Seahawks cruise to 34-6 win over Bears in third preseason game

Can the regular season start already?

The Seahawks are more than ready. At least they were on Friday night against the Bears, Seattle scoring all five times it had the ball in the first half and then coasting to a 34-6 victory at CenturyLink Field.

Everything went right, from Percy Harvin’s 46-yard kickoff return to start the game to Steven Hauschka’s 59-yard field goal to end the first half to the fact that All-Pro safety Earl Thomas – the guy so many people worried about returning punts – ran one back 59 yards and would have scored if not for the pesky punter tackling him at the Bears’ 16. Russell Wilson ran for one touchdown and threw for two more while Marshawn Lynch punctuated his only series of the game with an exclamation point by rushing 7 yards for a score on his third and final carry.

OK, deep breath. It is just the preseason after all, and while the third game is the most meaningful of August, it will still be meaningless when the calendar turns to September.

It’s just that Seattle looked so darn efficient, so ready and so utterly ruthless that it only heightened expectations for the next time the Seahawks play at home, which will be Sept. 4 against Green Bay.

Oh man, did the Seahawks ever look ready in this warmup game against the Bears. Seattle had scored four touchdowns before Chicago crossed midfield for a second time, the Seahawks outgaining the Bears 227-82 with less than 2 minutes remaining in the first half.

Wilson was efficient as anyone could ask, completing 13 of 17 passes for two touchdowns, and he also scrambled for a touchdown in the first quarter, his third of the preseason. Harvin caught three passes for 61 yards, making a couple of cuts that seemed to deny some of the fundamental laws of physics.

About the only thing that went wrong for Seattle came in the final half of the fourth quarter when Terrelle Pryor entered the game, short-armed one pass while on the run and then threw off his back foot down the sidelines for an interception that could have been fair caught.

Even when the Bears scored they couldn’t make it stick, first because of replay and then because of penalty. Martellus Bennett was ruled to have made a 23-yard scoring reception only to have a replay review determine he was down at the 1. Two plays later, Dante Rosario caught a scoring pass that was nullified by a penalty against Brandon Marshall.

The Bears had the ball at Seattle’s 12, and cornerback Jeremy Lane then picked off a pass from the utterly indifferent Jay Cutler. Lane ran it back 41 yards, and three plays later the Seahawks sent out Hauschka for what would have been a franchise-record kick were it in the regular season and Seattle took a 31-0 lead into halftime.

Hauschka missed a 52-yard attempt in the third quarter, a veritable knuckleball of his foot, but added a 38-yarder in the third quarter after Wilson left the game, replaced by Tarvaris Jackson.

The Bears did finally score midway through the fourth quarter, kicking two field goals in the final 6 minutes of a game that had stopped mattering by halftime.

Notes

• Rookie LB Brock Coyle left the game with an ankle injury in the second quarter but returned in the fourth quarter.

• S Jeron Johnson – Seattle’s backup to both Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor – suffered a foot injury.