SEATTLE — Sweat soaked through the players’ uniforms and rage from a season ended too abruptly was raw when Seahawks coach Pete Carroll stood inside the visitor’s locker room — minutes removed from a devastating 30-28 loss to the Falcons in the NFC divisional playoffs a year ago in Atlanta — and charted the plan for his team to take the next step.
“That,’’ Carroll told his players, “is why you want home-field advantage.’’
“Those were literally his very first words he said when he came into the locker room,’’ Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson recalled Saturday after Seattle advanced to the NFC Championship game with a 23-15 divisional playoff win over the Saints at CenturyLink Field. “We got home-field advantage this year and look what happened.’’
There is, indeed, a potent, imposing, immoveable force taking hold in Seattle right now — and it is equal parts home team and home stadium.
It starts with the talented Seahawks, but it does not end there. The force is galvanized by the place the locals call “The Clink,’’ short for CenturyLink, the Seahawks’ reverberating, eardrum-splitting home stadium that sometimes seems as intimidating to opposing teams as Lawrence Taylor was to the quarterbacks he used to terrorize back in the day.
The Seahawks and their fans were a force the Saints simply could not cope with, a force that perhaps no opponent can overcome — not the 49ers or the Panthers in next Sunday’s NFC Championship game.
“The Clink,’’ which seemed to will the Seahawks to victory on Saturday when their 16-0 halftime lead was sliced in half in the second half, has to be worth a touchdown a game. The fact the Seahawks are 16-1 at home the past two seasons is no accident and should come as no surprise.
Most impressive and fitting about the way the Seahawks beat the Saints was how they won without any one star leading the way. Much the way “The Clink’’ is about the sum of the record 68,388 bodies crammed into the building Saturday, the Seahawks are about the sum of their parts, not any particular star at quarterback, running back or defense.
Other than perhaps running back Marshawn Lynch, who rushed for 140 yards and two touchdowns, the Seahawks were far from perfect. Second-year quarterback Russell Wilson (9-of-18, 103 yards) was anything but spectacular, but he completed the biggest pass of the season when he had to — connecting with Dough Baldwin for 24 yards on a third-down play with 2:48 remaining. The Seattle defense was not dominant, but it never let the Saints get into a rhythm.
The Seahawks were helped by a fumble by Saints running back Mark Ingram on the first play of the second quarter deep in New Orleans territory, which turned into a too-easy 15-yard Lynch touchdown run for a 13-0 lead.
They, too, were aided by an ill-advised pregame tough-guy act from tight end Jimmy Graham, who incited a minor raucous during warm-ups when he wandered over to the Seahawks’ side of the field — an NFL etiquette no-no.
“He was just on our side of the field warming up and I asked him to ‘go over there,’ ’’ Seattle linebacker Bruce Irvin told The Post after the game. “He told me, ‘I’m Jimmy Graham.’ After he told me that, I knocked the ball out of his hands and kicked it across the field.’’
Graham, who after the game said, “I don’t want to talk about’’ the incident, slapped a hat off Irvin’s head then had words with Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman.
“It’s hard coming in here talking a big game,’’ Sherman said. “It’s a lamb coming to the wolves and throwing meat at them, slapping them in the face. He got us riled up. He woke up the DB group and that’s the last group you want to wake up.’’
The end result was disastrous for Graham, who caught 86 passes for 1,215 yards and 16 TDs this season and finished with only one catch for six yards Saturday.
“After a while he was getting frustrated,’’ Sherman said. “He wanted the ball and he wanted to back his words up.’’
Neither happened, and that stoked the rabid home crowd, dubbed “The 12th Man,’’ even more.
“Very few teams don’t feel the effect of our crowd,’’ Seahawks tight end Zach Miller said. “The 12th man is for real. It’s a factor.’’
This was exactly what Carroll had in mind a year ago.