Just what we needed?

Seattle did well to win on Sunday. The Rams fought valiantly. As expected, Jeff Fisher's staff outcoached Pete Carroll's staff, but the Seahawks had better athletes and better luck.

Every victory is precious in the NFL.

Several analysts have opined that a close game was just what Seattle needed at this point.

They are wrong.

What Seattle needed was a fourth consecutive blowout to scare the hell out of our next opponent.

Winning a close one is better than losing every time, but Seattle already has plenty of experience with close games. Most of our victories and all of our losses this year were close. The barely win/narrowly lose small ball incarnation of the Seahawks doesn't really scare anyone, and it shouldn't. That version of our team was7-6 overall and 2-5 on the road.

What other teams really fear is when Seattle comes out like Kali the Destroyer, as we did during that glorious 3-game murder spree that dispatched Arizona, Buffalo and San Fransciso.

Perhaps it was too much to expect that the team could maintain that intensity in what many dismissed as a relatively meaningless game. I guess finishing undefeated at home is "meaningless." As meaningless as optimizing your win-loss record to make it possible to host the conference championship if Seattle gets that far and the 2 top seeds don't.

The costliest aspect of the close game with Sr. Louis was that Fisher's Rams provided the rest of the league with the blueprint for stalling our offense. Many teams have tried to keep Russell Wilson bottled up in the pocket, but St. Lousi pulled it off, sacking Wilson six times with a series of inspired and well-executed blitz schemes

The only good news was that five of those sacks came in the first half, and Carroll's staff managed to make some adjustments to hold St. Louis to one sack in the second half. Perhaps that learning will prevent other teams from repeating the Rams' feat.

Seattle's defense finished #1 in the NFL in terms of points allowed. It is fortunate that we have a great secondary, because we continue to give opposing quarterbacks too much time to throw the ball.

\We'd better fix that fast, or it will be a long afternoon next Sunday against RG3.