Sometimes you just need to get away from it all. A vacation can do wonders to relieve stress from work, ease marital tension, or in the case of the Seattle Seahawks, allow a team to move past the most gut-wrenching play of their careers. From the moment Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson’s pass in the end zone to hand Super Bowl XLIX to the New England Patriots, there has been a non-stop turnstile of second guesses coming from Seattle. However, recent comments by the players suggest that the blame game extended far beyond blogs and sports talk radio and into the Seahawks’ locker room.
Doug Baldwin explained the team dynamic as follows in comments to Sports Illustrated. “There was tension. … People thinking we should have done this, we should have done that [in the Super Bowl]. There were a lot of questions that needed to be answered. And a lot that needed to be asked.”
In order to move past the controversial play and onto the upcoming season, many Seahawks players and their families came together for a seven-day trip to Hawaii. Quarterback Russell Wilson gave some insight to reporters on how the time away was able to renew Seattle’s team chemistry.
“I think ultimately when we got together in Maui and experienced one another, felt one another in the sense of our energy and our focus before one another and what we were gonna do — when we threw all the other stuff off the cliff kind of deal into the ocean there in Maui, and just focused on what we’re gonna do to move forward and how we’re gonna focus on each other and how we’re gonna build one another up and how we’re gonna try to win a lot of football games and continue to do the same thing. I mean, we were on the 1-yard line, you know? We don’t need to change much. So I think that’s kind of our focus.”
For now, it seems that all is well in the Great Northwest. Russell Wilson is charged with nanobubbles, Marshawn Lynch is stocked up on Skittles, and the Seahawks are ready to make a run towards their third consecutive Super Bowl. If Seattle does make it to Santa Clara, they may have a trip to Hawaii to thank for helping them move past a play that could have destroyed them.
