Bell tolls: Seattle Seahawks should still be feared as a Super Bowl contender

Jarrett Bell | USA TODAY Sports

Show Caption Hide Caption NFL Week 13 Bold Predictions USA Today Sports' Tom Pelissero gives Bold Predictions that you'd never expect for Week 13 of the NFL season.

Well, that was some hangover.

For the first time since Russell Wilson’s moment-of-glory-pass at the goal line in Super Bowl XLIX was intercepted by Malcolm Butler, the Seattle Seahawks head into a game again with a winning record.

Uh-oh. The Seahawks are not dead yet. They are gearing up for another run.

This should really concern the teams in the NFC – including the Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals – harboring legitimate Super Bowl aspirations. The Seahawks should be the last team they’d want to face in the NFC playoffs.

Let us count some ways.

With improved protection from the patchwork offensive line that Tom Cable has put together, Wilson is killing it from the pocket. He is still lethal with his legs, but he’s growing as a passer.

Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril, rushing off the edges.

Richard Sherman, who in containing the remarkable Antonio Brown last weekend, demonstrated that for all of the buzz surrounding rising Panthers star Josh Norman, he’s still the NFL’s best cornerback.

Thomas Rawls. Beast Mode has a clone.

And last but not least, Doug Baldwin. Catch the video highlights from the shootout victory against Pittsburgh that pushed the Seahawks to 6-5.

They are finally above .500 again, an accomplishment that is not to be sneezed at, even for a team that is coming off back-to-back Super Bowl appearances. One thing for sure, to get back there, it will take a different type of journey in a season that began at 0-2, then hit 2-4 before the surge.

Sure, they bring some baggage with them into Sunday’s game at Minnesota, where the Vikings are poised to make a huge statement of their own – or not – as a legit contender. The Legion of Boom, shredded for 450 yards by Ben Roethlisberger last Sunday, hasn’t been itself, lately. Two weeks before Big Ben, Arizona’s Carson Palmer lit up the Seahawks. They have given up too many big plays, which suddenly raises the stakes for all-pro safeties Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor to return to form.

Also, Jimmy Graham’s done for the year. It took a while for the play-making tight end to get into the flow, but he was hitting a stride. Then he blows out a knee. Tough break.

Yet Graham’s injury hardly dooms this team. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Seahawks over the past three season, it is they possess the mettle to hang tough. So add another layer of adversity.

The fact that the Seahawks have made this run before counts for a lot. Wilson, this week, made a reference to “clutch mentality,” and Sherman and Bennett, to name two, still carry themselves with the type of swagger that personifies the team’s identity.

They will be hard to beat in January, just because. This team rolls with a lot of pride.

If the playoffs were today, the Seahawks would be in — barely — as the sixth seed in the NFC. They’d have to go to the wild-card route and hit the road each week in the playoffs, which is what’s so different about their two Super Bowl runs gained when opponents had to come through CenturyLink Field.

Strikingly, if the seedings today were such in January, a first-round game at Minnesota would be the first draw. So Sunday’s game might even be a playoff preview that provides clues as to whether the Seahawks can sustain themselves for a run.

Hey, I’d give them a chance. Especially now, as they have gained some momentum. A few weeks ago, it appeared they wouldn’t even make the playoffs. But now they seemed poised to make a run, with the docket including Baltimore, Cleveland and St. Louis in the next three weeks.

To get to this point is encouraging to some degree. Just look at the history. So many teams have lost Super Bowls and tanked the following season. The hangover they call it.

Just seven teams from the first 49 Super Bowls lost and made it back the next year. Of the past 21 Super Bowl losers, not one made it back the following year. The Buffalo Bills were the last to do that, when Super Bowl XXXVIII marked their fourth consecutive Super Try.

Just two teams – the 1972 Miami Dolphins and 1971 Dallas Cowboys – won a Super Bowl after losing the Super Bowl the previous year.

At least the Seahawks are still in the hunt. So many Super Bowl losers couldn’t even say that. The landscape is littered with Super Bowl losers who came back at 7-9 or 5-11. Shoot, the Raiders were 4-12 in the season after Super Bowl XXXVII, and haven’t had a winning season since.

The Seahawks, with all of that pride and big-game experience, figure to be a tough out in January. And they will be pressed to beat history, too.

Other items of interest as Week 13 rolls on…

Who’s hot: Matt Hasselbeck. Age is nothing but a number. The Colts are surely buying into that, 4-0 with the 40-year-old backup who has saved the day while Andrew Luck recovers from a lacerated kidney and abdominal injuries. Some other numbers, though, are also rather revealing. Hasselbeck has averaged 255.8 passing yards a game, which if it holds up would be a career high in that category. His passer rating (94.4) and completion rate (64.7%) would be second only to the marks he put in in 2005 with the Seahawks. Another reminder of that banner 2005 campaign surfaces on Sunday in Pittsburgh, when he faces the team that beat him in Super Bowl XL. Of course, none of the Steelers are left from that Super Bowl team, but Hasselbeck is still rolling. It’s also notable that, according to ESPN Stats and Information, Hasselbeck has the NFL’s best completion mark (75.8%) on play-action passes … despite the fact that the Colts have gone an NFL-longest streak of 45 games without a 100-yard rusher.

Pressure’s on: Matt Ryan. After a 5-0 start, the Falcons, 6-5, have reached the point where they called a players-only meeting this week. Ryan, the franchise quarterback, heads into Sunday’s game at Tampa needing to better protect the football. Nothing says losing like turnovers, and going back seven games, Ryan committed 13 turnovers (10 INTs, 3 lost fumbles). There’s no better way for Ryan to demonstrate his leadership than with his play.

Key matchup: Odell Beckham, Jr. vs. Buster Skrine. With Darrelle Revis missing another game while in concussion protocol, the battle of the Big Apple we won’t get to see the hot young receiver square off against the savvy vet. But the Jets are still pressed to find some answers for containing the Giants’ wondrous Beckham, probably using one hand to carry his streak of four consecutive 100-yard games. With backup Marcus Williams also ailing (knee), the Jets’ best option will likely be to move Skrine – one of the best under-the-radar free agent moves last offseason -- from his slot nickel role to the outside.

Next man up: Austin Davis.What, no Johnny Manziel? For all of the clamoring to see the swashbuckling Johnny Football the Browns moved up to draft in the first round last year, Davis is the one with the big opportunity as the fill-in starter for the season-injured Josh McCown. Manziel’s off-the-field issues cost him dearly, but it’s not like he’s the only young quarterback the Browns need to see. Cleveland brought in Davis this year and promptly signed him to an extension, so there’s a message in that. He came off the bench on Monday and provided a spark that nearly snapped the Browns’ five-game losing streak, and also made me wonder why the quarterback-starved Rams ever let him out the door.

Rookie watch: Marcus Peters. Kansas City’s first-round cornerback has had a smashing debut season, moving past the issues he had in college that raised pre-draft concerns. Leading all rookies with four interceptions, he’ll be in the conversation for Defensive Rookie of the Year. But first things first: He heads home to Oakland to face the team he grew up rooting for, and to engage in a matchup against the likely Offensive Rookie of the Year, Amari Cooper. What a nice boost to the Chiefs-Raiders rivalry – a game-within-a-game competition between Peters and Cooper than might carry on for years.

My road to Super Bowl 50 goes through… New Orleans. Despite the Saints’ struggles and the solar eclipse event at Houston last weekend -- when Sean Payton and Drew Brees couldn’t put their heads together and produce a single touchdown for the first time in their union – the matchup at the Superdome with Carolina still looms as a potential trap for the NFL’s last unbeaten team. So often, when division rivals play, you can throw the records out and expect a competitive game. Remember, the Saints knocked off unbeaten Atlanta (then 5-0) at the Dome, and the Falcons have been in a funk since. To spring an upset on Sunday, the Saints need Brees to figure out the blitzes because the Panthers (11-0) strike from so many angles. Carolina’s 33 sacks have come from 15 different players, which is more variety than any team in the league has produced.

Did you notice? Jeremy Hill had his best game of the season last weekend for the Bengals, days after a one-on-one meeting with offensive coordinator Hue Jackson. He ripped off 86 rushing yards and averaged 5.4 yards against St. Louis. Not sure exactly what Jackson said to light a fire, but perhaps it had something to do with decisively hitting the holes. Hill, averaging 3.5 yards a carry, hasn’t looked like the same powerful force he was last season. He’s danced too much. But if he can finish as strong as he did a year ago -- when he rushed for 100 yards five times in the final nine games – perhaps all will be forgiven.

Stat’s the fact: So what’s happened to Todd Gurley? A month ago, the Rams rookie running back was seemingly on a fast track to Canton. He averaged a whopping 142.4 yards a game and 6.4 yards a carry in his first four starts, which included three victories for resurgent St. Louis. Not the case lately. In Gurley’s last four starts, the Rams are 0-4 and he rushed for just 55 yards a game, 3.1 a carry.

Fantasy vs. Reality: It’s the final week of the regular season in the 20-team Super League, and the good news is that Marion Motley Crew (9-3) has clinched a playoff berth and plays in a winner-take-all showdown against the JJ Watts (9-3) for the East title. You’d think that Roger Goodell arranged such scheduling. The bad news: In a 20-team league, injuries – like the setbacks to Rob Gronkowski and Ryan Mathews affecting MMC -- can be so critical. Maybe they’ll be back for the playoffs. Mathews’ case is intriguing in that his big rebound year has been thrown off by injuries – a theme throughout his career. He’ll miss his third game while in the concussion protocol. His case is also reflective of the more conservative return-to-play timeline that has existed all across the league. More often than not, players are missing multiple games before getting cleared after suffering concussions. So yes, the NFL’s heightened awareness of concussions is felt in the fantasy zone, too.

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