The Seahawks have lost their closing kick

Remember when Pete Carroll's team could be counted on to summon up a season-changing win streak in December? Man, that was awesome wasn't it?

Hey, do you remember that comedian Chris Farley who used to be part of the cast of “Saturday Night Live” and on some of the episodes he’d even get his own segment in which he’d get to interview the guest host and he’d be super nervous and fidgeting with his hands and kind of stammer through his questions, do you remember that?

Man that was awesome.

He interview Jeff Daniels and Martin Scorcese and Paul McCartney and there was never really a punchline or a conventional payoff so much as just the escalating amusement of watching Farley’s physical manifestations of intense nervousness as he talked with these people about their artistic creations.

I mention all of this because I’m not sure how much of a payoff I have today. There’s no punchline here just an observation about something that has fundamentally changed the second half of Pete Carroll’s tenure as Seahawks head coach. More specifically, his team no longer has the closing kick it once did, and in fact, it’s the absence of this ability to marshal a late-season run that might be the biggest thing that is keeping the Seahawks from being great again.

(Chris Farley voice) You remember back when Seattle lost at Miami in 2012, its playoff hopes were wobbly and then it won five straight games by a combined total of 193-60, you remember that? That was awesome.

And there was a time when you could count on the Seahawks to get better in the final month of the season. You remembert that? A time that I almost referenced last week after Seattle lost in Dallas, leaving its playoff hopes very much in jeopardy with five games remaining.

These are not those Seahawks. Not by a longshot, they haven’t been for some time and the reason they haven’t been was quite evident on Sunday in San Francisco: the defense.