Recent Super Bowl champions that failed to repeat the following season have typically fit into a certain category: They were lower-seeded teams during the season in which they won it all, having gone on a run and hit their stride at the right time. For them to come back down to Earth the following season wasn't all that surprising, seeing as how it wasn't as though they dominated during the season they took home the title.
But the 2013 Seattle Seahawks had a different look than those champs. They were only the third top seed to win it all since divisional realignment a dozen years ago. One of the two other top-seeded champs repeated (New England). This Seahawks team re-signed cornerstone players during the offseason and stood to become more dynamic offensively in 2014 with a healthy Percy Harvin contributing.
That was the plan, anyway.
All bets are off now that the trade that brought Harvin to Seattle has become an expensive failure, capped Friday by the Seahawks' trading him to the Jets for as little as a sixth-round pick. Now, there should be no overreaction to the Seahawks' 28-26 defeat in St. Louis on Sunday, which bore similarities to a 2012 loss there. A 3-3 record isn't necessarily a killer, either -- not with five NFC West games still on the schedule. But unfortunately for the Seahawks, the Harvin-related problems run deeper than a Week 7 defeat or a snapshot of the standings. There are long-term ramifications that have lengthened their odds for a championship repeat.
The Harvin fallout is significant enough to knock the Seahawks back into the pool of teams scratching and clawing from week to week. That's where we begin this run through 10 takeaways from Week 7, a list that includes perspectives on the Brandon Marshall-Jay Cutler situation in Chicago as well.
1. The Harvin trade is bigger than the trade itself.