Percy Harvin is back. After three consecutive practices this week following a calendar year away from game action due to injuries, the wide receiver, who represents the Seahawks' No. 1 draft choice from April, said he's ready for the game Sunday at the Clink against his old team, the Minnesota Vikings.

READ MORE»

When last seen along a Seattle football sidelines, Jim Mora's Seahawks were outscored  123-37 in their final four games of 2009 to make him the first and only one-year coach in franchise history. For a Bellevue native and longtime pro coach who had been sought not only by the Seahawks but fans of his alma mater, the University of Washington, it was an epic humiliation.

Just in case you wanted to know what is driving Mora Friday night in the Rose Bowl.

READ MORE»

As only he can, Richard Sherman unwrinkled the brows furrowed in his direction. He didn't practice Wednesday because of a previously unknown hip problem. With Brandon Browner almost certainly out, Seahawks fans were gasping and swooning over the possibility of playing the Minnesota Vikings Sunday without half the Legion of Boom (Platoon of Boom?).

READ MORE»

One of the trickier sports-management headaches is about to arrive in Pete Carroll's frontal lobe -- attempting to improve a team near the top of its game by adding a new superstar player in mid-season. If the Seahawks coach needs any instruction on how not to handle it, he can call Adrian Hanauer, Sounders general manager.

READ MORE»

Acknowledging the midseason arrival of Clint Dempsey ratcheted up locker-room tension that helped create "maybe the most frustrating season in the 12 years I've been with the Sounders," general manager Adrian Hanauer said Monday that the fate of coach Sigi Schmid remains undecided.

READ MORE»

Cornerback Brandon Browner "could be down quite awhile" after straining a groin muscle in Sunday's 33-10 win in Atlanta, but coach Pete Carroll had good Seahawks health news as well Monday: Tackles Russell Okung and Breno Giacomini will be practicing full time, and WR Percy Harvin will be activated for Sunday's home game against his old team, Minnesota.

READ MORE»

SCOREBOARD, BABY

Seattle Seahawks 33, at Atlanta Falcons 10.

TERSE TRUTH

They are who Seattle fans thought they were.

Despite injuries to the offensive line and the loss of CB Brandon Browner (strained groin), the Seahawks Sunday put together their most comprehensive beat-down of the season, using the hammer of Marshawn Lynch to pulverize the home-standing Falcons as well as doubts from the season's first half. While the much-wounded Falcons are a shadow of the team that beat the Seahawks in the playoffs, Seattle was unable to bury the previous two opponents of similarly modest accomplishments. With 490 yards of total offense that included 145 rushing yards from Lynch -- the Falcons had 226 yards for the game -- the Seahawks were in total control.

READ MORE»

The play was what Karl Malone would have made had the NBA Hall of Famer been a tight end. Austin Seferian-Jenkins posted up his smaller defender at the goal line, used his 275 pounds for leverage and went up high with both hands to get the ball. He could have pivoted and dunked, but he already had six points when his feet touched the turf.

READ MORE»

As closing acts go, the Sounders fell off the stage, into the orchestra pit and may not be recovered for days. Embarrassingly outplayed for 70 minutes Thursday night in Portland, Seattle scored two late goals, but the Timbers, clearly the superior team, prevailed 3-2 and 5-3 in the aggregate to move on to the Western Conference finals against Real Salt Lake.

READ MORE»

Michael Robinson doesn't know about NFL rookies having to pay out $32,000 in dinner tabs for veterans. But he does know about $7,000, because that's what he paid eight years ago as a rookie with the San Francisco 49ers, a bill he said was worth it because it brought him a little locker room peace.

READ MORE»

Unqualified for the world's worst occupation  -- a single mother with three kids and no income -- Lloyd McClendon had to settle for second-worst: He's the new manager of the Seattle Mariners. I'm sure he knows what he's doing, which puts him one-up on his new bosses, but either he didn't have Eric Wedge's phone number, or Wedge signed a confidentiality agreement to stay mum.

READ MORE»

DE Red Bryant joined C Max Unger in undergoing concussion protocols Monday after the Seahawks' 27-24 overtime win over the Tampa Bay Bucs, coach Pete Carroll said. He gave no indication of results or availability for the 10 a.m. Sunday match against the 2-6 Falcons in Atlanta, where the Seahawks were eliminated in January from the NFL play0ffs.

READ MORE»

After having opponents rush for more than 200 yards for a second week in a row, coach Pete Carroll doesn't think a football crisis is upon the Seahawks. But he does admit to being a tad embarrassed, particularly over a trap play that Tampa used Sunday very effectively in threatening to pull off the upset of the NFL season.

READ MORE»

If a Seahawks fan ever wondered what it would be like to experience a double-breaking, 150-foot putt on the 18th green to win a golf tournament, CenturyLink offered a three-and-a-half-hour course Sunday in yelling, "Get in the hole!"

A demanding, draining, perilous, arduous and exasperating afternoon ended with, well, another exhalation. Relief, just like Monday in St. Louis, not exhilaration. The Seahawks, again as bad as a good team can be, did what great teams do: Enough right things to win.

READ MORE»

As the most successful business enterprise in Major League Soccer history, the Sounders put money and muscle into 2013 to get an identical identity for their product on the pitch. For the fifth year in a row, they must make the claim the hard way. They are a playoff-quality team, but a championship-quality team? Not off Saturday's result.

READ MORE»

Unprompted, Pete Carroll gushed, which in itself is not unusual. Carroll has a way of making the most pedestrian moment seem like watching sunrise in Yellowstone. What made this episode notable was the first recorded Carroll geyser for Bruce Irvin that was based on fact instead of potential.

READ MORE»

"Out of the box" is a popular business phrase signifying creative thinking. In soccer, it is a phrase describing no thinking. The latter came to mind when Sounders goalie Michael Gspurning found himself on wrong side of the line with 10 minutes left in a loser-out game, against the equally desperate Colorado Rapids, that the Sounders led precariously, 1-0.

READ MORE»

SCOREBOARD BABY

Seahawks 14, at St. Louis Rams 9

TERSE TRUTH

When the best thing to be said about an NFL offense is that the quarterback is learning how to cover up the ball while being sacked, the conversation is about a dead team walking. But no.

READ MORE»

The Sounders will win a match again, someday. If it isn't Wednesday, then it will have to be 2014.  If not then . . . well, let's not go doomsday.

By managing a tie Sunday night against the Los Angeles Galaxy, the Sounders get to host a a game against Colorado at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the knock-out round of the MLS playoffs -- against a team that bashed them 5-1 Oct. 5. The brave post-game faces and rhetoric could not hide the fact fact that the Sounders  are still winless in the past seven games.

READ MORE»

A media acquaintance of mine uninvolved in sports remarked in late summer, after seeing  acres of empty seats at Safeco Field for most home games, that the Mariners must finally be headed for financial disaster.

Well, um, no. I told her that not only did the Mariners report an operating profit in 2012 of $5.8 million despite a terrible season and Safeco-record-low attendance, they had the guts to raise ticket prices for 2013, were finishing another lousy season with a minuscule uptick in attendance, yet had the capital to buy controlling interest in its regional TV sports network.

READ MORE»