Seahawks prove they have the hearts of champions
Down 16-0 at halftime, we wondered whether all of the talk about beating Seattle at home had gone to waste. Aaron Rodgers and the Packers had taken advantage of a handful of special teams turnovers to run up a 13-0 lead after the first quarter, in which the Seahawks were out-gained 137 yards to three.
Slowly but surely, Seattle climbed out of the hole. The defending champs erased the 16-point deficit and trailed 19-7 early in the fourth quarter. With 2:09 remaining, Marshawn Lynch rumbled his way into the end zone to make it 19-14, then following an onside kick and a fake field goal, Luke Willson hauled in a touchdown to give the Seahawks a three-point lead.
That set the stage for Green Bay to make a game-tying field goal in the waning seconds and send it into overtime, where the Seahawks famously got the ball first and they scored, punching their ticket back to the Super Bowl.
In a wild, impractical finish. Seattle scored 21 points in the span of five minutes and 28 seconds, the third biggest comeback in a conference championship in league history. The Seahawks became the first team to win in spite of five turnovers, the most in a conference championship game since San Francisco topped Dallas with six back in 1981. It was the team’s ninth straight playoff win at home, the third-longest such streak in NFL history.
