Forget about rivalry, Seahawks and 49ers are fighting for survival

What used to be a contest for supremacy is now a test of survival.

The two division heavyweights who’ve accounted for the past five NFC West titles are standing toe-to-toe at 2-4 and preparing to fight it out to see who’ll stay stuck in the division’s basement.

So while the stakes of this Seattle vs. San Francisco meeting aren’t as high as they’ve been the past few seasons, that might actually make this game even more important. Forget about rivalry between two teams who were built so similarly. This is a chance for revival for two teams used to playing each other with an eye toward playoff position, but who are now meeting at the opposite end of the standings.

That’s not a shock in San Francisco after an offseason of attrition that started with a change from coach Jim Harbaugh and continued with the retirement of mainstays like linebacker Patrick Willis and defensive lineman Justin Smith. Everyone knew there were going to be growing pains in San Francisco under first-year coach Tom Jimsula or Jim Tom Shula or however the heck you say it.

And actually, the 49ers have played surprisingly competitive football this season whether it was beating Minnesota on Monday night in Week 1 or holding Green Bay to 17 points or nearly beating the Giants on the road a couple of weeks ago.

The Seahawks have been surprisingly competitive, too, but not necessarily in a good way with five of their six games decided in the final minutes. Seattle has blown fourth-quarter leads in all four losses, the latest being the largest. The Seahawks lost after leading Cincinnati by 17 points and they were beaten by Carolina after being up by nine.

Three days later, the Seahawks are back on the road in San Francisco … errr … Santa Clara, where they will try to show the rest of the country that they’re capable of rebounding.

“We’re a hard team to rattle,” cornerback Richard Sherman said. “A hard team to get down because we take it one game at a time. We don’t win all of the games.”

No, but they haven’t lost with this kind of frequency in four years. The 2011 season was the last time Seattle was 2-4, and while the Seahawks improved dramatically in the second half that year, they couldn’t escape the hole it dug for themselves.

Whether you want call this adversity or an emergency, the urgency of the situation is evident. A fourth straight playoff berth for Seattle depends on its ability to take the disappointment and anger from the results of this season and channel those emotions into improved play on the field.

“Sometimes these moments kind of help you improve as a team,” Sherman said, “and I think that we appreciate that. We appreciate how tough it is this year.

“It would be a different story if we were getting blown out by 40 points every week, and there was no way to fix it.”

The Seahawks were a team built around a physical run game and a staunch defense. So was San Francisco. Seattle has a quarterback whose running ability is an asset to be used in case of an emergency. Same for the 49ers.

But the two teams that have slugged it out for the NFC West title are now tied at the bottom of the division.

And while Seattle has held a fourth-quarter lead in each of its four losses this season, the Seahawks are a lot closer to being 1-5 than they are to being 5-1. It’s hard to see this season being salvaged if Seattle is unable to beat the team that’s standing next to it on the ground floor of the NFC West right now.

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