Attyla the Hawk":3e9yrbqw said:
seahawksTopGear":3e9yrbqw said:
For the first time since the Ruskel era Seattle was tougher, meaner and faster than the competition and this is where the players themselves (let alone the fans and the rest of the country) found that out.
Baltimore @ Seattle?
BeastQuake playoff win?
This team has been consistently kicking the tar out of other teams for awhile. Although I think the Baltimore whipping in 2011 was the first instance of taking a real physical NFL team and beating them at their own game.
I love it!
Stole my thunder... That game against the Ravens the season before was a real coming-of-age for our Smashmouth Seahawks. For the first time EVER in my recall, we slugged toe-to-toe with a physically-beat-you-up heavyweight team, and matched them punch for punch and raised them one, AND WON THE GAME. The 2012 Dallas game just continued to reinforce that identity, that it hadn't changed.
I would add to the list also the Giants game from the 2011 season, IN NEW YORK, where NYG and Eli were about to punch in the game-winning TD, merely a formality, after all it's the Seahawks, except that Eli threw a tipped ball a little behind Victor Cruz, and Brandon Browner grabbed it and went 90 yards the other way for a game-clinching TD. Oh yeah, those same Giants went on to win the Super Bowl a few weeks later. We out-smashmouthed the East Coast Giants on their turf and came away with the W.
Do you remember where you were when Browner picked that and started running the other way for the score? Just when we were all going, "10am East Coast game, here we go again...", BAM!! it all changes in an instant...
The New Orleans Beastquake victory was awesome, but I didn't feel it was an out-smackdown thing necessarily (Beastquake run itself aside), but a matter of Hasselbeck having a *brilliant* game and the whole team playing out of their minds to OUTSCORE the Saints.
So for me, the signature games showing the transition to becoming the Smackdown Seahawks (no more Sea-Sissies) were the Baltimore and NYG games late in the 2011 season.