NFL Playoff Saturday: Will Seattle Seahawks Trip Up New Orleans Saints?

The Redskins' 73-0 defeat by a team that they had licked a month ago, doesn't add up. But there it was. [Shirley Povich, Washington Post Dec. 9, 1940]

It was the worst beating in NFL history by any team. Chicago Bears 73, Washington Redskins 0. Like a lump of pasta that just could not be digested, the score just sat there on Redskin fans' stomachs making them nauseous and bringing them pain.

After defeating the Bears 7-3, the Redskins lost in an historic romp. Who did this to them? Could the same Four Horsemen come back again to stomp on the New Orleans Saints? 

"Outlined against a blue-gray [January] sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Carroll, Hasselbeck, Seattle and the Twelfth Man." [Paraphrased from Grantland Rice's famous account of the 1924 game between Notre Dame and Army]

The Seahawks play their brand of small ball. It has been some time since Matt Hasselbeck has aired it out. Look for this to happen today as the Seahawks take on the Saints in what many believe will be the most lopsided football game since the Redskins game in 1940.

Yet the Saints won the first game in which Matt Hasselbeck played one of the best away games of his career. Matching up with him, the more experienced Carroll and the Seattle seascape is trouble enough. 

Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. [Samuel Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]

Sitting on the Puget Sound, just off of the Pacific Ocean, Seattle gets some nods simply for being so far. And despite the time difference, Seattle did well enough in the first game. 

And I had done a hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow! [Coleridge]

Much has been made of the extreme point spread against the Seattle Seahawks in today's NFL playoff game against the defending Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints.

Yet, as in the "any given Sunday" philosophy, there are signs that this could be the game that the banged up Saints lose. Perhaps the best sign is that the Saints already killed the bird earlier in the season when they beat the Seahawks, a truly hellish thing.

“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way [football] is.” [Bob Feller]

Matt Hasselbeck, the man who has been struck by lightning twice and whose wife was struck once, may have this as his last game starting in Seattle. In any case, this game will be a defining moment in his and many other NFL careers.

If they win, Hasselbeck will be the man who should retain the starting quarterback job in Seattle. As he said earlier this week, the Seahawks (and he) are starting 0-0. 

Quoth he, `The man hath penance done, And penance more will do. [Coleridge]

Pete Carroll will become more distant from the reputation he garnered after leaving the University of Southern California ridden in scandal. A few wins and he will be idolized in Seattle.

He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn. [Coleridge]

Could it be that Drew Brees will begin to be seen as a one-season pretender? Probably not. But he will be sadder and wiser if his Saints are beaten today. 

So we go into today's game, all up for the most down the Saints can prove to be. Hoping against hope that we will see the team who, like Jim Murray once said about Merlin Olsen:

"...went swimming in Loch Ness—and the monster got out."