity I spewed about our offense prior to the last two minutes of the game. This was simply the most unbelievable comeback Ive witnessed in my limited lifespan. Great coaching and team effort by all. Sorry Packers, you guys might have earned it, but either grace or treachery stole it for us. 2. Ive been coaching, playing, and watching football games since 1955. Ive seen numerous playoff games. This afternoons Seahawks win, guided by Russell Wilson, ranks way up there as one of the best even. What else is there to say? Go Seahawks Go. 3. One of the most dramatic, exciting finishes ever: the onside, the Lynch run, the miraculous two point conversion lob--and the incredible, risky Wilson to Kearse pass for the OT win. This is one for the books, to be replayed on highlight reels for years to come. At 5 minutes left we had all but given up, people shaking their heads, texting their doubt, getting texts of doubt, heads hung low, and then...bam. bam. bam...and BAM! Our living room exploded with minutes long group jump dance. What a finish! Congratulation Seahawks! Super Bowl Bound--again! nytimes/2015/01/19/sports/football/seahawks-rally-past-packers-in-overtime-for-nfc-championship-and-spot-in-super-bowl.html?ref=sports
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 18:23:08 +0000
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