You know why they're here. The Seahawks and Patriots share the same reason — to win another Super Bowl.
Seattle is trying to win its second straight Super Bowl while New England is hoping to claim its fourth title in its eighth Super Bowl appearance.
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"This is the greatest opportunity that we have," Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. "I think our players understand that. It takes a tremendous amount to get here the first time, it takes another tremendous amount of effort to get here a second time. Now that it’s here, for us to miss the emphasis and undershoot this thing, it’s not going to happen. That has nothing to do with winning or losing. This is a great team that we’re playing against. They have every reason in the world to win and to outplay whoever they play and whomever they play. But, we’re going for it again. We’re going to try to do this again.
"I think the fact that we’ve been here before helps us. The fact that we did it mindfully and we knew what we did to get here and we took accounting on the way, we’ve used that experience to help us get back on track and to get here. Now that we’re here I think we can do something really special with it if we can play a good football game. We’re so fortunate to be here and we’re not going to miss this opportunity to go for it."
Both teams got back to a bit of normalcy on Wednesday, resuming practice following Tuesday's media day circus. Unfortunately for reporters hoping to get a significant quote from Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch, he again was compliant with NFL media rules but defiant by again giving the same answer to each question. Tuesday's response was, "I'm just here so I don't get fined." Wednesday's catch-all reply was, "You know why I'm here."
As for actual football news, both safety Earl Thomas and cornerback Richard Sherman have injuries that could hinder them on Sunday. Thomas said his shoulder feels better each day and it won't stop him from being physical.
"Our teammates are depending on us," Thomas said Wednesday. "You have to prepare, visualize and understand that your body is not 100 percent. At the same time, it’s so much out there. Your teammates feed off of that."
Aside from Thomas and Sherman, others listed as probable on the injury report were rookie starting right tackle Justin Britt (knee), long snapper Clint Gresham (neck) and guard J.R. Sweezy (ankle).
"This is finally the day we get into the weekly routine, practice-wise," Carroll said Wednesday. "There is still a lot that goes on just in getting to the practice field, but once we’re there, we’ll be in pretty good shape and it should feel very comfortable for the team.
"This day is the first day of the week for us on the field and so the central theme in the program is competition so we, in essence, focus on competing on this day, not necessarily about the opponent, it doesn’t have anything to do with that. There are game plan issues of course that we cover, but this is really to get it going back, to leave what has happened before, the game that happened before, the events that happened before, to put us on course with the normal week. So, we compete. There (was) a lot of work one-on-ones. We work offense against defense right off the bat in practice to get the tempo and the speed and the feel that we want to begin the practice. The rest of the session is really at a high level. It’s really about making this a great practice day and that means that we want to compete whenever we can."