Reliving that Monday night street fight

The Seahawks have a week off.

Thank heavens, because…

Russell Wilson needs time to stop jumping up and down, not to mention hugging Pete Carroll like they’re a couple of schoolkids.

Jadeveon Clowney might finally stop trying to sack the flight attendants on that plane ride home from the Bay Area — after a monstrous game in which he scored a touchdown when Jarran Reed caused a fumble.

Clowney also was credited with a whopping 10 quarterback pressures, and he made several 49er linemen look just plain silly.

The guy was a beast.

Also during this week off, tackle Germain Ifedi might be able to relax and forget about that running back career.

But perhaps the best reason for a week off is that the rest of us need to take some deep breaths while we try to process what all happened in that Monday night insanity.

It ain’t easy.

YOU DON’T believe me?

Hey, go back and see if you can remember most of the impact plays that occurred during the Hawks’ 27-24 OT victory over the previously unbeaten 49ers.

Even if you just skim the highlights on both sides of that heavyweight brawl, you’re going to forget two-thirds of the action — and you almost certainly won’t grasp the bizarre strategies employed by Carroll and San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan.

Both coaches seemed to make decisions that went against their team’s best interests.

Really.

With less than two minutes left in overtime, Carroll chose to punt on fourth-and-two from near midfield.

If the 49ers had just run out the clock after the punt, they’d now be sitting at 8-0-1, while the Seahawks would be left at 7-2-1 — and no closer to catching San Francisco than they were before the game.

BUT MAYBE Carroll knows his old pal Shanahan better than we guessed, because the 49ers tried to move the ball despite bad field position and a Seahawks pass rush that was forcing Jimmy Garoppolo into some awful passes — several of which could have been picked off.

What happened in that brief series was that Garoppolo threw three quick incompletions, using up just 14 seconds, and thus Seattle got the ball back with more than a minute left.

Was it really wise to give Wilson ANOTHER chance to win the game?

The 49ers had dodged one bullet on the interception by Dre Greenlaw, but Wilson is never going to let you off the hook forever.

We know now that Russ broke containment on a pass rush and dashed for 18 yards, then hit DK Metcalf for eight more to set up Jason Myers’ game-winning 42-yard field goal.

Maybe it’s just the code of football, especially in a game of back-and-forth violence like this one, that prompted Shanahan to try winning the game from a poor position — and perhaps Carroll was counting on that.

But it was weird, on both sides.

MEANWHILE, it’s fair to say we saw a battle in which every participant left every ounce of effort on the field.

Plus some blood and maybe even a few body parts.

The shocker, honestly, was that a Seahawks defense that had been distinctly average through nine games went toe-to-toe with the fearsome 49ers.

Perhaps a message from Clowney to his teammates on Sunday night helped a little.

“I just said we could play with these guys, and all we had to do was stay together, fly around and take energy from each other.

“We could really feel that energy.”

There were so many sub-plots to this fight, for instance both teams coming into the game shorthanded and then losing more key players along the way.

SERIOUSLY, did you expect to see Wilson firing critical third-down slants to Josh Gordon?

Or cheer for a key interception by safety Quandre Diggs who, like Gordon, was playing his first game for Seattle?

I mean, seriously?

Both Wilson and Clowney said it was the craziest game they’d ever played in — hey, 49ers rookie kicker Chase McLaughlin hit three field goals straight down the middle, and then hooked a potential winner with a stroke that looked like me trying to hit a 3-wood over a lake.

Myers, who was awful a week earlier, wound up lifted to his mates’ shoulders after slipping that final kick just inside the right upright.

It was just nuts.

What’s goofiest of all, maybe, is that both these teams have brutal schedules the rest of the way — so the Monday street fight might not decide a thing.

Except that now the Seahawks know they can play with anyone.

And go home happy.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball each Tuesday.