SEATTLE — As Marshawn Lynch rumbled for a 23-yard gain — a play that started with some Russell Wilson wizardry as he escaped the relentless Arizona Cardinals pass rush — Earl Thomas couldn’t contain himself.
The Seahawks’ All-Pro safety ran down the sideline and briefly onto the field to celebrate the big play with Lynch until an official reminded Thomas that he wasn’t supposed to be out there with the offense, and moments later, Seattle head coach Pete Carroll came running in to pull Thomas onto the sideline. It was a moment of pure joy in tougher-than-expected season for the Seahawks, one of several goofy moments on a day where Seattle looked a lot more like the team that won a Super Bowl last season than the one that struggled at times on the way to a 6-4 start.
On an afternoon when the Seahawks dominated the Arizona Cardinals on the way to a 19-3 victory, the defending champs didn’t just find a way to knock off the team with the league’s best record, they might have found themselves.
“It’s a special win, because we did it together,” Thomas said after he and his defensive teammates held the Cardinals to 204 yards, their lowest output in nearly two years. “For the first time this year, I think we played for pure reasons with no motives attached. And that’s what you love about this team — we can put our egos to the side, we can admit when we’re wrong, but we got to stay true. We have different personalities, but the thing I love about this week was it was up and down, we had tough battles with each other, but it turned into something beautiful, man. I’m talking about hugs, emotions, meetings, and I love all of that, man that’s a part of the game.”
The Seahawks have been saying their locker room is fine all season, even after trading Percy Harvin and through every negative report that suggests friction between teammates or between players and coaches. But while they weren’t willing to publicly air their dirty laundry, the Seahawks have had some issues.
The way Thomas described it, the Seahawks are a family, and while that term usually suggests a positive relationship, families fight, family members bicker, they hold grudges, they don’t always see eye to eye. But last week, after a few things boiled over — believe it or not, Thomas got into it with some teammates over their eating sunflower seeds during a walkthrough practice, something he could laugh about after the game, but a scene he said got pretty heated at the time — and after a meeting between some of the team’s core players and Pete Carroll, the Seahawks found something that’s been missing this season.
“Trust,” Thomas said. “That’s what we’ve been missing, to be totally honest. I think we haven’t been trusting each other, but tonight, man, it was just pureness.”
“We’re playing for each other, that’s what make us us, that’s what makes us special.”
Apparently the healing that has been going on for the Seahawks has been more than just physical. Getting middle linebacker Bobby Wagner back after a five game absence was big for the defense. And the physical improvement in Kam Chancellor, who fought through injuries early in the season, is also noticeable.
But to hear players describe the team’s improvement following Sunday’s game, the biggest difference was the way the team came together during the week.
At the heart of the turnaround was the meeting that involved players like Thomas, Chancellor, Russell Wilson, Doug Baldwin, Michael Bennett, Richard Sherman and a few others, as well as their head coach.
“It was more so just about us trusting each other, us feeling each other, feeling what it is to play like a team,” Baldwin said. “It was very evident today that we were playing like a team.
“That was the theme of the week. We had to get back to trusting each other. I spoke to Earl about it a little bit earlier this week. I told him that in order for a team or collective group to live and to thrive, the individual must die. Not necessarily die as in not breathing; it means the ego. We as a collective need to realize that if we just trust everybody on this team, if we trust each individual, each other to go out there and do their job, and then we put the put the pressure on ourselves just to do what we’re supposed to do, not doing anything out of the ordinary, not try too hard. If we just trust each other, the sky will be the limit for us and that we’ll be unstoppable because if we’re all playing collectively together, it’s like the theory of the fist and the fingers, when the fist is together it’s a lot more difficult to break than when the fingers are apart.”
Baldwin went on to describe a feeling that something was missing, and that there was just a “subtle difference” between where the team was last week and where it is now, and in a parity-driven league in which talent is fairly evenly distributed, that subtle difference can be huge.
“The subtle difference between what’s good, what’s great and what’s legendary is the mental side of it and also the emotional side of it,” Baldwin said. “You have to play this game with emotion and if you can play this game with love, with trust and commitment to each other, that’s probably the hardest thing for anybody to stop.”
Of course it’s a lot easier to talk about turning a corner after drubbing a first-place team than it would have been had the Seahawks had that same honest discussion midweek then lost to the Cardinals. And with another tough test coming in San Francisco Thursday, the Seahawks will need to back up this performance for people to really buy that a season-altering change occurred.
But for one Sunday afternoon at least, the Seahawks found joy on a football field, and more importantly, they say, they killed their egos and learned to trust again.
“You could feel the connection with these guys,” defensive coordinator Dan Quinn said. “Maybe that was the missing ingredient that we needed.”
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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