NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Sunday, February 2nd, 2014

Seattle Seahawks win their first ever Super Bowl; Pacific Northwest roars in jubilation

It’s final­ly hap­pened.

After almost four decades, the Seat­tle Sea­hawks have brought home the Vince Lom­bar­di Tro­phy, win­ning Super Bowl XLVIII by a score of forty-three to eight to cap­ture their first title and only the fourth pro title in Seat­tle sports his­to­ry. (The Son­ics won it all in 1979; the Storm did the same in 2004 and 2010).

The Sea­hawks, rep­re­sent­ing the NFC, com­plete­ly dom­i­nat­ed the AFC cham­pi­on Den­ver Bron­cos on offense, defense, and spe­cial teams. Up until late in the third quar­ter, Seat­tle had a shutout going. At that point, the Bron­cos final­ly man­aged to score a touch­down and tack on addi­tion­al points with a two-point conversion.

It would be the only time Den­ver would score.

Seat­tle took an incred­i­bly ear­ly lead twelve sec­onds in thanks to a botched snap in the first quar­ter, which result­ed in a safe­ty. Seat­tle fol­lowed up with a field goal, and then anoth­er. After that, the Sea­hawks sim­ply went for the endzone.

Helped by turnovers forced by the defense, they scored two touch­downs in the sec­ond quar­ter, two more in the third, and for good mea­sure, one in the fourth too.

Each touch­down was scored by a dif­fer­ent Sea­hawk. Mar­shawn Lynch was in the end­zone first on a one yard run. Line­backer Mal­colm Smith returned an inter­cep­tion for a touch­down only min­utes lat­er. The third quar­ter began with Per­cy Harvin return­ing Den­ver’s kick­off eighty-sev­en yards for a touch­down. Jer­maine Kearse lat­er caught a twen­ty-three yard pass from Rus­sell Wil­son, and in the fourth quar­ter, Doug Bald­win caught a ten yard pass from Wil­son to com­plete the rout.

When it was over, blue and green con­fet­ti rained over MetLife Sta­di­um in East Ruther­ford like snow flur­ries at Par­adise, Mount Rainier. Sea­hawks play­ers cel­e­brat­ed on the field and in the lock­er room, accom­pa­nied by musi­cians Mack­le­more and Ryan Lewis, who won four Gram­mys for their work last Sunday.

Mean­while, fans back home rushed out on the streets to share their eupho­ria with neigh­bors. Big crowds flood­ed Pio­neer Square and inter­sec­tions on Capi­tol Hill. In the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict, couch­es and mat­tress­es were set on fire, and the Seat­tle Fire Depart­ment had to be called in to put the fire out when the flames got too high.

The City of Seat­tle announced that a wel­come home Vic­to­ry Cel­e­bra­tion Parade would be held on Wednes­day morn­ing at 11 AM. The parade will go down 4th Avenue, begin­ning at Den­ny Way, and end at Cen­tu­ryLink Field, where the Sea­hawks most recent­ly defeat­ed their divi­sion rival San Fran­cis­co 49ers.

“What a great day for the Sea­hawks and a great day for Seat­tle,” said Seat­tle May­or Ed Mur­ray, who was in New Jer­sey attend­ing the game, along with Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. “This is the first NFL Cham­pi­onship for the team and a great achieve­ment for the fran­chise,” Mur­ray not­ed. “My con­grat­u­la­tions go to the play­ers, coach­es and to the fans who all con­tributed to win this title. Now the city will pre­pare to cel­e­brate in the way that only Seat­tle knows how.”

The city is encour­ag­ing fans to act “con­sci­en­tious­ly” and behave respon­si­bly in the wake of the vic­to­ry, so as not to detract from the Sea­hawks’ title.

Seat­tle is so unused to win­ning titles that today’s Super Bowl vic­to­ry does­n’t seem real. But it is. The city’s oth­er pro teams — the Mariners, Storm, and Sounders — wast­ed no time in offer­ing their jubi­lant con­grat­u­la­tions to the Sea­hawks on Twit­ter, as did the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty.

The Sea­hawks returned the love.

To thank the UW, they tweet­ed a pic­ture of Jer­maine Kearse with the words “Bow Down To Wash­ing­ton”. To thank WSU, they tweet­ed a pic­ture with the Sea­hawk and Cougar mas­cots togeth­er. To thank the Mariners, they tweet­ed a graph­ic of the Vince Lom­bar­di Tro­phy with Mariners announc­er Dave Niehaus’ favorite catch­phrase, “Break Out The Rye Bread — It’s Lom­bar­di Time!” And to the Sounders, they tweet­ed a graph­ic with the cap­tion, “Lom­bardis Up, Seattle!”

U.S. Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell issued a state­ment con­grat­u­lat­ing the team.

“Con­grat­u­la­tions to Pete Car­roll and the Seat­tle Sea­hawks on bring­ing the Pacif­ic North­west its first Lom­bar­di Tro­phy! And con­grat­u­la­tions to the best fans in the NFL. Tonight, the 12th Man took over East Ruther­ford and made it feel like SoDo.”

“Tonight’s vic­to­ry is a cred­it to the Sea­hawks sti­fling ‘Legion of Boom’ defense, and to the offense led by Rus­sell Wil­son and Mar­shawn Lynch,” Cantwell added. “The 2013 Sea­hawks tru­ly prove that team­work wins cham­pi­onships. This Super Bowl vic­to­ry is a defin­ing moment in North­west sports history.”

“Tonight, the 12th Man flag is fly­ing high over Wash­ing­ton State.”

Local com­pa­nies and non­prof­its also showed their Sea­hawks pride, includ­ing Microsoft, Ama­zon, Pem­co, BECU, PCC, T‑Mobile, and Nordstrom.

The vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion has just begun and shows no sign of abat­ing. As for­mer Sea­hawks quar­ter­back Matt Has­sel­beck tweet­ed, every­body in Seat­tle deserves a day off. That won’t hap­pen, but undoubt­ed­ly work­places around the region will be in high spir­its tomor­row as the Pacif­ic North­west rev­els in the glo­ry of the Sea­hawks’ first ever Super Bowl win, a tru­ly well-deserved and well-earned triumph.

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