Stakes high for 49ers, Seahawks in showdown (w/video)
SANTA CLARA - After the San Francisco 49ers won another close game Sunday afternoon, coach Jim Harbaugh watched that night’s nationally televised NFL game with his family. During one network promotion for San Francisco’s game on Thanksgiving against the NFC West rival Seattle Seahawks, NBC showed a gang of live turkeys. Harbaugh’s three youngest children were excited.
“And then the next shot, they had loaded the turkeys onto a truck and they were driving them away,” Harbaugh said Monday. “And the kids were like, ‘Where are they going?’ And we kind of thought, maybe we won’t have turkey this year for Thanksgiving.”
Dinner plans were scuttled by the schedule, anyway, with an evening kickoff at Levi’s Stadium. With both the 49ers and the Seahawks at 7-4, two games behind the division-leading Arizona Cardinals (9-2), the loser on Thanksgiving might be left out in the cold.
The 49ers have reached the conference championship game the past three seasons. The Seahawks beat the 49ers there in January, barely, then won the Super Bowl. The teams have combined for 47 regular-season and eight postseason victories the past two seasons, more than any division rivals.
Now they play two of their next three games against one another, and it looks like at least one of them could miss the playoffs. Season obituaries, at least rough drafts, will be written for tonight’s loser.
“If we’re good enough to be in, we’ll know,” Harbaugh said of the playoffs. “We’ll know soon enough.”
The problem for the 49ers and the Seahawks is not just one another, but the Cardinals, who won nine of their first 10 games before losing in Seattle on Sunday. Without a division title, the 49ers and the Seahawks would be left fighting for two wild-card spots, along with the likes of Detroit (7-4), Dallas and Philadelphia (both 8-3).
The 49ers were 7-4 at this point last year, too, and finished ?12-4. There is no palpable sense of concern, at least within team headquarters.
“We’re in the same spot we were last year, something we’re very familiar with,” San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick said. “We just have teams that are in other positions now.”
Not only do the 49ers and the Seahawks play one another again on Dec. 14 in Seattle, but they each play the Cardinals in late December.
“This season is just beginning, with all of the games that we’ll be playing here in the next month-and-a-half,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said.
It has been a strange season for both teams. Seattle opened by trouncing the formidable Green Bay Packers, then lost three of its next five games. Dissension festered in the locker room. Receiver Percy Harvin was traded to the New York Jets amid reports that he did not get along with teammates. The Seahawks lost a game at CenturyLink Field, the best home-field advantage in the league, then struggled to shake off the winless Oakland Raiders there.
It looked likely that the Seahawks would be the 10th team in a row unable to successfully defend a Super Bowl title.
But an attitude adjustment was credited for helping the Seahawks win four of the past five games, including Sunday’s 19-3 victory over Arizona.
“All throughout the season, you always have these opportunities to go one way or another, and to grow, hopefully, in the right direction,” Carroll said. “We made a real nice shift and took a nice step forward to getting to where we want to get.”
Seattle’s vital signs are strong - but so is the schedule. It has the league’s top rushing offense (170 yards per game) behind Marshawn Lynch, and the NFL’s top defense (297 yards allowed per game).
But the Seahawks sandwich their games with the 49ers around a trip to Philadelphia to play the Eagles, then face the Cardinals in Arizona. It is as difficult a stretch as any team faces over the next month.
The only certainty is that the Seahawks will garner headlines. Last week, Lynch was fined $100,000 for not speaking to the news media after a game. After playing the Cardinals, he answered questions - mostly by answering “yeah,” even if the query was not a yes-or-no proposition.
On Tuesday, cornerback Richard Sherman and receiver Doug Baldwin took to the lectern with a bit of satirical performance art aimed at what they see as the NFL’s hypocritical stances on news media obligations, sponsorships and player safety.
“Speaking of healthy, how do you feel about the NFL making you play two games in five days?” Baldwin asked from behind a full-size cutout of himself.
“Oh my gosh, geez,” Sherman said. “I almost didn’t realize that because they’ve been talking about players’ safety so much. Two games in five days doesn’t seem like you care about players’ safety much.”
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