Even When the Seahawks Play a Normal Game, It's Weird
By Kyle Koster
Unabashed sickos may be reeling a bit this morning when they grab their newspaper and pour over the sports section while eating Cracklin' Oat Bran with 2-percent milk. Because the agate page will suggest that the Seattle Seahawks, proudly the most chaotic and bizarre of all the NFL teams, managed to play a conventional and normal game last night against the Arizona Cardinals.
The final score suggests as much. Twenty-eight to twenty-one. As simple and straightforward as one team scoring four touchdowns and the other posting three. Depressingly normcore numbers for the true freaks out there. But all is not what it seems.
As only they can do, the Seahawks managed to do weird stuff.
In the second quarter, Jason Myers missed an extra-point, which isn't the biggest deal. But it made the score all jumbled, delighting those who had unconventional numbers in their squares pool. Heading into the fourth, Seattle led 23-14. Closing time brought with it a rare and immensely satisfying five-point quarter.
Rarely does a person get to see a team's score go from 23 to the incredibly special 25 then to the more acceptable 28 in such a short manner of time. It took a dubious holding-in-the-end zone call to get there but life is nothing if not an unpredictable journey itself.
Reminder, Pete Carroll is on the record that contests cannot be won in the first, second, or third quarter. That's why Seattle has been in seven one-score games out of 10. It's why stuff absolutely will get weird whenever they play. Especially in primetime and especially on NBC. This is a franchise that couldn't conform even if it wanted to.
Anyone tuning into a Seahawks broadcast enters into a universally understood social contract that the journey will take us all to unusual places over a 210-minute span. That's just the way things are. A leopard can change its spots and a peacock could never be less uniquely beautiful.