Marshawn Lynch, Seahawks Deliver Once-in-a-Lifetime Performance

SEATTLE – Watch sports all your life and never again will you witness something like this. It was sheer will colliding with reckless abandon. It made you believe again in miracles.

That's what the Seattle Seahawks' astonishing, epically implausible 41-36 wild-card win over the New Orleans Saints was, right? A little dash of miracle dust sprinkled over a whole lot of will power. As Marshawn Lynch, aka "Beast Mode," stiff-armed his way through tacklers, knocking them over like flimsy dominoes, preconceptions and insults tumbled one by one.

The worst team to ever grace the NFL playoffs? Watch out, crumbling New Orleans defensive line.

Ten and 1/2-point underdogs at home? See ya, Darren Sharper.

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The defending Super Bowl champions, not as great as they once were, but still eons better than Seattle's bunch of scrubs? Oops, try not to eat turf, Jabari Greer.

A quarterback as old as Methuselah, playing with a bum hip that had to be drained of fluid this week? Whisper that to Matt Hasselbeck as he tops off what could have been his swansong by motoring downfield, throwing blocks.

A defense as soft as pudding, surely no match for Drew Brees' laser beam throws? Try a little harder, Alex Brown.

A coach mocked for his rah-rah college enthusiasm? Too bad about that futile last-ditch dive, Roman Harper.


More from NFL.com Lime-green gloves flashing, his offensive line and quarterback huffing to keep pace, Lynch nimbly squeezed his 215-pound body through slivers of holes that kept appearing, rumbling for 67 yards and a touchdown as improbable as anything else that took place Saturday afternoon on the magic carpet of Qwest Field. On a second-down carry with less than four minutes remaining, Lynch broke a slew of tackles and then tossed away Tracy Porter as if he were a bit of tissue, sending the cornerback flying through the air. Off a simple play called "17 Power" that was designed to pick up a yard or three, Lynch dashed his way into football lore.

It was fearlessness and guts, tucked inside 10 violent seconds.

"It just so happened my number got called," said Lynch. He had 131 yards rushing, the first 100-plus performance for a Seahawk all season, but Lynch's checkered past has taught him humility plays better than defiance.

"The offensive line just did a great job of getting me to the second level. Instincts just took over from there," he said. "And my hamstrings."

Somewhere scores of dead birds dropped from the sky, and buckets of rotten fish came in with the tide, because the lowly Seahawks have beaten the mighty Saints, and the apocalypse must be nigh. It was so shocking, even Pete Carroll, the coach who overflows with empowering phrases, had gone comfortably numb.

"This was a day to remember," Carroll said, eyes wide, goose bumps pronounced. Standing at the podium, searching for words, he looked as if he had just witnessed a UFO scorch through Qwest. In a way he had -- an Unbelievable Freakin' Offense knifed apart the Saints through the air and, mercy me, on the ground, piling up 415 total yards, many through second effort and pure grit after New Orleans had jumped to an early 10-0 lead.

"When you are playing a really good team, you have to come up with some ways to sort of trick them a little bit," said Hasselbeck, having polished off 272 yards by completing 22 of 35 for four TDs and one interception. "And we came up with some of those things."

Grumpy all week after being sidelined in the final regular season game, the one that clinched the division for Seattle and sent everyone into a ridiculous lather, Hasselbeck more than any Seahawk took the shrill criticism of his team to heart. His teammates have learned an angry Hasselbeck often translates into a dangerously tuned-in quarterback.

"We just beat the world champs," Hasselbeck said, as if certain pundits needed to be reminded. "And we worked hard to do it."

When it was finally over, after it seemed as if the stadium by the bay might buckle from the tension and the 66,366 fans on hand swore their lungs had been scraped with razors and millions more had bitten their fingers to a nub, players from both teams mingled slowly on the field, looking as if they couldn't quite comprehend what had just occurred. Hasselbeck hoisted his young son Henry atop his shoulders and they soaked in the waves of adoration. What's worse than being the most awful team to somersault backward into the playoffs?

Being the team beaten by the most awful team to somersault backward into the playoffs.

The Seahawks, now a glorious 8-9, will be on the road next week, against either Atlanta or Chicago. They left Qwest a teeming mosh pit of bewildered joy.

The Saints aren't the same squad that last season paraded through the Super Bowl. Their rushing attack, already missing two cogs, took another hit when Reggie Bush pulled up injured in the fourth quarter Saturday. But Brees was typical magic, completing a playoff-record 39 passes in 60 attempts for 404 yards and two touchdowns -- and when he led one last drive after Lynch's dazzling rumble made it 41-30, stomachs clenched.

"That was the most unbelievable, unrealistic play I've ever seen in the history of football. It was just unreal."
-- Aaron Curry
on Lynch's run Down by five points with 1:30 left after Brees found Devery Henderson on a quick strike, 6-yard touchdown pass, the Saints went for the two-point conversion, but DeShawn Wynn, signed just a few days ago to fill in the cracks, was stuffed at the goal line. This must be what it feels like when a frantic soul is forced to lift a car.

"Kind of amazing what the human body can do, right?" asked wide receiver Mike Williams, another Seahawk busy redeeming himself. "Coach keeps saying, if we have faith in each other, we can do pretty much anything. And that's what our defense did."

Eleven months ago, New Orleans turned the Super Bowl with an onside kick, the perfect ambush to finish a charmed season. Saturday, Garrett Hartley's onside attempt was recovered by Seattle's John Carlson – the best catch of all on a day when he had two touchdown receptions -- and the Seahawks had wrapped up the NFL's biggest playoff upset not involving the Super Bowl.

As the Saints wandered around, dazed as zombies, Carroll called his team together at midfield and the Seahawks began bopping on the logo, college-style, their ecstasy vibrating to the deafening roar. "One of the greatest lessons for us in sports is that it's about how you finish, and ain't about how you start," Carroll said later. "As you look at our season, we're in the finish now. This is finish time. And how are we doing?"

Once everyone picks their tongues off the floor, he'll have an answer.

Even the 12th Man had vaulted the expected, creating an environment that rotated between chaos and pandemonium. Reckless abandon was everywhere, because what was there to lose? It oozed from a defense that hammered the Saints over the top and buried them in the red zone, twice forcing New Orleans to settle for field goals when touchdowns would have been daggers.

It sent Hasselbeck floating back to 2005, before his body began to creak. Seattle fans kept waiting for him to crack, to throw a killer interception or flinch on third-and-1, the Seahawks' bane. Everything was against him -- his age, his hip, the massive weight that rests on 10 1/2-point underdogs -- but Hasselbeck kept rifling passes through the tiniest of windows, the ball dropping like a soft pillow into his receiver's arms, his patched-together line opening up some deep holes.

Center Chris Spencer, barely able to practice because of a broken finger, willed his way through 60 excruciating minutes, allowing Hasselbeck to take creative, dangerous risks. And why not? The Seahawks could not possibly be mocked any more than they had been all week. Late-night comics used them as punch lines. Sports experts raged at the insanity of a sub-.500 team making the playoffs. Casual fans wondered who had called in a fix so the Seahawks, winners of the weak NFC West, could host a home game.

The Beast Mode's lumbering run erased everything. Renewed after coming through his coach's habitual revolving door, Lynch spun a career marked by serious off-field misdeeds into a slice of NFL history. Traded from Buffalo to Seattle in October, he's still learning Carroll's playbook, but there's nothing in it about how to drag nearly all of the opposing defense across a world stage the Seahawks were never supposed to grace.

"He's a clown, so I knew he was going to style a little bit. I'm happy for him. He wants the ball and when you do stuff like that, you get it," said Seattle linebacker David Hawthorne.

"That was the most unbelievable, unrealistic play I've ever seen in the history of football," said Aaron Curry, another Seattle linebacker. "It was just unreal. It seems just like a routine football play, then he takes it to another level."

Lynch should have been knotted up at the line, but the Hawks aren't inclined to do what they should. "One of the greatest runs I've ever seen," said Seattle receiver Brandon Stokley after Lynch burst through the gate, busted past one Saint, then three, his arm out like a thick tree branch, leaving would-be tacklers sprawling everywhere.

Come to think of it, they looked a bit like millions of other non-believers, all slack-jawed and incredulous. Sheer will colliding with reckless abandon tends to take the breath away.