22 January 2015
From Field Gulls
How the Seahawks saved their season in 6 minutes
The wild finish to the NFC Championship game will go down as one of the most unlikely and unbelievable comebacks in NFL history. The Seahawks erased a 16-point second-half deficit -- the largest comeback in championship game history -- including a 12-point Packer lead with under three minutes to go. Only twice before in postseason history has a team overcome a 10-point deficit under three minutes and gone on to win.
Down 19-7 with 3:52 remaining, just about everyone had given Seattle up for dead. To that point in the game, Russell Wilson was living a nightmare, and despite coming into the game with one postseason pick on 152 attempts (the lowest interception rate in NFL postseason history), he'd thrown a career-high four picks and had only completed 8 of his 22 attempts for 75 yards.
But, that's when an improbable chain of events would kick into motion. From that point on, Wilson would finish out the game 6-of-7 for 134 yards with a touchdown pass, a touchdown run, and a successful 2-point conversion.
Seahawks-Packers NFC Championship Game: Six early moments when the NFCCG was unlost
For years to come, we will celebrate the late-game heroics that improbably chucked the Seattle Seahawks into Super Bowl XLIX. (Which is an event that we did not collectively hallucinate. You will not be waking up from this nightmare-turned-wet-dream seconds from now, with specks of sleeps in your eyes and the calendar plunked open to Sunday, January 18, 2015. Relax. R-E-L-A-X. If that were going to happen, it would've by now.)
The things that happened, happened.
The Jon Ryan touchdown pass. The onside kick. The Beast Mode go-ahead TD. The two-point "Hell, Mary" conversion. Overtime. The big-play offense finally XLIXing. The Sickest thRoW. The ensuing loss of mind.
Like 43-8, those things will never unhappen.
But without six earlier events, six largely forgotten events, there is no comeback. There is no Improbable 8:30, as Kenneth put it yesterday. There is no perfect pandemonium, no blissful bedlam -- no impending invitation to immortality.
The Better Team
Stop the presses. The Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl, thanks to a sequence of events every bit as improbable as a randomly-selected lineman being named "Garry Gilliam". Which is to say, the external observer had no means of predicting it. But Garry never had a doubt.
A debatable, and herein to be debated, sentiment among some Green Bay players and fans is that "the better team" lost Sunday's NFC Championship Game. And they aren't referring to a team which is proven better over the course of the season having an off day (a distinction that clearly belongs to Seattle), they mean that the losing team actually outplayed the winning team.
Did they?
The wild finish to the NFC Championship game will go down as one of the most unlikely and unbelievable comebacks in NFL history. The Seahawks erased a 16-point second-half deficit -- the largest comeback in championship game history -- including a 12-point Packer lead with under three minutes to go. Only twice before in postseason history has a team overcome a 10-point deficit under three minutes and gone on to win.
Down 19-7 with 3:52 remaining, just about everyone had given Seattle up for dead. To that point in the game, Russell Wilson was living a nightmare, and despite coming into the game with one postseason pick on 152 attempts (the lowest interception rate in NFL postseason history), he'd thrown a career-high four picks and had only completed 8 of his 22 attempts for 75 yards.
But, that's when an improbable chain of events would kick into motion. From that point on, Wilson would finish out the game 6-of-7 for 134 yards with a touchdown pass, a touchdown run, and a successful 2-point conversion.
Seahawks-Packers NFC Championship Game: Six early moments when the NFCCG was unlost
For years to come, we will celebrate the late-game heroics that improbably chucked the Seattle Seahawks into Super Bowl XLIX. (Which is an event that we did not collectively hallucinate. You will not be waking up from this nightmare-turned-wet-dream seconds from now, with specks of sleeps in your eyes and the calendar plunked open to Sunday, January 18, 2015. Relax. R-E-L-A-X. If that were going to happen, it would've by now.)
The things that happened, happened.
The Jon Ryan touchdown pass. The onside kick. The Beast Mode go-ahead TD. The two-point "Hell, Mary" conversion. Overtime. The big-play offense finally XLIXing. The Sickest thRoW. The ensuing loss of mind.
Like 43-8, those things will never unhappen.
But without six earlier events, six largely forgotten events, there is no comeback. There is no Improbable 8:30, as Kenneth put it yesterday. There is no perfect pandemonium, no blissful bedlam -- no impending invitation to immortality.
The Better Team
Stop the presses. The Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl, thanks to a sequence of events every bit as improbable as a randomly-selected lineman being named "Garry Gilliam". Which is to say, the external observer had no means of predicting it. But Garry never had a doubt.
A debatable, and herein to be debated, sentiment among some Green Bay players and fans is that "the better team" lost Sunday's NFC Championship Game. And they aren't referring to a team which is proven better over the course of the season having an off day (a distinction that clearly belongs to Seattle), they mean that the losing team actually outplayed the winning team.
Did they?
Labels: Seattle Seahawks
# posted by mamurd @ 9:24 PM 
