THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Seahawk fans get an early jump looking ahead to next season

If you can’t block anyone at the line of scrimmage…

You won’t win football games.

Just ask the Seahawks.

They simply could not handle ANY of the Rams up front on Saturday, and thus got bum-rushed right out of their own building.

That 30-20 score actually was a little deceiving, since the Rams slapped around their hosts like big brothers snatching that last candy bar.

It felt worse than a 10-point defeat.

Rams rookie Cam Akers ran for 131 yards, caught a little dump-off pass for 44 more, and basically moved the chains whenever there was a hint that the game might get close.

Meantime, the Los Angeles defense was, well…

Frightening.

Rarely bothering to blitz, the Rams nonetheless sacked Russell Wilson five times and hurried him every time he even thought about throwing the ball.

Even a safe pass turned disastrous.

Wilson tried whipping a wide receiver screen out to DK Metcalf, but cornerback Darious Williams somehow knew it was coming — stepping between two feeble block attempts and taking the throw 42 yards to the house.

WILLIAMS’ pick-six, the first wide receiver screen returned for a TD this entire season in the NFL, gave the Rams a 13-3 lead in the second quarter.

Even Pete Carroll — always the optimist — must have had a sickening feeling the rest of the way, because the Rams never, ever, ever looked like they’d let Seattle back in the game.

The weirdest part of the Seahawks’ terrible day at the office was that the Rams came into the game banged up, and things only got worse.

Quarterback John Wolford didn’t make it out of the first quarter, suffering head and neck injuries after a wicked hit from Jamal Adams.

Wolford’s departure meant that L.A. had to go the distance with Jared Goff, who had surgery to put three pins in his thumb just 12 days earlier.

Then, not long after halftime, the Rams lost Aaron Donald — merely the best defensive lineman in the sport — to some type of rib injury.

Yet, none of it mattered.

Goff wasn’t exactly Patrick Mahomes, but he made a couple of decent throws off play-action — simply because the Seahawks had to load up trying to stop Akers and the running game.

As for Donald’s absence, yeah, he had two sacks before being sidelined.

The rest of the Rams defense, though, looked almost as awesome.

Wilson did manage two TD throws to Metcalf, but one came on a broken play and the other was a consolation throw in the final minutes with the game out of reach.

MAYBE the lack of that usual ear-splitting crowd at Lumen Field made a difference.

Or maybe the Seahawks just had the tar beaten out of them.

Or perhaps it was a combination, since Seattle never could capitalize when there WAS some positive momentum — like D.J. Reed’s wasted 58-yard kickoff return to open the second half.

No matter the reason, though, the day’s result came almost as a shock.

After all, the Seahawks beat these guys 20-9 just two weeks ago, and Seattle seemed to take more and more command as that game wore on.

Not this time, though.

Why the surprise?

Oh, how about the fact that the Seahawks had never lost a home playoff opener in the Carroll era — he’d won all six tries — and in fact, they hadn’t been knocked out of the playoffs in a home opener since 2004.

Combine those numbers with that result from 13 days earlier, and Seahawks fans probably were looking ahead to their next opponent.

Instead…

Sorry, but you’re stuck looking toward next season.

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.

Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published each Tuesday.