1. The noise was back.
Just before Seahawks players took the field, a loud “Sea-Hawks!” echoed throughout Lumen Field, a sound that prior to last year might have seemed routine, but that on Sunday was goosebump inducing. Prior to Sunday, it had been more than 20 months since fans filled this building for a meaningful football game, and for four quarters those fans brought the noise.
The noise created by the 68,585 in attendance reached perhaps its highest level at what was up to that point one of the biggest moment of the game when Tennessee, trailing 30-23, went for it on fourth-and-2 late in the fourth quarter. With the noise at stadium-rattling levels, the Seahawks defense got a stop thanks to pressure by Kerry Hyder Jr., then later Rasheem Green, who both hit Ryan Tannehill to force an incomplete pass.
The Seahawks did their best in 2020 to, as Pete Carroll often described it, create their own juice, but all of the noise and energy the fans brought Sunday was missed, and it while it wasn’t rewarded with a win on Sunday, it was great to have back nonetheless.
