Field Gulls
Where do you even start?
At the end? Sure, but you can’t tell this happy ending without the dark-magic two-point conversions.
With a fourth-quarter comeback straight out of the Improbability Drive? Maybe. But you can’t tell the story of how the Seattle Seahawks defeated the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday Night Football in Week 16 and totally leave out everything they did to lose it in the first three and a half quarters.
From the perspective of the game-winning drive? Maybe.
When a game has everything, you can’t retell this victory without the role players, the redemption stories, the bounces that were and weren’t, the hot-and-cold defense counterbalancing their hot-and-cold teammate at QB. Can’t forget the feeling of death, then hope’s resurrection. Or the missed field goal that left one final door ajar.
You can’t leave out the special teams touchdown! That was the first real ray of hope.
Even though it’s impossible to recapture every twist of fate, if you left anything out, it would do a disservice to the greatest regular-season game in Seattle since…? Since? Help me out here. Because sure feels like “since ever.” How many times will we ever witness the Seahawks:
You could live multiple lifetimes and not have the stars align as neatly again. So much history was made in this game, so very much that you’re better off finding it elsewhere on the website. Tyler wrote about two-pointers, Mookie wrote about the comeback and the final play’s uniqueness. There were hundreds of individual stories intersecting at different speeds on the field. Thousands of battles were won, lost or fought to a draw, weaving amongst each other to shape an exquisite tale equal parts coherent and chaotic. In short, almost everything that can happen, did. A victor was crowned because some of the everythings took precedence over their brethren.
The story of Seahawks 38, Rams 37 found its fulcrum in the center of a seesaw manned by a devastating giveaway and a resuscitating punt return. Of course it did! Because until Rashid Shaheed took matters into his own hands, yelled “CLEAR!” and applied the paddles humming with defibrillating energy, this game looked deceased. Sam Darnold had just thrown a goal-line interception. The Rams had scored 30 practically unanswered (Kenneth Walker begs to differ, and that studly gentleman can check back in later) to turn a 7-0 Seahawks lead upside down, all the way into a 30-14 stinker of a blowout. Pardon me, potential blowout.
Like Ernest Jones captured with an earnest eloquence, somewhere in that messy fourth quarter, “over” lost its meaning. The Seahawks defense bucked up with two run stops and a good piece of coverage by Josh Jobe on Puka Nacua....
