Football Made Us Cry Today
The Green Bay Packers pulled off the impossible, upsetting the Seattle Seahawks to earn themselves a trip to the Super Bowl. Except that the Seattle Seahawks pulled off the impossible, overcoming themselves AND the Green Bay Packers with the greatest comeback in the history of American professional sports. It was sloppy, wet, windy, wonderful, and at the end we were all in tears. Nothing is going to beat that, ever.
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It was heartbreaking, until it was the opposite. The Seahawks were entering the offseason earlier than expected with more questions than they had after week six, until Michael Bennett was doing NFC Championship victory laps around CenturyLink Field on a borrowed police bicycle. The Seahawks were a great team having a terrible game, until they were a Team Of Destiny.
Was that the worst first half in the history of playoff football? Maybe? The third quarter wasn’t much better, either, and the fourth quarter started out more of the same. But with a big deficit to overcome and the Super Bowl acting as the light at the end of the tunnel, Seattle became the Plano East to Green Bay’s John Tyler:
Bingo, bango, bongo. That clip’s famous because it documents events that, despite being entirely impossible, actually happened. That clip features a hyperreal comeback by a goofy high school football team. The Seattle Seahawks weren’t supposed to give us that clip, since they were supposed to cruise to a resounding victory. But now they’re Plano East. For now and for always.
Chances are football made you cry today. You jumped around and screamed, crying tears reserved for a crazy kind of happiness. To compare this to a wedding or the birth of a child seems unfair, since those are events you can and do anticipate. This came straight from the realms of folklore and fantasy. This was the double.
Except it was more than that. This was everything going as wrong as possible for 52 minutes, then everything going as right as possible until the game was over and the Seahawks had won. Except there was the completely ridiculous field goal that sent the game to overtime, which saw the Seahawks’ lead dissolve into a tie with seconds to go. The ‘Hawks overcame everything, made it all the way back, and then had something new to overcome. Then they overcame that. And now they get to play in the Super Bowl.
There’s never been a comeback quite like that before. There will never be a comeback quite like that again. With an appearance in Super Bowl XLIX on the line, the Seattle Seahawks realized they’d made a huge mess. In order to clean up that mess they’d have to be perfect, lucky, and efficient. And then they were all those things. Again, the Seahawks won that game. They won! The NFC championship, after being down by so much!
For now, party in the streets. For the rest of your life, remember how football made you feel today. Remember that nothing is impossible. Remember that it’s not over ’til it’s over. Remember that not only are these Seahawks the best football team in the world, they’re also entertainment to a degree we probably shouldn’t be able to fathom.
We’ll be talking about this game a lot for the next two weeks, until a bigger game comes along. But no matter what happens in the Super Bowl, we’ll still talk about this one when all’s said and done. This was a classic among classics. Through sideways rain and blinding light, the Seattle Seahawks completed one of the most remarkable comeback wins in the history of sports. No wonder football made us cry today.