"The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology."


Monday, December 10, 2012

The Next Step

Elite teams go 1-0 week in, week out. Regardless of opponent, venue and the extraneous, they remain consistent. They tune out the noise, they focus on the task at hand, they win as a matter of course.

The Seahawks have not attained that level of consistency -- they have only begun to hint at it. Consecutive victories at Chicago and at home against Arizona are significant, especially the former. But this team has yet to string together three wins in a row. At best it has been two steps forward, one step back.

No more of that. No steps back. Keep making steps forward. You do that by winning on a neutral field in Toronto this Sunday against Buffalo. Lose that eminently winnable game and much, if not all of the good feeling and accomplishment from the last two weeks is erased. Win it and you have a three game winning streak (two on the road), a guaranteed winning season, a stranglehold on a playoff spot, and possibly a chance to play San Francisco for the division championship the following week on your home field.

We've proven that we can take care of the best and worst the NFL has to offer at home. We've proven that we can take the field on the road and beat one of the league's better teams against a plethora of adversity in Chicago.

What we need to prove -- and can prove on Sunday -- is that we are able to consistently win on the road against inferior opponents. That is a different beast altogether. The NFL's elite do it as a matter or course. Young, talented and inconsistent teams routinely struggle with it.

Sunday at Buffalo is our next, possibly last chance in 2012 to abdicate the latter characterization and assume the former.

It is the next step.

It is the hardest step.

GO 'HAWKS.

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