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A team that works hard to convince anyone and everyone that it’s not fighting among itself may be working too hard when fighting with opponents.

“It wasn’t our best game,” Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor said after Sunday’s loss to the Titans. “We’ve just got to get back to playing together, playing sound ball, taking it one play at a time, eliminating the frustration, eliminating the bickering with other teams, eliminate the extra exertion of energy that we don’t need. Conserve the energy for each play so your brains can think. . . .

“I think every time we get into bickering, it takes a little bit. It’s wasted energy. It takes a little bit of the focus, it distracts, and it takes a little bit of energy.”

So if the bickering that is happening with other teams “takes a little bit of energy,” it’s safe to say the bickering that they still claim isn’t happening inside the team “takes a little bit of energy,” too. Or a lot.

“[A]fter a while it’s like, if you start getting into it too much, then you start losing your energy and your focus,” Chancellor said.

He’s right, and it’s not just about squabbling with opponents or officials. It’s about squabbling on the sidelines, in the locker rooms, in the meeting rooms, and/or on the practice field. Coach Pete Carroll has done a nice job of keeping that stuff from bubbling over since Super Bowl XLIX. But it’s still there, as evidenced by comments since Week One from Earl Thomas, Doug Baldwin, and Richard Sherman regarding the disparity between offense and defense.

It’s hard to imagine the bickering ending, however. If anything, they’ll now potentially be bickering about whether they’re bickering. And the cycle likely will continue until the culture of the team dramatically changes, which may not happen until the core players who have made bickering a way of life are no longer playing for the Seahawks.