Matt Hasselbeck has struggled this season, throwing seven interceptions in four games, but he has retained the confidence he had last year during Seattle's Super Bowl run.

Seahawks choosing to ignore Super Bowl jinx

Seattle coach Mike Holmgren delivered the speech early in training camp, almost as an obligation, and then he was done with the whole issue. He told his players about all the recent teams that had lost in the Super Bowl and then failed to make the playoffs the following season and why the Seahawks shouldn't be dwelling on such a fate. All they could do was control what was ahead of them this season.

So this is how the Seahawks are going to cope with the notion that their Super Bowl loss last season automatically equates to a lousy season this year  -- by acting like it's a complete load of b.s.? To be honest, I agree with them on that one. They may have gotten fleeced by the Minnesota Vikings this offseason (when the Vikes signed away free agent Pro Bowl guard Steve Hutchinson), and they may have lost MVP running back Shaun Alexander to a broken left foot for a few weeks, but the Seahawks aren't heading south any time soon. Even with the 37-6 shellacking they suffered in Chicago on Sunday night, they're still one of the elite squads in the NFC.

The Seahawks aren't in any position to worry about a Super Bowl hangover. After all, the idea of a team falling apart after a championship-game loss suggests that such a team is still reeling from the emotional impact of just missing out on its title hopes, and I don't see or hear the Seahawks acting like that defeat to Pittsburgh left a collective hole in their hearts, one large enough for John Madden to squeeze through. They realize, as everybody else should, that Super Bowl hangovers have more to do with specific circumstances than with anything that ties a bunch of runners-up together.

Just look at the Super Bowl losers since the 2000 season. One team, the New York Giants, was notoriously inconsistent under former head coach Jim Fassel (whose teams missed the postseason after every year that they qualified for the postseason during his seven-year tenure with that franchise). The Oakland Raiders, the 2002 AFC champs, had a head coach in Bill Callahan who really didn't deserve the job after Jon Gruden left town and eventually inspired a mutiny with his callous approach. The other three runners-up all had at least one star player sidelined for more than half the season. (St. Louis lost Kurt Warner; Carolina lost Steve Smith, Kris Jenkins and Stephen Davis, among others; and Philadelphia had to deal with Donovan McNabb's sports hernia as well as all the pain caused by Terrell Owens.)

Thus far, the Seahawks do have Alexander off to a slow start, but all indications are that he could be back by the end of this month. Tight end Jerramy Stevens also is sidelined, with a knee injury that should heal by Week 6. After that, Seattle is fairly healthy, and if that weren't enough, it also still competes in a weak NFC West, a division where only the surprising 3-1 St. Louis Rams pose a serious threat. This isn't to say they have an easy road back to the NFC championship, but the Seahawks are in better shape than most Super Bowl runners-up have been in their first seasons back from that disappointment.

In fact, the Seahawks have bolstered their roster in several areas. They added an athletic, playmaking linebacker in Julian Peterson. Their hard-hitting safety, Ken Hamlin, has returned to the field after missing nearly all of last season following a fight in a Seattle bar that left him hospitalized. They deepened their receiving corps with the additions of Deion Branch and Nate Burleson, and they've decided to use more four-receiver sets to create mismatches in the passing game. They realize their window of opportunity probably won't stay open much longer, so they have to make the most of it now.

To those who think that the loss to Chicago was an indication of where the Seahawks are heading, I will say you're wrong. That rout was more an indication of how strong the Bears can be when they are clicking on all facets of the game. The Seahawks left Soldier Field clearly stunned by their inability to execute anything against Chicago, but they didn't leave with any evident concerns about their strategies or their personnel. If anything, they saw it for what it was: the type of butt-kicking that every team takes sooner or later.

What is easy to forget about Seahawks is that they have plenty of resilience. Let's not forget that they've had plenty of ups and downs during the Holmgren era, and they were supposed to be championship-caliber long before they reached last year's Super Bowl. It's those kinds of experiences that give them an advantage when it comes to rebounding from a Super Bowl loss. If you don't believe me, check back with them in mid- to late January. It says here that they'll still have more games to play and more reasons to prove that they're not like the other recent Super Bowl losers.