If the usual rowdy crowd had been at the Clink -- in full throat when the two best NFL teams over the past decade were deciding the Sunday night national showcase game on fourth and goal at the 1-yard line with three seconds left -- Seahawks SS Jamal Adams might never have gotten the word that LB Bobby Wagner said that the Patriots' final play was going to be a run to the defense's right.

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Any doubt that Russell Wilson has ascended to another level of confidence this season was erased this week.

Asked Friday by broadcaster Dan Patrick, "Do you think you're the best quarterback in the NFL?" Wilson replied, "Do I think I'm the best quarterback in the NFL? I believe so, without a doubt."

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I wish there was the equivalent of an air quality index meter for this sort of thing. Or maybe something like an antigen test. But there is no plausible marker to measure what's happening. So in the absence of a quantifier, I'm going to give it at least an identifier.

The Foghorn Leghorn Seattle Sports Week: A Set of the Most Unheard of Things I've Ever Heard Of.

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After all the disruptions this year to daily life as well as to sports, and their calendars, rules and customs, any NFL team could be forgiven for spitting up in its opener. But the Seahawks not only didn't spit up in Atlanta, they cooked.

On the road against a solid Falcons team, they were up 31-12 with 11 minutes left, and only a generous prevent defense eliminated use of the word rout.

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Through the Northwest smoke, light appeared Sunday.

Sure, it came through the TV. From Atlanta. And it wasn't much help for the physical well-being. But for sports fans beleaguered by fire, disease, racial tension, financial and political peril, the Seahawks offered some psychological sustenance.

They played a ball game. Played it better than anyone expected. Won going away.

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In the sports response to the pandemic, travel was a huge casualty. Several major leagues devised elaborate schemes that allowed teams to re-start or start seasons played in one or two spots, avoiding planes, airports, hotels, fans and other carriers of transmissible ickies.

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As with many of his teammates, players around the NFL and the rest of sports, Seahawks LB Bobby Wagner would like to see some tangible results from anti-racist activism.

"I don't even know when it was when we sat down and and had that conversation," he said this week about the time after the May 25 murder by police of George Floyd, triggering a global eruption of protests. "(But) after everything that's happened, I can't say that it's gotten too much better since then."

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First games in any pro football season often look like two clumsy guys taking an upright piano down five flights of stairs. They can plot how it should go, but once it gets going, holy crap.

Remember the Seahawks opener a year ago? At home and heavily favored over a Cincinnati Bengals team operating under a new coaching staff after a 4-12 season, Seattle won 21-20, saved only by recovering a late fumble.

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The verdict on the 11-5 Seahawks of 2019 was that it was an otherwise ordinary team that had the extraordinary Russell Wilson and much good fortune, including drawing a foe in the playoffs that was more broken than was Seattle.

Or have you forgotten the Eagles played most of the game in Philadelphia with 40-year-old Josh McCown at quarterback, in the first playoff game of his 17-year NFL career?

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Apparently the charm of Pete Carroll, Seattle, the Seahawks and Allen family wealth has its limits. DE Jadeveon Clowney is joining the Tennessee Titans, according to ESPN.

The Seahawks released their 53-man roster Saturday absent Clowney, who gave the Seahawks a good but not great year in 2019 and escaped into free agency, his longtime goal.

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The only complete NFL season Josh Gordon has played was his rookie year. By his second year in Cleveland, despite missing two games for a drug suspension, he was voted first-team All-Pro after 1,646 yards on 87 receptions, including becoming the first player in NFL history with 200-yard games back to back.

But he can't seem to replicate anything good because he can't stay clean long enough to pass a random drug test by the NFL.

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No discerning NFL fan makes judgments about a class of rookies based on a single preseason. And given the freakish nature of this preseason, a fan would do better to forecast the future of COVID-19 in the U.S. than guess at the football fate of youngsters offered jobs in a pandemic.

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For the first time in his three pro years, RB Chris Carson made the annual Top 100 players list. The rankings are a bit of fluff put out by NFL.com to hype the coming season, and even though no cash is involved, it's a talker among players as well as fans, particularly since the voters are the players.

Typically a humble, deferential sort -- a seventh-round draft pick, you know -- Carson, while appreciative, felt his ranking at 96 sold him short.

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The day after the Seahawks skipped practice to talk about the crisis of race in America, followed by a passionate public discourse from coach Pete Carroll about white ignorance, routine had returned to the VMAC. The Seahawks Sunday had their third and final preseason mock game on a grand afternoon by the lake, and life again seemed about ball.

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Pro football and pro basketball are the only two high-profile industries in America where most of the employees are Black and well-compensated. Which explains why major sports are about to become ground zero in the culture wars that will be turned to 11 until Nov. 3.

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After canceling practice Saturday, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll met with players. He was clearly moved by their words, as well as the events of the week and of the last several months, not to mention the past four centuries.

He took to the Zoom podium to offer a 15-minute monologue about race in America, cajoling his national coaching cohort to stand firm with him, and most poignantly to share the fears Black players were feeling in one of the most fraught times in American history.

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To hear Russell Wilson tell it, the NFL got lucky this week. Had there been regular-season games, players would have gone on strike to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

“Yeah, for sure," said the Seahawks quarterback , answering a question on ESPN 710 radio Friday. "Just witnessing what happened to Jacob and all the things that have added up to this, it’s devastating, truly devastating. And it’s not like this hasn’t been going on for years. That’s the scary part and sad part.

"The difference now is we get to see it every day because of social media and phones.”

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The Seahawks staged a mock game Wednesday at the otherwise-empty Clink, which was football-useful but utterly irrelevant culturally. Another unarmed Black man in America had been gunned down by police, this time in Kenosha, WI. The Seahawks joined others in the sports world furious about another atrocity -- Jacob Blake, 29, was shot seven times in the back, in front of his three children.

Coach Pete Carroll was among the outraged.

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The most noteworthy impediment to the #LetRussCook movement by many 12s is the regular inability to keep the varmints out of the kitchen. Nobody eats when the chef is skittering past the cooktop, looking to climb a footstool.

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and his viceroy, offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer, understand this, and often call a run-heavy, lower-risk game early. As defenses inevitably wear down, QB Russell Wilson gets busy, by air and land, and the Seahawks, to cite a recent set of outcomes, in 2019 win 10 regular-season games and a playoff game by eight points or less, an NFL record for drama.

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Nothing will change the fact that Earl Thomas was a spectacular contributor to the greatest sustained team success in Seattle's modern history of pro sports.

In his continuing role as NFL drama king, however, he appears to be -- to borrow Russell Wilson's anointed nickname for himself -- Mr. Unlimited. His fans hope the latter speculation doesn't obscure the former truth.

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