This Sunday as you may have heard, the Seahawks will be traveling to Foxboro, Mass. to play the New England Patriots in what will be a rematch of Super Bowl XLIX. It would be a perfect chance for the Seahawks to avenge their epically tragic loss two years ago, even if they say they're past it, but with the way the team is now it just is not realistic.

First, there's the fact that the Hawks are playing the Patriots of all teams. They have lost only one game all year, and have looked anything but beatable since Tom Brady came back. Now that you mention Brady, he is playing as well as he ever has. Last year he said that he envisioned himself playing past 40, and right now he's playing better than any quarterback in the league at 39 so it seems he's not as crazy as he might have sounded back then. 

However when you have a big ol' target like Rob Gronkowski to throw to, it's hard to suck as a quarterback - not to take anything away from Brady. But we see it ourselves here in the Pacific Northwest. We saw against the Bills how Jimmy Graham can elevate Russell's game because all Russ needs to do it throw it in Graham's general area. On Jimmy's second touchdown catch, he had two defenders all over him, yet still made the catch with one hand while falling to the ground. 

As it stands, it seems like the success of this Seahawks offense goes as Jimmy Graham goes, no one can impose their will on the game quite like he can right now. Especially see how poor the running game is right now. The Seahawks only gained 33 yards rushing Monday night, following a downward trend. It would be easy to simply blame it on Christine Michael, but even Jim Brown couldn't get yards behind this offensive line.

In years past the line had started out with questions, and looked similarly terrible early in the season. Although this year he just have not seen the improvement we saw that would normally give us hope this time of year. Therefore it doesn't seem like the running game will get going even when Thomas Rawls comes back.

This is the first in a series of tough tests coming up for the Hawks, first with Foxboro, then traveling to Lambeau in December. So far the midwest has stayed warm, but things can change real quick out there, and we saw how the Hawks play in the cold last January when Minnesota got hit with some deathly cold.

Photo: Flickr/Keith Allison