SEAHAWKS FIRST SUPER BOWL!!!!

I woke up this morning not believing that the Seahawks were going to go to the Super Bowl. All of the sudden it felt surreal. Everything that has happened in the past two weeks on the way to this game seemed like a dream, a haze, something I'd created in my own mind.

But it was real. Oh, how it was real!!!

OK, yeah, we lost. It hurts, I won't lie about that. I wanted to win.

I'm going to share an email I received just after the game. This message was sent to me by a Cleveland fan:

From: charlies fryes
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 9:38 PM
Subject: CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SEAHAWKS!
Becky,

I just wanted to write you and let you know that your team out played the Steelers. In all the years of watching football I have never seen so many bad calls and penalites against your team than I did tonight. The no touchdown by Big Ben, the holding call that would have had the Seahawks at the one and the penalty against Matt for trying to tackle the guy!

Your team should have won but I think the game was ruined by the officials!

Good luck and keep in touch!

Mike Randall
Charlies Fryes

I've gotta say, I really didn't think that first Pittsburgh touchdown was a touchdown. It was shades of Testaverde coming back to haunt us.

If the touchdown by Darrell Jackson was negated by an interference penalty, why wasn't Pittsburgh flagged for touching Darrell seconds earlier on the same play? At the very least it should have been offsetting penalties.

I don't know the rules enough to know if Hasselbeck should have been flagged for tackling the opponent, but Madden seemed to think the flag was bogus.

Same goes for the holding penalty that was so detrimental to us.

I'm not trying to make excuses for our loss. There were things we could have done to put points on the board that didn't happen. As calm as Hasselbeck appeared, I think his passes took off on him a few times. We dropped some balls that should have been caught. Our last possessions at the end of the 2nd quarter and 4th quarter weren't played out as well as they could have been. We got burned on defense with some pretty amazing plays by Pittsburgh. We lost some men to injury.

But I really think we did more good things than bad, and I especially think we played well against a team well-represented by fans.

I admit, I'm crushed that we lost. I realized in the second half that I hadn't prepared myself for a loss. It wasn't that I was so confident about winning that I didn't think it would happen, it's just that I was so hopeful for a victory that I hadn't considered what it might feel like to lose. When things turned ugly at the end of the first half, for the first time since we won the division championship it occurred to me that we might not bring home the trophy. My heart sunk to my toes.

Anyway, what's done is done and the world will go on. I'm VERY proud of the Seahawks and we can all hold our head up high!