Art Thiel

Things can change quickly. What can't change is the fact that the Seahawks have eight games of proof that their offense is better without Wilson.

The excruciating 21-year wait to return to the postseason ended in an even more excruciating manner -- a six-hour, 22-minute molar-grinder against the American League's best team that had enough shoulda-woulda-coulda to displace all the water in Puget Sound.

As Philadelphia Inquirer columnist David Murphy described it: “Watching playoff baseball is like watching a loved one defuse a bomb.”

Fourteen years to .500, 21 years between playoffs. If you are a non-baseball fan, look upon your overwrought Mariners-loving friends and family with compassion.

“Geno was the best he’s ever been,” said Pete Carroll. “He was ready for this game.” Said Smith: “People wrote me off. I didn’t write back.”

Russell Wilson didn’t want to be here. Pete Carroll didn’t want him to be here. Simple.

It’s official now that the industry has fallen off the edge of the flat Earth propped so long by the mythology of amateurism.

Carroll’s emphasis on the run is neither wrong nor hopeless; it helped get the Seahawks to two Super Bowls. But the system takes better players to execute it than he and Schneider had provided since then. Until, perhaps, now.

Wilson and Carroll were dug in hard on damage control regarding the steaming crater in the Seahawks' roster, true feelings disguised by the polite prevarications and mendacity that attended the run-up to the trade.

The writing has been on the wall for this moment. The Seahawks were forced to do the forbidden thing in the NFL: they traded a Hall of Fame quarterback with tread on his tires.