Doug Baldwin and Kam Chancellor were the best version of the Seahawks

And they were everything I love about the team.

You never forget your first.

Sports might not seem like the most appropriate topic for that particular platitude. But for devoted fans, what feeling can match seeing your team hoist the trophy that proves they won it all for the first time? The trophy that shows instead of rooting for a rag-tag crew of lovable but possibly mediocre players, you had been rooting for winners the entire time?

Admittedly, my own Seattle sports suffering had been superficial at best. I was more a Mariners fan than anything else, and only knew enough to know that they were bad and had mostly been bad since the last time I paid attention (the year 2001). I had watched Super Bowl XL, still struggling to understand the rules of football but certain all the same that the Seahawks had been robbed. If I had been paying attention to the Seattle Storm or the Sounders, I might have gotten a taste of that elusive championship feeling earlier.

But by late 2012, it was impossible to ignore the fact that a Seattle sports team might actually be decent. Even from where I was in New York — decidedly not watching the NFL — Seahawks buzz took over my hometown friends’ social media.

The Seahawks made the playoffs; I was alone in the Columbia dorms over winter break with nothing to do. So I commandeered the lounge TV to watch the wild card game, with the Seahawks’ brutal triumph over Robert Griffin III and the (other) Washington football team, and then the divisional game, with their mind-boggling, heartbreaking, unbelievable loss to the Falcons on a field goal with 13 seconds left on the clock.

I was hooked, and I know I wasn’t the only one.

Many people feel this way about their teams, insisting that they’re just better than the rest — even if they can’t put a finger on why. But going into the 2013 season, the Seahawks boasted a cast of characters that has to be among professional football’s most memorable.

Even if you weren’t charmed by new quarterback Russell Wilson’s unflagging, impenetrable veneer, there was no denying that he was one of the most fun quarterbacks to watch play, period. Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman were the rare players whose outspoken (or unspoken, in Lynch’s case) personalities off the field almost matched their bruising abilities on it.

Kam Chancellor and Doug Baldwin never absorbed as much of the spotlight — but they might have been even more beloved, especially among players and by fans.

“He damages people’s souls,” Sherman once memorably said of Chancellor, whose unforgiving hits never failed to put the exclamation mark on even the surest Seahawks victory. Chancellor wasn’t The Enforcer, but he had his blessing. He had his own nickname: the tattooed “Bam Bam” across the tops of his shoulders labeled the tools that would help make him a pillar of the Legion of Boom.

Baldwin quickly became known for the chip on his shoulder, mostly expressed via unflinching retorts to any analyst who doubted him. But watching him play, Baldwin’s ability to turn that skepticism into motivation became overwhelmingly obvious, especially in the eye-popping precision of his route running and toe-dragging catches. No part of his game came easy, but he preferred it that way.

“I’m one of these people that, I don’t like it to be easy, no matter what it is,” Baldwin said before the Super Bowl in 2014. “To me, it’s not trying to prove others wrong, it’s trying to prove myself right.”

Kam and Doug were the quintessential Seahawks, at least in the Pete Carroll era: diamonds in the rough who wound up shining brighter because of the alchemy of the team than they might have otherwise. Over their tenure, a fifth-round pick and an undrafted free agent became the team’s steadiest leaders on defense and offense, essential players who were never originally supposed to do anything other than fill in the gaps (if you’re talking to Doug, don’t bring up the word “pedestrian”).

The prospect of either Baldwin or Chancellor on another team is almost inconceivable, not just because they’ve been with the Seahawks so long, but because they so perfectly embody the team’s purported values: unbelievable toughness, smarts, and a healthy dose of attitude. Win forever, etc.

They were the rocks of the team, and for me. I’d just graduated, and was attempting to put myself through journalism school; two months in, I dropped out. But I had the Seahawks, who I went to watch every single week I could, by myself, in whatever bar I could find the game on where I could also afford the drinks. I bartended full-time (night games were the bane of my existence) while responding to every single Craigslist ad that seemed remotely connected to writing.

The only real structure in my life was the team, and the cornerstones of that team were Doug Baldwin and Kam Chancellor. They weren’t the marquee attractions, but those who knew their names understood that they were among the team’s most important players. Together, the Seahawks’ linchpins improbable-catch and wince-inducing-tackled their way to wins that should have been losses — the only place in my life, at that point, where unlikely victory was replacing expected defeat.

The Seahawks made the playoffs, and then Super Bowl XLVIII, which it was obvious in about one play that they would win. I watched surrounded by my few Seattle friends in New York, none of whom knew any of the players’ names — so I was alone in gleefully screaming Kam’s name when he intercepted Peyton Manning, in celebrating Doug’s slippery, absurd touchdown.

Watching them succeed — those men who weren’t just on my team, but epitomized everything that made it great — on the biggest stage in sports was the kind of euphoria I’m not sure I’ll ever feel again.

A year later, I went to Chancellor’s annual charity basketball game in Norfolk, Virginia to write my first sports story.

Now, after a couple of long goodbyes, both Chancellor and Baldwin are officially off the Seahawks roster with injuries that have made it impossible for them to continue playing. Watching nearly every member of that Super Bowl team leave has been heartbreaking in its own way, even though that’s (obviously) how football, with its expedited life cycle, works.

But when you’ve never won before, it feels only right that the people you win with should be there forever — especially Doug and especially Kam, the players who more than anyone else felt like our guys.

They didn’t get the dynasty that seemed promised, but they gave fans more passion, hard work, and kindness than we ever deserved. (Oh, and the time Kam jumped over an offensive and defensive line to block a kick — twice— and compelled the NFL to change its rules as a result. That was pretty great, too.)

We’ll remember the ring, but more than that, we’ll remember how you both showed everyone the very best version of what it meant to be a Seahawk. Thank you.