Seattle seahawks Schedule
The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football franchise based in Seattle, Washington. They are members of the National Football League (NFL) and the current Super Bowl champions. They are members of the NFC West division of the National Football Conference (NFC). The Seahawks joined the NFL in 1976 as an expansion team along with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The SeattleSeahawks have no relation to the defunct Miami Seahawks of the All-America Football Conference. The Seahawks are owned by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, and are currently coached by Pete Carroll. Since 2002, the Seahawks have played their home games atCenturyLink Field, located south of downtown Seattle. The Seahawks previously played home games in the Kingdome (1976–1999) andHusky Stadium (1994, 2000–2001).
The Seahawks are the only NFL franchise located in the Pacific Northwest region of North America and thus attract support from a widegeographical area, including Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Alaska, as well as Canadian fans in British Columbia and Alberta.[3]
Seahawks fans are known collectively as the "12th Man"[4][5][6] or "12th Fan."[7][disputed ] The Seahawks' fans have twice set theGuinness World Record for the loudest crowd noise at a sporting event, first on September 15, 2013, registering 136.6 dB during a game against the San Francisco 49ers[8] and again on December 2, 2013, during a Monday Night Football game against the New Orleans Saints, with a roar of 137.6 dB.[9][10]
Over the years the Seahawks have had some notable players on the team, such as Steve Largent, Dave Brown, Jim Zorn, Dave Krieg,John Randle, Kenny Easley, Curt Warner, Joe Nash, Brian Blades, Cortez Kennedy, Joey Galloway, Warren Moon, Walter Jones, Steve Hutchinson, Jerry Rice, Shaun Alexander, Matt Hasselbeck, Marcus Trufant, Marshawn Lynch, Percy Harvin, Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor, Brandon Browner and Russell Wilson. Largent, Kennedy, and Moon have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as was Jones in 2014.[11] Easley, Jones, Kennedy, Krieg, Largent, Warner, and Zorn have been inducted into the Seahawks Ring of Honor, along with cornerback Dave Brown and defensive end Jacob Green.
The Seahawks have won eight division titles and two conference championships. They are the only team to have played in both the AFCand NFC Championship Games. They have appeared in two Super Bowls, most recently Super Bowl XLVIII where they defeated theDenver Broncos 43-8 to win their first title.
Franchise history[edit]
For more details on this topic, see History of the Seattle Seahawks.
As per one of the agreed parts of the 1970 AFL-NFL Merger, the NFL began planning to expand from 26 to 28 teams.[12] In June 1972, Seattle Professional Football Inc., a group of Seattle business and community leaders, announced its intention to acquire an NFL franchise for the city of Seattle.[13] In June 1974, the NFL gave the city an expansion franchise. That December, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelleannounced the official signing of the franchise agreement by Lloyd W. Nordstrom, representing the Nordstrom family as majority partners for the consortium.[14]
In March 1975, John Thompson, former Executive Director of the NFL Management Council and a former Washington Husky executive, was hired as the general manager of the new team. The team was originally going to be called the Seattle Kings, but the name Seattle Seahawks ("Seahawk" is another name for Osprey) was selected on June 17, 1975 after a public naming contest which drew more than 20,000 entries and over 1,700 different names.
Thompson recruited and hired Jack Patera, a Minnesota Vikings assistant coach, to be the first head coach of the Seahawks; the hiring was announced on January 3, 1976. The expansion draft was held March 30–31, 1976, with Seattle and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers alternating picks for rounds selecting unprotected players from the other 26 teams in the league.[15] The Seahawks were awarded the 2nd overall pick in the 1976 draft, a pick they used on defensive tackle Steve Niehaus. The team took the field for the first time on August 1, 1976 in a pre-season game against the San Francisco 49ers in the then newly constructed Kingdome.
The Seahawks are, to date, the only NFL team to switch conferences twice in the post-merger era. The franchise began play in 1976 in the aforementioned NFC West but switched conferences with the Buccaneers after one season and joined the AFC West. This realignment was dictated by the league as part of the 1976 expansion plan, so that both expansion teams could play each other twice and every other NFL franchise once (the ones in their conference at the time) during their first two seasons. The Seahawks won both matchups against the Buccaneers in their first two seasons, the former of which was the Seahawks' very first regular season victory.
In 1983, the Seahawks hired Chuck Knox as head coach. Finishing with a 9–7 record, the Seahawks made their first post-season appearance, defeating the Denver Broncos in the Wild Card Round, and then the Miami Dolphins, before losing in the AFC Championship to the Los Angeles Raiders. The following season, the Seahawks had their best season before 2005, finishing 12–4.[16] Knox won the NFL Coach of the Year Award.
The Seahawks won their first division title in 1988, but from 1989 to 1998 had poor records and did not play in the post-season. The team almost relocated, and was in bankruptcy for a short period. In 1997, Microsoft co-creator Paul Allen purchased the team, and in 1999 Mike Holmgren was hired as head coach. He would coach for 10 seasons. The Seahawks won their second division title, as well as a wild card berth in the playoffs.
In 2002, the Seahawks returned to the NFC West as part of an NFL realignment plan that gave each conference four balanced divisions of four teams each. This realignment restored the AFC West to its initial post-merger roster of original AFL teams Denver, San Diego, Kansas City, and Oakland.
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In the 2005 season, the Seahawks had their best season in franchise history with a record of 13–3, a feat that would later be matched in 2013. That record earned them the #1 seed in the NFC. They won the NFC Championship Game in 2005, but lost in Super Bowl XL against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The loss was controversial; NFL Films has Super Bowl XL at number 8 on its top ten list of games with controversial referee calls.[17] Before 2005, Seattle had the longest drought of playoff victories of any NFL team, dating back to the 1984 season. That drought was ended with a 20–10 win over the Washington Redskins in the 2005 playoffs.
Starting in the 1998 season, Blitz has been the Seahawks' official mascot. In the 2003 and 2004 seasons, a hawk named Faith would fly around the stadium just before the team came out of the tunnel. However, because of her relative small size and an inability to be trained to lead the team out of a tunnel, Faith was replaced by an augur hawk named Taima before the start of the 2005 season. Taima started leading the team out of the tunnel in September 2006.[18] Beginning in 2004, the Seahawks introduced their drum line, the Blue Thunder. The group plays at every home game as well as over 100 events in the Seattle community.[19]
In the 2010 NFL season, the Seahawks made history by making it into the playoffs despite having a 7–9 record. They had the best record in a division full of teams with losing seasons (Seahawks 7–9, Rams 7–9, 49ers 6–10, Cardinals 5–11) and won the decisive season finale against the Rams (not only by overall record, but by division record, as both teams coming into the game had a 3-2 division record). In the playoffs, the Seahawks won in their first game against the defending Super Bowl XLIV champs, the New Orleans Saints, 41–36. The Seahawks made even more history during the game with Marshawn Lynch's 67-yard run, breaking 7 or so tackles, to clinch the victory.[20] The Seahawks lost to the Bears in their second game, 35–24.
