Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of HockBlogger Mornings. I'm Brian

Nemhouser. You can find me and everything we do on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Apple Podcast, Spotify,

at HockBlogger. Join over at patreon.com slash hawk blogger. Get ad free audio access to the

Discord server and a chance

to just hang with all of us over there as we talk about this Seahawks team that is heading back

to the NFC championship for the fourth time the fourth time can we count that high and we have

our favorite guest here Matt Hasselbeck to talk about all that has happened and all that's going to happen. Matt, how are you doing on this Tuesday? Good morning, Brian. Fired up. I mean, I feel like you called this, right? You said, uh, the first matchup, you were like, not a big deal. These two teams are probably going to meet three times. You know, I don't know if he was analytics or math or how you knew, but you called it. It made sense to me. I mean, it's been my, it's been my experience too when you have a great team in your division, whether you win the division or you're a wildcard team. You're going to see them again. And here we are. And like, Not only did they have to go through the Niners again, they had to go through the Rams.

They have to go through the Rams again.

And so we are. And like, not only did they have to go through the Niners again,

they had to go through the Rams. They have to go through the Rams again. And so we're,

we're fired up. I think we're playing great football, especially on defense and special teams.

It's been, I think, legendary, historic maybe. Maybe the numbers back that up. But certainly on the eye test, it feels that way. So I think everyone's really excited.

Could be a really special year.

Yeah, I obviously want to talk a lot about the game that's coming up,

but I feel like we got to touch on the game that just happened.

What was your reaction as that game unfolded?

Excitement.

I mean, it was great.

I think, it was great.

I think, you know, I think people think like, you know, when one star player goes down, in this case, it was George Kittle. People would be like, oh, game's over. You know, that's just like not the case. You know, like even going into the AFC championship game right now, Bo Nix is out with the broken ankle. I think people like here in New England, they're already booking their flights to the Super Bowl.

It's like it's not a guarantee. Like, you know, it's really not. So, you know, for me, I think I've just been around football long enough to know that this was not a guarantee situation. And it was going to be important to start fast and have a lead. Like, if we can have a lead on a team like the Niners, I think that's a huge advantage. And then to like take the opening kickback to the house was just like, I mean, I'm getting goosebumps now. Like the stadium was rocking. It's exactly what you talk about. And I would even argue like you don't even talk about it because you don't even dream that big. You know, like, hey, kickoff return, you know, start us out with a good one. Give our offense a short field. Like, that's typically what you say. You don't say, like, hey, special teams, we're scoring here. Like, you don't, like, you don't even dream that big. And yet they did and really never looked back.

So it was a pretty cool game, probably a great atmosphere.

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