Salk: When it became clear the Seahawks were elite

One of the great things about having a team play for a championship like the Seattle Seahawks will next Sunday is that it gives you the opportunity to really think back on how they got there.

Has a Super Bowl-winning QB ever had a career like Sam Darnold?

At the beginning of the year, was this expected? No. I know how much has been made of the 60-to-1 odds that both the Seahawks and Patriots had before this season began.

Did I think they’d be good? Yeah, I did. I thought they would beat their over-under number from before the season.

But it wasn’t until about halfway through the season that I started to really take them seriously as a team that could eventually have this kind of run in them.

And honestly, there’s a lot of reasons why. My co-host Brock Huard spoke about what the Seahawks did after the Week 11 loss to the Rams and the support they showed Sam Darnold in that moment, and I think there’s a lot to that.

For me, it was the blowouts.

When you blow teams out in the NFL, you are making a profound statement. It just doesn’t happen that way, right? When two good teams face each other in the NFL, generally, it comes down to the final possession or two, and whoever’s got the best quarterback or whoever doesn’t make a mistake in those moments wins.

But we watched the Seahawks beat the brains out of the New Orleans Saints and then the Washington Commanders. And honestly, it was when they did it to the Arizona Cardinals that I was really convinced.

Not that the Cardinals are good. They’re not. But they were predicted to have some level of talent this year, and the Seahawks just destroyed them. I mean, that game was over 15 minutes in. There was no need to even play a second half because of what the defense did to them in the first half.

That doesn’t guarantee you a Super Bowl appearance. And obviously, the Seahawks needed to get through their big rivals. They needed to do what Mike Macdonald was brought here to do – to beat Kyle Shanahan, to beat Sean McVay. And oh, by the way, he did that twice apiece. So obviously, those moments were so huge and so critical to them getting to their ultimate goal.

But when you start beating the living tar out of teams the way the Seahawks did this year, you start to become a Super Bowl favorite, or at least a Super Bowl possibility.

And now, we get a chance to see it play out in Santa Clara.

This post is a transcript of the video at the top of the post. It is edited for clarity.

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