In their infancy, before they ever played a game, the Seahawks gathered together inside an amphitheater at Eastern Washington University, a collection of questionable talent and unfamiliar names all harboring this bizarre notion they could bring NFL football where it had never been before.
There were 120 players in the meeting room, all freshly-minted 1976 Seahawks, and the coach, Jack Patera, set the agenda for the first-year expansion team.
“Jack goes, ‘Guys, we’re here for one reason, that’s to go win a Super Bowl and we’re going to do everything we can to do it,'” recalled offensive lineman Art Kuehn, an original member of the Seahawks. “This is the first year of the team, guys are laughing. And he says, ‘We’re going to tolerate you until we can replace you.'”
Laughter and toleration are two key ingredients in the history of an easy-to-ignore franchise tucked away in the Pacific Northwest that at long last is on the precipice of fulfilling Patera’s marching orders. Life indeed begins at age 30 for the Seahawks, who in one week take the field at Ford Field in Detroit to face the favored and far more recognizable Steelers in Super Bowl XL.
Thirty years of football in Seattle has come and gone with more rain than reign, more losses than latte. The Buccaneers were born the same year and quickly forged the identity of lovable losers, going 0-14 that first year.
The Seahawks went 2-12, bad but not memorably so. All-time, they are 227-241, mediocre and seemingly irrelevant, existing in a faraway land hard by the western edge of Canada, three hours behind most clocks and often several points behind on the scoreboard. They started off in the NFC, switched to the AFC and in 2001 moved back to the NFC, not quite homeless, never quite brimming with tradition. From 1991-98 there were no winning seasons. Before this year, the Seahawks finished within one game of .500 eight times in a 10-year span. Just bad (or good) enough to go unnoticed.
And now, this, the first Super Bowl in team history.
“It’s pretty cool,” Dave Krieg, who started 116 games at quarterback in his 12 years with the Seahawks, said over the phone to The Post. “Now that they’re there, you get some recognition again; that’s the good thing about having your team get to the Super Bowl. It validates some of your career. People remember you.”
Krieg, the only Seattle quarterback to ever win a playoff game before Matt Hasselbeck this season, now lives in Phoenix and like so many other Seahawks alumni are feeling pangs of nostalgia and bursting with pride now that their former team is about to play the big room.
“You remember the old times and the struggles you had and I think that makes it all the more special for this particular team,” Krieg said. “It meant a lot. It’s not just a team, it’s the whole Northwest. The Pacific Northwest, who recognizes you out there? That’s our little niche up there. Thirty years, just imagine. It’s almost similar to the Red Sox, a little bit.”
The wait is over.
“I didn’t think there was any question we would eventually get there, I just hoped it was going to happen before I retired,” said Gary Wright, the 61-year old former Seahawks PR man who at present is the vice president of administration, one of only three employees who have been with the club from its inception. “I think it’s really neat, everybody who’s a Seahawks alumnus, one way or another, really feels part of this.”
An ownership group led by the Nordstrom family (of department store fame) gave birth to the Seahawks, the name most often suggested from among 20,365 fan entries. Lloyd W. Nordstrom, the majority owner, died in January of 1976 while vacationing in Mexico, seven months before his team ever played a game. The first regular-season look at the Seahawks was a 30-24 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals when rookie Jim Zorn’s last-gasp pass was intercepted in the end zone. The first victory came a month later. In a battle of first-year teams, the Seahawks beat the Bucs 13-10, as linebacker Mike Curtis blocked a field goal attempt with 42 seconds remaining.
Respectability came quickly. The five victories in 1977 were the most ever by a second-year expansion team. The Seahawks were fun to watch, with nutty special teams hi jinks and Zorn’s wild scrambles. The love affair inside the earsplitting Kingdome was on.
“That was a beautiful place to play, in the early years especially, it didn’t matter if you were winning games or not, the fans were crazy, they just wanted to see football,” said Kuehn, who spent seven years on the Seahawks offensive line and currently is the athletic director at Interlake High School in Woodinville, about 30 minutes from Seattle. “It was nothing like New York or Philly or any of those places. This was a town that had to grow with the Seahawks. The people in this area didn’t have that tradition to go back on.”
The first winning season came in 1978. The first playoff appearance came in 1983, after Patera was fired and Chuck Knox took charge. The Seahawks at 9-7 made it to the AFC Championship Game, where they were routed by the Raiders 30-14. Since 1984, there were only six playoff games, all losses, before this year’s breakthrough.
The Seahawks past and present know what awaits them in Detroit, where the tradition-rich Steelers, with all their Hall of Famers and Super Bowl rings and national following, will own the heavy emotional advantage. Motown will be awash in Black and Gold.
“That’s OK,” said Krieg, whose schedule is rapidly filling up with appearances lined up for him this week in the Motor City. “That gives us more of an underdog mentality. I think the Seahawks are going to be overlooked, which is good.”
Overlooked. Even at the Super Bowl, it should be no other way for the Seahawks.
The 30-year itch
There’s been plenty to remember, and forget, in the 30-year existence of the Seahawks as they ready for their first Super Bowl. Here are a few items of interest:
DAVE KRIEG’S FAVORITE GAME
Nov. 11, 1990
Seahawks 17, Chiefs 16
“We went to Kansas City one time, hadn’t won there in 10 years in a row, we won a game there in the last second, I threw a pass to Paul Skansi, that pretty much epitomizes what the Seahawks were then and what they are like now. It was a whole total team effort, an unknown receiver catching a pass.” A side note: Krieg in the game was sacked a record seven times by Derrick Thomas and barely escaped an eighth sack on the game-winning TD pass.
THE SKY IS FALLING
In 1994, ceiling tiles fell from the Kingdome roof, forcing the Seahawks to play their first three games at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium. In 2000, the Kingdome was imploded.
“When they imploded it, my wife went down and got a piece of it and gave it to me for our anniversary,” said offensive lineman Art Kuehn, a member of the original 1976 Seahawks. “It’s a piece of heaven.”
THE SUPER BOWL, ALMOST
At 9-7 in 1983, the Seahawks first-ever taste of the playoffs was a mouthful, as they upset the Broncos and Dolphins before losing to the L.A. Raiders 30-14 in the AFC Championship Game.
“We knew we had beaten the Raiders twice that year,” Krieg said. “They knew what it took to get to the Super Bowl and they came out with an intensity and just pounded us. They played for keeps and we were way over-exuberant, I guess. They just dismantled us.”
HAIL TO THE FANS
In 1984 the Seahawks became the first team in any sport to retire a number (12) in honor of the fans.
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’
In January of 1996 team owner Ken Behring, upset that the city of Seattle would not pay for upgrades he sought for the Kingdome, announced the Seahawks would move to Los Angeles. All the team equipment was shipped to the Rams old practice facility before the NFL office forced the team to return to Seattle.
“It became evident he had to sell the team,” said Gary Wright, a Seahawks exec for all 30 years. “Paul Allen, one of the richest men in the world, co-founder of Microsoft, stepped up and saved the team for the community. I never got the impression he did it because he was a football fan … I really do believe he bought it just to save it for Seattle. I would say now he is a huge fan.”