Good topic Aros. For me, watching the team since Patera, growing up in Seattle and enduring everything including the ridiculous 21 year gap without a playoff win ('84-'05), finally winning the SB was the penultimate. Watching with my family and girlfriend was a memory of a lifetime.
But the XLIX loss was the most emotionally devastating sporting event I've ever been a fan to (watching in person the legendary Zenyatta heartbreakingly lose the '10 Breeders Cup Classic by a neck in her career finale due to jockey error is tied though).
XLIX stung like nothing before or since because it felt like destiny was altered. To see the team miraculously win the NFC title game, to overcome the bad injuries to Lane and Avril, to get the incredible TD before halftime, to have the chance to defeat the hated Cheatriots and the conniving Brady and Belichek--everything was coming into place for a storybook, indelible place in history that was meant to be...and through pure arrogance and stupidity it was all snatched away from us...and I knew immediately we would never get back again and the team would never fully recover--because it is so hard to ever come back.
Had we won, with 2 titles--and back to back would've landed us in sports immortality--right up there with the '72-'73 Dolphins, the 70s Cowboys, '98-'99 Broncos.
With just 1 title, we're no different than the '02 Bucs, the '09 Saints, the '15 Broncos, the '10 Packers, the '06 Colts, etc.-All teams who won only 1 SB in their era and may or may not be even competitive anymore. IMO Pete will never get us there again.
So in sum, had we won XLIX, it would've been much easier to watch this slide before our eyes. We would've had a mark in history forever that no one could take away. Or even had we lost XLIX but ran Lynch at the 1 and still failed, I'd be ok knowing we went down with our best-no regrets. But because we didn’t, it makes the declining Carroll era all the more difficult--knowing what should've happened.
And make no mistake, while we will cherish our 1 title, the world will remember this Seahawk era and Carroll by what happened in XLIX.