SEATTLE — By chance, Matt Hasselbeck was in Arizona last winter watching one of his daughter's lacrosse training sessions when the former Seahawks star recognized a new Seahawks star going through an offseason workout at the same facility. So Hasselbeck introduced himself to DK Metcalf.
"I had a couple conversations with him, and I was so impressed," Hasselbeck recalled this week. "So I called all my friends in Seattle that work there still, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, dude, I love DK Metcalf. Tell me — please tell me — that I'm right.' And they just gush about the guy."
Who isn't gushing about DK Metcalf these days, right?
What struck Hasselbeck most in his conversations with Metcalf wasn't the young receiver's obvious athletic gifts. It was Metcalf's humility and maturity, and Hasselbeck pointed to two recent social-media posts — when Metcalf was propping up fellow receivers Tyler Lockett and David Moore — as examples of the kind of selfless outlook that has helped the Seahawks' offense excel this season.
Hasselbeck recognizes that quality in these 2020 Seahawks, because he said it was an essential characteristic of the Seahawks' makeup when he was the quarterback of the 2005 NFC championship team. That's one of several similarities Hasselbeck senses with the 2005 and 2020 offenses.
"They can do it all," Hasselbeck said of this Russell Wilson-led offense. "And it doesn't seem like this team, like our '05 team, is overly concerned with who gets the credit. I love how unselfish they are. You don't see that on a lot of teams, and you rarely see that at wide receiver."
The Seahawks, now 6-1, enter Sunday's game at Buffalo having matched their best start in franchise history in large part because of an offense that leads the NFL in scoring, at 34.3 points per game. The last time the Seahawks led the league in scoring was, yep, 2005, when they set a franchise record at 28.3 points per game and rode Shaun Alexander's MVP season to the franchise's first Super Bowl berth.
Can these 2020 Seahawks follow a similar blueprint?
