SEATTLE — The chants of “Seahawks, Seahawks” cascaded from the stands at CenturyLink Field, where the playoffs returned on Saturday evening, and not a day too soon.
It had been only 11 months, but the denizens of this football-crazed city had missed the postseason something terrible. They missed it because they expected it, and they expected it because the paradigm has shifted.
Winning the Super Bowl can do that, and the Seahawks took another step in their title defense by squeezing the underdog out of the Carolina Panthers,31-17, to roll into next weekend’s N.F.C. championship game.
On a night when Carolina bottled up the Seahawks’ powerful running game, putting them in unfavorable down-and-distance situations, Russell Wilson completed all eight of his passes on third downs for 199 yards and three touchdowns.
Seattle secured the victory when Wilson connected with Luke Willson — the same combination that sunk Carolina in Week 8 — on a 25-yard scoring throw with 10 minutes 26 seconds left. The Seahawks were just showing off minutes later when Kam Chancellor stepped in front of Ed Dickson by the near sideline and ran 90 yards, untouched, to extend their lead to 31-10.
All Chancellor saw was green, he said, and “green means go.”
The crowd roared, and the press box shook. This lair of loudness will need a week to recover, and it will get it. In becoming the first reigning champion since the 2005-6 New England Patriots to win a playoff game, the Seahawks set up a home game next Sunday against either Dallas or Green Bay, each of which has already visited CenturyLink Field this season.
If the Seahawks had a preference, they did not say. They beat Green Bay in the season opener and lost to Dallas five weeks later. Either would be a worthy adversary, as was Carolina, which, after two turnovers by Cam Newton, trailed by 14-10 at halftime.
The same Panthers team that went two months between victories — whose quarterback, Newton, sustained two back fractures in a car accident and whose coach, Ron Rivera, was awakened Monday by a two-alarm fire at his home — had gone six weeks without a loss, winning the N.F.C. South at 7-8-1 and toppling Arizona last weekend.
Speaking to his team, Rivera mentioned the only other squad with a losing mark to win a playoff game — the Seahawks, who beat New Orleans in 2011. Then Rivera challenged his players to go out and win again.
“It isn’t the prettiest thing, but we got a date at the prom,” said Carolina safety Roman Harper, who played for that Saints team four years ago. “We’re here. She’s probably not the best-looking one, she’s not going to win prom queen, but we’ll have a good time.”
Or so the Panthers told themselves. As the Seahawks ran onto the field before the game, Newton stood about 20 yards away and watched, sizing up the foes and gauging the din.
The Panthers went three-and-out on their first possession — and again on their second. Not on their third, which ended in an interception by Richard Sherman. Or on their fourth, which ended with a fumbled snap at their 28-yard line. That led, four plays later, to Wilson’s nifty 16-yard scoring pass to Doug Baldwin.
“He played all right,” a smiling Baldwin said of Wilson. “Average.”
There were 46 minutes remaining. Seattle led by 7-0. It felt insurmountable.
The Seahawks have given up the fewest points and yards in the league for two consecutive seasons. They had ceded all of 39 points in the last six games. They had not allowed a touchdown over the last 10 quarters. Their collective reaction: So what?
Every play, they must prove themselves — the Seattle ethos — and the Seahawks had to do so again after Carolina gashed them on a 79-yard scoring drive. On it, Newton converted all four third downs, the final one with a 7-yard touchdown pass to Kelvin Benjamin that silenced the crowd, at least temporarily.
All Carolina did last weekend was hold Arizona to 78 yards, the lowest total in postseason history. The Seahawks noticed, and they were not impressed.
“They were going against the Cardinals’ third-string quarterback,” Seattle linebacker K. J. Wright said last week of the Panthers, “so I don’t think we should praise them too much.”
One similarity between that third-string quarterback, Ryan Lindley, and Wilson: They both throw right-handed. As for other similarities: See the previous sentence.
Wilson extends plays and makes smart decisions and can loft a ball 35 yards downfield into an area roughly the size of a keyhole. That is what he did on a 63-yard scoring play by Jermaine Kearse, who slipped behind the rookie cornerback Bene Benwikere and caught the arcing pass with his right hand, cradling the ball as he raced toward the end zone.
“That ball couldn’t have been any more on the money,” Warren Moon, a Hall of Fame quarterback who works as a radio analyst for the Seahawks, said in the locker room afterward.
A push from Tre Boston sent Kearse careening out of bounds near the goal line, but Kearse had the presence — and the body control — to touch the pylon with the ball, completing with a flourish the longest touchdown pass in Seattle postseason history.
The score was Seattle 14, Carolina 7, and the Seahawks expected — twice — to go into halftime leading by that margin.
Except Earl Thomas was ruled not to have made an interception near the goal line, reversing the initial call. Their drive extended, the Panthers attempted a field goal on the final snap of the first half. Timing the snap count, Chancellor leapt over the offensive line — as he had done the play before, when Carolina was called for a false start — and Graham Gano’s kick went wide.
“I can get up there,” Chancellor said.
A late flag was thrown on Chancellor for running into the kicker, though, and Gano drilled a 35-yarder for the Panthers’ final points of the half.
The scoreboard said the game was close, but the Seahawks knew otherwise. They bullied Carolina at the line of scrimmage. They forced turnovers. They threw exquisite scoring touchdown passes.
They are back in the N.F.C. championship game.
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