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THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Seahawks could stand to be a little more daring — like Kansas City

| January 18, 2021 1:10 AM

If you’re tired of Tom Brady, well…

Too bad.

The 43-year-old poster boy is still winning, and with New Orleans now in the rear-view mirror, Tampa Bay is off to play the Packers for the NFC championship.

For so, so long this season, it appeared that Brady’s shotgun marriage with the Bucs might explode — but as with so much else in Brady’s life and career, the playoffs are still rolling on a red carpet.

The anti-Brady club will have to endure one more week (at least) of Tom Terrific and his search for yet another Super Bowl.

Brady was not the quarterback, though, who got the most attention over the weekend.

The Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, last year’s Super Bowl MVP, had to leave Kansas City’s thrilling victory over Cleveland.

Mahomes got knocked silly on a keeper in the third quarter of the Chiefs’ 22-17 survival act, and was ruled out after going through the league’s concussion protocol.

Mahomes’ status for next week’s AFC title game against Buffalo is uncertain — perhaps changing the entire league title picture.

HOWEVER…

One legend was reinforced in the process.

KC coach Andy Reid, hoping his team could hang on with backup Chad Henne holding the fort, gambled on a fourth-down pass with less than two minutes to play.

Reid proved once again that you can be a little daring and still win in the sometimes-boring NFL.

After Henne scrambled 13 yards, coming up just a half-yard short of a first down with a head-first dive, the obvious strategy was to punt the ball away — pinning the Browns deep in their own territory with about 1:20 left to play.

Instead, Reid chose to let Henne flip a short pass to Tyreek Hill, good for 5 yards to clinch the victory.

"When you're around him, you just know," Reid said of why he trusted Henne, who hasn't been a regular starter since 2014, when he was with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

"Everybody has full confidence in him.”

After the win was secure, Mahomes tweeted: #HenneThingIsPossible, and the Chiefs saluted their surprise hero.

"That's all heart," said defensive back Tyrann Mathieu, referring to Henne’s heroics on the final drive.

"Those are the moments that lift teams."

Reid agreed.

"I think we'll all remember the run, that dive, and then the throw,” Reid said.

ALL THESE heroics probably felt a bit sad for Seahawks fans.

The playoffs are still going on, with Seattle left to pick up the pieces for next year and beyond.

The Seahawks have not advanced past the second round of the playoffs since their second Super Bowl appearance in January of 2015 — so it’s now six years and counting.

Considering that the Seahawks have had a winning record in each of Russell Wilson’s nine years with the club (missing the playoffs just once), you’d think one of these seasons would have ended with a trip back to the Super Bowl.

Instead…

Wilson and his boss, Pete Carroll, may be on different wave lengths.

Carroll wants to play cautious football based on a solid running game, letting Russ throw safe play-action passes.

Wilson would like to be turned loose — as he was for half of this season — to take shots and become the ultimate weapon.

That strategy almost certainly would involve some turnovers, as it did during a gloomy stretch in the season just concluded (and in the 30-20 first-round playoff loss to the Rams).

I CAN see both sides of the argument.

Pete has won a Super Bowl on the back of ball control and defense, although he doesn’t have quite the lockdown defenders from the Legion of Boom days.

Still, he loathes to give the ball away, and if that seems just a bit old-fashioned, so be it.

The 33-year-old Wilson, meanwhile, knows that he’s learned plenty in his nine years, and can get the Seahawks to the promised land if he’s trusted to turn the ball loose.

Wilson also can point to the fact that none of teams still playing are ball-control outfits.

Sadly, I don’t think either man will change his thinking down the road.

And Pete’s in charge.

So let’s put it this way…

I don’t think Pete would have let Henne throw that pass.

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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.