Seahawks’ Hearts Are Not in Game : Pro football: Players’ thoughts are focused on their paralyzed teammate, Mike Frier, and not on Indianapolis, which comes back to win, 31-19.

They took the field with the bravado of heroes.

They left it in despair.

Faced with what they thought was a chance to heal tragic wounds, the Seattle Seahawks realized something early in their 31-19 loss to the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday.

Those wounds might never heal. This tragedy will never be forgotten.

A dozen game balls will not make teammate Mike Frier walk again.

Sometime during the process of blowing a 10-point lead and committing five turnovers, 45 men intent on winning one for the Gipper learned a lesson.

Sometimes, the Gipper is a lie.

In what was supposed to be an inspirational game for a teammate paralyzed in an auto accident three days earlier, the Seahawks left their hearts in their lockers.

“A game ball would have been nice, but you know something?” asked safety Eugene Robinson. “When all the cheering stops, when all the lights are off, you still have a guy lying on his back, in a bed, fighting to walk.”

He paused.

“No matter what we did out there, as soon as the game ended, nothing would change,” he said. “We still have a teammate fighting for his life.”

Frier, a reserve defensive tackle, was paralyzed from the neck down in a one-car accident Thursday night that also caused injuries to starting running back Chris Warren and back-up running back Lamar Smith.

Warren, who suffered two cracked ribs, surprised his teammates by showing up Sunday morning ready to play.

He then surprised the 39,574 fans at the Kingdome with 81 yards on 23 carries.

But even that didn’t matter.

“All that has happened, I know it affected the team today,” said somber Seahawk Coach Tom Flores. “I mean, it has to.”

Frier, a seventh-round draft choice from Appalachian State, had spent a total of only about two months with the Seahawks.

He was with them during their 1992 training camp before being claimed on waivers by the Cincinnati Bengals, then he rejoined them last month after being released by the Bengals.

His Seahawk career consisted of only two games. He had no sacks, tackles or even assists.

Statistically, he was never here.

“But he was in this locker room with us, he was one of us,” said Joe Nash, Seahawk nose tackle. “And that was enough.”

So the Seahawks did all the right things. And came up with all the wrong results.

They wrote his number 92 on their wrists. But those wrists threw two interceptions and lost three fumbles.

They wrote his number on their shoes. But those shoes gained only 238 yards.

They prayed for him before the game, a prayer led by Robinson in the seclusion of their locker room. The Kingdome crowd offered a moment of silence minutes later.

And then the Seahawks played the sloppiest, most insensitive game of their season with 13 penalties for 124 yards.

“It almost got to the point of being ridiculous,” Flores said.

From the moment that a vehicle driven by Smith crashed into a utility pole on a rain-slicked residential road near the team’s Kirkland headquarters at 8:40 p.m. Thursday, this incident has been just as confusing.

Even though the car belonged to Smith, Kirkland police claimed Warren was driving. After reportedly spotting beer in the car, amid estimates that the car was being driven at an unsafe 50 m.p.h. in the rain, police arrested Warren on investigation of vehicular assault. They also tested his blood-alcohol level, with results to be announced this week.

On Saturday, though, representatives for both Warren and Smith announced that Smith was the driver. This story has since been supported by Frier in a conversation with his girlfriend, according to Rick Schaeffer, Warren’s agent.

Smith, a seldom-used rookie third-round draft pick from Houston, is probably out for the season with a chip facture in his back.

“This has been a very, very disturbing three days for everybody,” Schaeffer said. “Besides the obvious tragedy of Mike Frier, you have the police saying something that just isn’t true, with the worry that it will take a long time for something like this to be undone.”

Warren is so worried that in a statement he released to NBC television before Sunday’s game, the first sentence proclaims that he wasn’t the driver. The rest of the statement asks for prayers for Frier.

Afterward, Warren refused to answer questions about Frier, and said he was not thinking about his friend during the game.

“I was 100 percent into it mentally,” he said. “This is my job.”

The situation has become so unsettled that all three men have hired lawyers. The tension is so thick that lawyers have not even allowed Warren to speak to Frier since the accident.

Frier’s family, meanwhile, has been accompanied by security guards while tending to Mike in the intensive care unit at Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue.

Frier, 25, contracted pneumonia Saturday, according to doctors, who said such an ailment is common among newly paralyzed patients.

The 6-foot-5, 300-pound man was sitting in the back seat when the car bounced off a median while trying to overtake another vehicle. It crossed the other lane, and crashed into a utility pole .

Frier broke his neck either on the roof or a large stereo speaker on the back dashboard. Doctors have said there is a 90 percent chance he will not walk again.

“That is something that none of us can even imagine,” Nash said. “That is the really hard part. One day the guy is running around here like everybody else. And the next. . . .”

It’s easier for Seahawk defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy to imagine. Several years ago, he lost one of his best friends, Jerome Brown, when that former star defensive lineman was killed in an auto accident.

“Sometimes you wish you had done a lot more things with somebody, gotten close to him,” Kennedy said. “(Mike) was always spending time with his daughter, and I was spending time with my family. Now I wish I had just a little of that time back.”

Kennedy and teammates had hoped to compensate for those lost moments by impressing Frier on Sunday. They will try again next week. But they can’t promise it will be any better.

“Right now, we’re just living through today,” Flores said.