Seahawks Swoop Back Into Monday Night Football

You wouldn't believe it, but the Seahawks' fondness for the national stage that is Monday Night Football runs deep with supreme success. Unless you simply don't follow our hometown eleven or aren't really a "football stats" person (or you're fantasy football only, smh), your Seattle Seahawks just so happen to own the best record on Monday night of any team in the National Football League.

If we're going to continue our Monday Night Football
success, this guy must get into Beast Mode. 

That's right. With an all-time best record of 17-8 on Monday Night Football, it doesn't matter if it's 1979 and it's Efren Herrera faking a field goal for a first down against the Falcons (Howard Cosell that night: "Jack Patera is offering the nation a lesson in creative football!") or Matt Hasselbeck & Co.'s absolute dismantling of the Philadelphia Eagles 42-0 in the "Monday Night Massacre" in 2005, the Seahawks bring their A game more than anyone else.

Not that winning is ever easy, especially under the intense glare that is the ultimate regular season stage. Tonight is going to be a tough battle. Green Bay comes into the Clink the reigning Super Bowl champion with future Hall Of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers leading the way. Seahawks fans have been through this test before on Monday night, and more often than not have come through very well. Let's take a look at some of those games.

Though these particular Monday Night Football appearances might not be the first the average Seahawks fan would highlight, I've always looked back at two of these with great admiration and one with definitive embarrassment, even 23 years later. (the feeling never leaves you)

It's October 29, 1979, and the improving Seahawks had built a reputation of unpredictability under fourth-year head coach Jack Patera. Despite being a harder-than-rock task master, Patera understood the value of unpredictability. It came in handy for their first Monday Night Football appearance. In one of the Seahawks most enduring images of their early years, fan favorite and kicker Efren Herrera finds himself in front of a nail-biting 55-yard field goal in the 4th quarter in Atlanta. With a practiced, fluid motion, placeholder and quarterback Jim Zorn pulls the ball up and catches a streaking Herrera for a crucial first down at the Atlanta 18.

Kicker Efren Herrera was an early fan favorite
for the young franchise in the '70s.

Such plays were emblematic of the Seahawks during their first decade of existence. Not that I remembered that particular day, but I can only imagine what that feeling of "breaking out" to the nation meant to Seahawks fans at the time. It was the first time the players, coaches, and fans could let the country know they had finally arrived.

This next Monday night game was one of the tougher ones to take as a young kid who absolutely breathed Seahawks blue and green. The year was 1987. After so many close calls and impressive showings, the franchise's stars were primed for a major run in the postseason. With Steve Largent, Dave Krieg, and Curt Warner (coming off his best season in 1986 with 1,481 yards rushing) on offense and leaders Kenny Easley, Jacob Green, Jeff Bryant, and new wunderkind linebacker Brian Bosworth on defense, many national media outlets picked the Seahawks to go to the Super Bowl.

I still remember the night, November 30, 1987. It was one of the few evenings I actually planned out my homework to be finished before kickoff. It was a tight race at the time for the AFC West title and the despised Raiders were coming to the Kingdome. We were a tough team, a Super Bowl-contending team, and we always played these brutes hard. Tonight was different though; the Raiders brought their usual full-complement of weapons in Marcus Allen, "Swervin' Mervyn Fernandez, Todd Christensen, and James Lofton. But something was different. The Raiders had "taken a chance" on a certain Auburn football Heisman Trophy-winner and current baseball player who had announced he was looking to "make a hobby" out of playing in the NFL. Boy, do I remember that statement ruffling a lot of feathers.

Bo Jackson made the kind of fools out of the Seattle Seahawks that day I don't recall seeing before or since. After getting stuffed at the line of scrimmage on his first carry and then fumbling on his second, Bo Vincent Jackson then took it upon himself to announce to the NFL world he was the new and absolutely DOMINANT running back on the block by rushing for an astounding 221 yards in the Kingdome. "Bo Knows" (Knew?) how to run through, around, over, and under everyone that night. Kenny Easley himself, whether you know it or not, was one of the best athletes you'd probably ever meet in your life. When Bo ran off that 91-yard touchdown at the start of the 2nd half, Easley actually had the angle to make the tackle. Bo destroyed that angle with his immense speed, and after flying into the player tunnel following the touchdown, commentator Dan Dierdorf exclaimed, "He might not stop 'til Tacoma."

Now, I hem and haw about that night 23 years later, but the way Bo played that night, I doubt the '85 Bears defense or the Steelers' "Steel Curtain' of the 1970s could have stopped him. With UNDYING respect to the greatest NFL cornerback of all-time and sometime-MLB outfielder Deion Sanders, Bo Jackson is, to this observer, simply the finest athletic specimen in the history of pro sports. And he showed every fast-twitch muscle fiber of that talent against the Seahawks on the grandest stage possible. Looking back at the end of that day so many years ago, I can honestly say I saw true greatness break out. It just wasn't for my team!

This third and final game occurred in the most forgettable campaign for most Seahawks fans. It was another November 30, 1992, and the Seahawks offense was barely averaging 8 points a game during their now-infamous 2-14 season. With Denver, minus John Elway, coming into the Kingdome vying for a playoff spot, even the most optimistic of fans had to have been skeptical. Seriously, if you ever want to see a team actually look like they were trying to be terrible, watch video of this offense from 1992. The only reason the Seahawks were in any game that year was because of all-planet DT Cortez Kennedy, who would go on to improbably (impossibly?) win the NFL Defensive Player Of the Year award on a 2-14 NFL football team.

Even with Tommy Maddox starting in place of John Elway, things were bleak. Fortunately, we had a defense to envy. Down only 13-6 in the 4th quarter, journeyman (and I use that term favorably) Stan Gelbaugh replaced Kelly Stouffer at quarterback. What does he do? He proceeds to lead the Seahawks' offense down the field, resulting in a dramatic touchdown grab by Brian Blades to tie the score and send the game into overtime. We defied the tone of the season with a John Kasay field goal to win it.

A testament to the true immortality of the Seahawks'
Cortez Kennedy: on a franchise-worst 2-14 team in 1992,
the future first-ballot Hall of Famer proceeded to win the
NFL Defensive Player of the Year Award.

 I don't know if I have been more proud of a Seahawks team for a single game in my entire life. Even the '05 Super Bowl team. This '92 team of idiots and idgits on offense, these champions of nothing, these absolute zeros, hadn't showed an ounce of consistent internal fortitute that entire year. Yet now, on the ultimate stage, they rose up ONCE, and told people they WERE. They weren't much, but they WERE. Aside from the 2010 Seahawks walking into the offensive juggernaut that was Drew Brees' Saints and winning two years ago in that wild card playoff game, I can't express to you how happy and proud I was for that 2-14 team that night.
The Seahawks face a Green Bay Packers team that may very well choose tonight, September 24, 2012, to walk into The Clink and put on another of their patented passing exhibitions that helped them win the NFL title last year. There's then the idea the Seahawks, as they always have since 1979, will garner up the ghosts of Seahawks past and deliver an ass-beating on a level of which the Packers have yet experienced on a national stage.

Let's gird our loins, have high expectations, and cheer on our Monday Night Football record-best Seattle Seahawks to another victory tonight.

Now, WHO'S READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL??!!!