One of the recurring themes of this blog has been that it's tough to be the class of the NFC West, a division which is, if nothing else, relentlessly egalitarian. The Seattle Seahawks, who've competed with the St. Louis Rams this year for the honor, learned this the hard way, when they lost a poll, on the Seattle Times's website, as to whether their fans would prefer they beat the Rams tonight and represent the NFC West, at 7-9, in the playoffs.
↵The Seahawks can't finish at .500, and with Matt Hasselbeck 35 the team doesn't have the same presumed upward trajectory as the Rams. But even with two years of Seahawks struggles to reckon with in Seattle I think this poll's results in Seattle, and its hypothetical sibling's results in St. Louis, is a sign of just how starved for good news Rams fans have been in the post-Martz era.
↵The St. Louis Rams are not a great team, and like the Seahawks they are below the unwritten standards we have in mind for playoff teams. But it's exciting because it promises better things are on the immediate horizon, when most of us were resolved, before the season, for a much longer wait.
↵I'm no expert on what Seattle fans wanted out of 2010, but it appears that it wasn't what they got.
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