RENTON, Wash. — If, as Janis Joplin so memorably sang, freedom is really just another word for having nothing left to lose, then consider the Seahawks to be, well, free as a bird as they head into the 2022 playoffs.
The Seahawks are as much as a 10-point underdog heading to Santa Clara to play a wild-card playoff game Saturday at 1:30 p.m. against the 49ers, who have won 10 in a row and feature a defense ranked first in the NFL in both fewest points and yards allowed and an offense ranked in the top six in both categories.
"It's like nobody expects us to win outside of our building," receiver Tyler Lockett said. "We believe that we can win, but nobody else does. Nobody thought that we would be able to do any of the things that we were able to do (this season). Everybody was shocked that we even got into the playoffs. I mean, for us it's like, man, we're just going to go out there and just play free. ... We're just going to play like we've got nothing to lose."
As Lockett indicated, the season already feels like a success given the events of last March, when the Seahawks traded Russell Wilson and released Bobby Wagner, emphatically turning the page on the Legion of Boom era and heading uncertainly into a new one.
With a cachet of five draft picks over the 2022 and 2023 seasons from Denver, the season had all the feel of a rebuilding year, even if coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider always resisted using that word.
The joke was on much of the rest of the NFL — and the laughs in Seattle — as the Seahawks jumped out to a 6-3 start and rallied from a late-season slump to win the final two games and sneak into the seventh and final spot in the playoffs.
Still, the reasons for reservations about the Seahawks heading into the playoffs carry a fair hint of validity. Had the NFL not expanded the playoffs before 2020, they would already be sitting at home.
The 49ers didn't have much issue dispensing the Seahawks in two regular-season games by a combined 48-20, taking leads of 11 points or more at halftime of each game and was never seriously threatened, outgaining Seattle by an average of 377-246.5.
Sure, there are some caveats. The 27-7 loss in Week 2 in Santa Clara came six days after the emotional win over Wilson and the Broncos and before the Seahawks let quarterback Geno Smith loose.
A 21-13 loss at home in on Dec. 15 turned on three big plays that went the 49ers' way — two TD passes to tight end George Kittle, one on something of a trick play, another on a busted coverage — and a fumble by Travis Homer that set up an easy San Francisco TD right before halftime. Change just one of those, the Seahawks feel, and it might have been a different game.
The 49ers can also point to rookie quarterback Brock Purdy being healthy now after battling through rib and oblique injuries in the December game. This is the first time this year the Seahawks will have to face the 49ers' full complement of three elite skill players in Kittle, running back Christian McCaffrey and receiver Deebo Samuel. McCaffrey wasn't a 49er yet for the first game, traded by Carolina to San Francisco in October, and Samuel missed the December game because of injury.
At least one Seahawk, safety Quandre Diggs, didn't even try to argue why San Francisco would be favored.
"Who wouldn't put us as underdogs?" Diggs said. "San Francisco, they've been on the road, they've played great ball, they're division winners, they've beat us twice. Why wouldn't they be considered the favorite? For me, I just enjoy the process. I enjoy the process, and I'm just blessed I get another opportunity to go play the game I love and go out there and give it my all."
Some Seahawks fans this week have recalled that they faced similarly long odds in the first playoff game of the Carroll era when they were 10-point underdogs against the defending Super Bowl champion Saints in the wild-card round in the 2010 season.
The Seahawks, who had made the playoffs by winning the NFC West at 7-9, pulled the upset with a 41-36 win remembered forever for Marshawn Lynch's "Beast Quake" run. Maybe lesser remembered is that they were a 10-point underdog the following week in the divisional round at Chicago, and fell behind 28-0 before losing 35-24.
While Carroll has proved the ability to get his team ready to pull upsets, the Seahawks are 2-6 when underdogs by 10 or more points in his Seattle coaching career, highlighting that there are reasons the heavy favorite is a heavy favorite.
But as some of the Seahawks noted, anything is possible.
"We're just taking it and enjoying it, and whatever happens, happens," Diggs said.
That the Seahawks are playing up the nothing-to-lose angle led some to wonder if the Seahawks are a bit looser this week — an idea fed by a tweet the team sent out with a brief video of Smith dancing and Carroll riding a scooter after practice.
Carroll said that to the contrary, the Seahawks are trying to embrace their underdog role by not changing anything.
"We are just being like we are," he said. "We are not trying to be anything other than who we are and what we are."
And, Carroll said, in having nothing to lose Saturday he also promises that the Seahawks will leave nothing on the field.
"We are going all out, giving it everything we have, and we are not going to leave anything in our back pocket," Carroll said. "We are going for it, and it wouldn't matter what's happened before — that's how we think and how we operate."
