Why not?
And why not? Why can’t a 7-9 team knock off the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints in the playoffs? Why can’t a 36-year-old quarterback who never quite reached “elite” status throw for four touchdowns in a game where he’s nursing a bad hip? Why can’t a cast-off running back from the Buffalo Bills — yes, Marshawn Lynch was traded by the Bills, who, kindly put, suck — break out a 67-yard touchdown in which eight Saints defenders failed to bring him down?
Heck, why can’t a bunch of latte-swilling, flannel-wearing, code-writing, former grunge-listening, sunlight-deprived Seattleites create the loudest environment of any stadium in the NFL, forcing opposing teams to commit multiple false-start penalties in every game? (And yes, it’s louder than Yankee Stadium…filled with angry New Yorkers.)
I love this story, perhaps more than I loved New Orleans’ underdog climb to the Super Bowl and improbable defeat of the Indianapolis Colts last year. Yes, I lived in Seattle for a few years, but that’s not it. Football, to me, is a microcosm of myth and story, played out every Sunday (or on Thursday, Saturday or Monday). The sports media does an amazing job of ferreting out the interesting people involved, their battles to make the team, overcome injury or a rough upbringing, their breakdowns and comebacks. They turn a bunch of millionaire athletes into a Band of Brothers (a term first coined by Admiral Horatio Nelson) and make large, muscular, rich men seems scrappy or evil or heroic.
So I want to see this chapter play out for the Seahawks. Of course, I’m in the New York area, so I’m going to root for the Jets, because I also have a fondness for their weirdness and their uncalled-for bravado. But deep down, I want Seattle to go to the Super Bowl, if only because it would be the strangest, most improbable road to glory since…well, maybe since last year.
, 
Michael J. Martinez 