Hawks Fly South For Key NFC West Tilt

Earl Thomas and the Seattle Seahawks will make a pilgrimage to the desert this weekend, where they’ll put their division title hopes, and their reputation as a Super Bowl favorite, on the line.

The Hawks fly south this weekend to take on the NFC West leading Arizona Cardinals. At 11-3, Arizona owns the division lead and is the only team to clinch a playoff spot thus far, but if Seattle can come away from the University of Phoenix Stadium with a victory, they’ll be in the driver’s seat to take the crown.

“This is a game that’s going to call for everything,” Seattle head coach Pete Carroll said on Wednesday. “They’re tough, they’re winning, they’ve got confidence, they get after you at home … it’s a great challenge for us. Our guys, probably not going to surprise you, are really excited about this opportunity.”

Fortunately, the Seahawks are looking like the hottest team in football right now. They’re winners of four straight, and their Legion of Boom-led defense has allowed just 6.8 points per game in that span.

Right on par with his team, in the last six games, ET III has been playing his best football of the season. No. 29 started his second-half hot streak with a game-changing pick against the New York Giants. The next week he had 11 tackles and two forced fumbles against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Two weeks ago, Earl had an enormous fumble recovery that led to a Seattle touchdown in a win over the Philadelphia Eagles—and just last week, No. 29 tallied nine tackles in a dominant 17-7 win over the San Francisco 49ers.

That Hawks’ four-game win streak started in Week 12, where the Hawks cruised to a 19-3 victory over the Cardinals, who held the NFL’s best record at the time. ET and the Seattle D held Arizona to just 204 total yards in the victory to end its six-game win streak.

Arizona looked as good as any team in the league early on, but quarterback injuries have slowed their progress of late. First, starter Carson Palmer went down with a torn ACL, forcing Drew Stanton to take over.

However, last week, Stanton also suffered a knee injury, thrusting third-string QB Ryan Lindley into action. Lindley will start his first game since 2012 in what will be the biggest game of the regular season for either team.

If the Cardinals win, they’ll clinch the NFC West and home-field advantage through the playoffs; if the Seahawks win, they’ll have an identical record to the Cardinals with one game left in the season, but they’ll also hold the tiebreaker for winning both head-to-head matchups.

Carroll likes the energy of his team heading into the crucial Wild West tilt, and he’s expecting a classic defensive slugfest.

“These are kind of the classic NFC West matchups,” Carroll said. “Defense is going to get after it, try to run the football on both sides and all that, and we’ll slug it out and see what happens. We’re looking forward to it.”

In the first game, the Legion Of Boom forced just one turnover — a first-half interception by then-starter Stanton — and will be hoping for more this time around against Lindley. The Cardinals, albeit under Stanton and Carson Palmer most of the season, have turned it over just 13 times all season. Only three teams have turned it over fewer times, one of which is Seattle.

Carroll specifically mentioned turnovers as a key not only to this game in particular, but to the Seahawks’ philosophy as a whole. He attributes a big part of the team’s renewed dominance recently to possession, and he wants his defense to keep getting the ball back in quarterback Russell Wilson’s hands.

“The primary philosophy of our football is taking care of the football and getting after it,” Carroll said, “and it’s all about the ball.”

Not only will the Seahawks be facing a different quarterback than the one they saw last month, but they’ll also have a different set of weapons to deal with. In the first matchup, the Cardinals were using Andre Ellington at running back, who has since been placed on injured reserve. The Seahawks held him to just 24 rushing yards and 39 receiving yards, perhaps because they had two games’ worth of film from the 2013 season to study in preparation.

Sunday night, Earl and the Seahawks will get their first-ever look at newest stud running back Kerwynn Williams, who burst onto the scene with 175 rushing yards in his first two games.

The Hawks will also be tasked with stopping top star receiver Larry Fitzgerald, who missed the first game between the two teams this season. Fitzgerald, who Carroll called “one of the best that’s ever played,” is the team’s primary deep threat, meaning he could well be spending most of the game in Area 29.

Cornerback Richard Sherman, who will surely spend some time on Fitzgerald, was also high on praise for the legendary receiver, saying “the boy catches a football very well” and “he makes the defense pay attention to him.”

However, Sherman also said all the moving parts don’t change much with how the Seahawks defense prepares.

“They don’t look that much different in terms of the plays they’re running and how they’re using their personnel. They still take their shots when they them,” Sherman said.

“I think you prepare for them to take shots down the field, they’re going to try to establish a run game, which is something they’ve done better in the past weeks, and be ready for their quick game.”

Sunday night’s game will be nationally televised on NBC with a scheduled kickoff time of 8:30 p.m.