Art Thiel

The guess is here the Mariners are again so far behind, it will take another 20 years to catch up.

It will be a match with stakes beyond the rivalry, featuring teams on an uptick that accept the frozen darkness of the Palouse as a proper FOX Sports theater for proving they can get as metaphorically dirty as everyone else in college ball and come out ahead.

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.