Seahawks Fans, Relax (Some Hopefully Encouraging Thoughts About Today’s Loss to San Diego)

I’m writing this mostly for my friends back in Washington who are seemingly distraught over watching the Seahawks lose to San Diego on the road today. Folks, relax.

Let’s put things in perspective. The best kind of loss an NFL team can have is a non-conference road loss. Remember the Hawks’ first loss last year? That’s right, it was at Indianpolis, a non-conference road opponent. How did that season work out for us?

Also, as a USC grad who was crazy about Carroll back when most of you despised him, I can tell you that losing in the NFL means nothing compared to a loss in the BCS days of college football. I take you back to a Thursday night in September of 2008 when top-ranked USC, coming off a 35-3 demolition of Ohio State in LA, got beaten 27-21 at Oregon State mostly because of a tiny running back named Jacquizz Rodgers. At that time, the national media instantly created a narrative that USC was now out of the running for the national championship and in spite of the fact that the Trojans went on to win every game from then on out and set school-records for points allowed (an amazing 9 points per game, with 10 of 12 games holding the opponent to 10 points or less), somehow we were passed up for Oklahoma and Florida, both who also had one loss. Mostly, it was because Florida was the defending champs and Oklahoma was a record-setting offense and I’m sure you Hawks fans remember before the Super Bowl that the pundits picked the team with the record-setting offense to beat the team with the great defense because, hey, offense is sexy and defense is not. My point is, the NFL is a long season and except for two teams, nobody has made it through without losing at least one game (and one of those teams, the 2007 Patriots, lost in the Super Bowl).

Which brings me to another thing close to my heart. Some of you who I hope are reading this went to high school with me and thus likely had your passion for winning football shaped, in part, by our Curtis Vikings. Did we win every game in those two seasons we won the state title? Nope, we lost to Lakes one year and the next at Pasco. It was at that time that I learned the idiom a “blessing in disguise” because sometimes what unites a team is going through the wrenching emotional difficulty of a loss more than winning every game, week in and week out, which can lead to a false sense of invicibility.

I write all this on a weekend where I just couldn’t win anything—whether it was football or my life in general—and yet, you may be surprised that my mood is rather buoyant. I have learned to laugh when the Universe tosses me one of these weekends where the stars seem aligned against me, because I know they are inevitable and usually outside of my control, and I also know that for every weekend like this, I’ll likely have a weekend (or two) where everything seems to go my way.

So, don’t sweat it. I’m sure the team is disappointed and wishes they were coming back home 2-0 and not 1-1. But look at some of the other NFC powers—the Saints are already 0-2 and lost on the road to the Browns today! And we already have a tie-breaker over Green Bay since we beat them head-to-head.

Ultimately, what I hope you can learn from me is not to feel such pressure for the Hawks to win that you can’t enjoy it any more. I went through in the 2005 season when USC was coming off two straight national titles and had won like 20 games in a row and was everybody’s favorite to repeat. When we lost the final versus Texas on one of the last plays of the game, it hurt but after a day or two I realized quickly that life goes on and that I’d been blessed to be a fan of such a good time that brought me such joy from week to week. From then on, I watched each game with less of a sense of pressure to win, and more of a sense of just wanting to enjoy the experience. That’s why today, I was able to appreciate how well the Chargers were playing and even applaud some of them, even as they were likely leading to a Seahawks loss. Being a fan is great, but being a fanatic is not. Learn the difference and you’ll enjoy the experience all the more. With that all said,  go Hawks!