By Mike Wise
Sunday, January 15, 2006
SEATTLE -- Way to ruin a script going on 22 years, Seattle. Your team was supposed to be soft, squeezably soft, able to fold in any playoff game in any stadium, in any year.
Your sorry Seahawks fell apart against St. Louis at home last season and lost a thriller in Green Bay two years ago. You went through an 11-year drought between 1988 and 1999 without a playoff appearance. Your sad postseason history featured 10 measly games over three decades, three of which your team won but none since the Reagan administration.
Between 1983 and 1987, Joe Gibbs coached as many playoff games as the Seahawks' organization has ever played.
The dissolution was felt in the first paragraph of Seattle Times columnist Steve Kelley on Saturday: "Life as we know it in Seattle will end today if the Seahawks lose to Washington and add one more year to their playoff drought."
And now, they take out Washington, 20-10, in an NFC semifinal playoff game.
Unreal, huh? The latte-sippin', tree-huggin', New-York-Times-readin', Courtney-Lovin' Seahawks won a playoff game? What's next? Sunlight in this gray, dank corner of the world?
Paul Allen was playing the "Where were you in 1984?" game, trying to recall where he was the moment the Seahawks last won in the playoffs.
"Geez, I was probably working on some form of the IBM PC," said America's third-wealthiest man, according to Forbes magazine. "No, wait. I'd left Microsoft already."
There was this other guy named Lorin Sandretzky at Qwest Field, who did not have $21 billion to his name but said he felt just as rich as the Seattle owner. Sandretzky is a 40-year-old, 6-foot-8, 460-pound beefcake of a man, whose sizable head made his Seahawks baseball cap look like a yarmulke. He has been to every Seahawks game for 16 years as a season ticket holder, and now this big lug with the words "Big Lo" on the back of his game jersey was near tears.
"Next to my nephew and niece being born, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me," Sandretzky said, his torso halfway over the stands under one goalpost. "I got to suck it up right now, but once I get inside my vehicle I'm going to be bawling my eyes out."
Finally, there was Mack Strong, plowing 32 yards, the longest of his 13-year career. (Mack Strong? Is there a greater name for a fullback? Maybe Tank Brisket. Or Bull Trucker. Brutus Rock? But as names for fullbacks go, Mack Strong is a good one.) Anyhow, what a surreal scene amid the drizzle and then a downpour:
The gazillionaire owner.
The lovable, long-suffering lout in the stands.
And the 34-year-old vet who almost gave up the game six years ago after two ankle surgeries, sealing the win as the masses went mad in the cold.
When you wait 22 years in the rain for a postseason win, the losses that bind pile up. Until they sting, and then hurt, and you feel like you're almost supposed to lose the important ones.
"The great thing in sports is when there's a bond between fans and players and everybody is waiting for victory," Allen said. "And then it's over, and it's a great thing."
Said Strong: "The history of bad things happening, the history of failing, this is a different football team. This is a new era and we're going in a different direction."
Standing beside him in the locker room on Saturday was Allen, once a 14-year-old sports fan at Lakewood High along with his curious 12-year-old friend, Bill Gates. While they went on to change the world, Allen's hometown team changed little. When it came to the postseason, Seattle lost. And lost, losing every postseason game they played since 1984.
"I told them they don't have to hear about 1984 anymore," Allen said.
At the time, Sandretzky was an 18-year-old high school football player, years from living out his NFL dreams vicariously through Cortez Kennedy, Kenny Easley and Steve Largent. Today, the big lug is so well known, his action figure is sold all over town. What fan has his own action figure?
Maybe it was apropos that a sense of Seattle dreariness clouded everything. Gray, bleak and wet from the opening kickoff, it was a game that could have been played on a London pitch or in a Dublin alley. There was something inherently depressing about this environment, which Mark Brunell and his teammates were never able to completely shake off.
The whole first-half stalemate seemed what the weather called for, a sense of blase, of nothingness. Joe Gibbs's players never upped their dosage until it was too late; they were never able to kick their malaise. And as it continued to drizzle long after the clock ran out on Washington's season, the Seahawks celebrated their playoff victory as much as their triumph over three decades of postseason futility.
Most amazing: They won a nasty, physical game after their best player, MVP Shaun Alexander, was literally knocked out. They won after giving up a late touchdown and a fumble that seemed to ensure their demise. They were about to lose a two-touchdown, fourth-quarter lead and melt down against a team with so much more playoff history on its side.
What a reversal of fortune, no? The soft, West Coast team stood up and fought back and finally advanced.
The rain was coming down, the 27th straight day. Six more and they've got the record here. Allen was richer, in ways $21 billion could not make him. Strong was looking as manly as a fullback can, flexing his biceps by his locker cubicle. Sandretzky? He was content.
"Doesn't matter how much bad happens to you," Big Lo said. "You get a day like this, it totally outweighs all the bad days you ever had."
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