Ignored, Laughed At, Seahawks Find That Win Is Best Revenge

In the showbiz glitz and sizzle of a prime-time television show called “Monday Night Football,” the only thing worse than being ignored is being laughed at.

The Seahawks got a taste of both forms of indignity Monday night in the Kingdome.

First, when the ABC cameras started beaming the show across the country at 6 p.m. sharp, the network used every second of its three-minute lead-in to relate Buffalo Bills war stories. The Seahawks, like your rude relative who has the bad habit of belching out loud after dinner at family gatherings, weren’t even mentioned. If you didn’t have a schedule guide, you might have thought you were about to watch Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer doing a “Prime Time Live” episode on vagaries of life as a professional football player in Buffalo.

The ABC crew treated the Seahawks almost as an afterthought to the evening’s entertainment, and who could blame them? The most notable achievements the home team had to play for after three-fourths of the season were two individual records, one of which threatened to prevent the other.

Steve Largent came into the game with 16 quarters of football left in his 14-year career, needing one more touchdown reception to set an all-time record of 100 scoring catches.

For a guy who has caught 99 of them, one more in four games didn’t seem too much to ask, but the challenge was complicated by the particular problems of the guy who had been chosen to deliver the passes Monday night, quarterback Dave Krieg. He also came into the game within reach of an unwelcome all-time record. Three more fumbles attributed to Krieg this season would give him 18, more than any player ever in the NFL.

The TV guys opted to speak of the Seahawks only when absolutely necessary. For a while there early in the game, the ABC crew must have thought that Christmas had come early. The Seahawks opened the evening looking like a capable football team, which served to add an unexpected dramatic twist to the script.

By halftime, Buffalo was even at 10-10, and shortly into the third quarter the Bills had their own laugh track going when Art Still intercepted a pass thrown directly to him by Krieg to set up a 40-yard field goal for a 13-10 lead.

On the way off the field after Still’s catch--his first in 12 years in the NFL--the faces of the Bills looked like outtakes from a Three Stooges movie. Krieg walked off disgustedly to the east sidelines while the Bills came skipping off to the west sidelines nyuk-nyuk-king and snapping their fingers all the way.

Buffalo’s Jim Kelly was mired in the middle of one of his worst games as a professional, and after Norm Johnson missed his second field goal of the night--which did not come as a surprise--it looked as though it wouldn’t really matter. The Bills had assumed a 16-10 lead, and ABC, the in-house crowd of 57,682 and those good-time guys from Buffalo all assumed this one was over.

Oops.

It turned out better than the network ever dreamed it might, thanks to a little sideline pass from Krieg to fullback John L. Williams that blew up one of the NFL’s top 10 defenses.

Williams hauled in the pass, avoided going out of bounds and instead of running into a semitrailer truck, which usually happens to people who receive passes against the Bills, Williams had a nearly wide-open field in front of him. He outran all but the last defender and sliced into the corner of the end zone, and the Seahawks went away with a 17-16 win.

They used to do this sort of goofy, unpredictable stuff as a matter of routine on “Monday Night Football,” but this year, misery has been the only routine. For the moment at least, it didn’t hurt quite so bad.

“It makes you forget what the record is,” said Seahawks linebacker Dave Wyman of the embarrassing 5-8 mark, “and it will make it fun to go to work the day after a game for a change. It’s been a while since we’ve come in after a game feeling good about things. It also makes you wonder why we can’t do this more often.”

Several things happened in this game you probably won’t see again for a long time.

Travis McNeal, the third tight end to start a game for the Seahawks this season, turned an otherwise typical first-quarter pass reception into a 48-yard gain that set up the Seahawks’ first touchdown of the game.

They used to call him Travesty, but after this game, McNeal will be remembered as the guy who trashed the Buffalo secondary and got the folks excited back home.

“I hope they were all watching,” McNeal said, “but I don’t think the folks, my grandmother or any of them even knew I was going to be starting. I tried to call them, but there wasn’t nobody at home.”

Like the Buffalo defense on those two key passes to McNeal and Williams. Nobody home.

It took those oddball plays and a point after touchdown run by Steve Largent to make this one come out right for Chuck Knox’s team. Holding for Johnson, Largent scooped a bad snap by Grant Feasel, quickly reviewed his options, realized there was nothing Johnson could do with it, then scampered into the end zone.

One point, big deal. Very big, as it turned out.

At the end, the Seahawks were down next to the Buffalo goal line with a chance to get Largent his record, but operating on the premise that a sure victory is preferable to forcing a pass that could be returned for a touchdown, Knox had them fall on the ball.

The way it began was that Largent needed one touchdown catch to break an NFL record.

The way it ended was that Largent got into the end zone with the ball but didn’t break the record. When it was over, he and Art Still caught as many passes in the game.

Even the hair-spray guys in the TV booth couldn’t have scripted this one.