THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Missing the real story from Monday night

The national media had its story already written.

Future Hall of Famer Russell Wilson, discarded by the Seahawks for a bag of kicking tees, would return to Seattle and show the local yokels what they’d be missing.

Betting services uniformly begged their customers to wager house, car and children on Denver as “just” a 6 1/2-point favorite.

“Wilson is a great, great quarterback with a point to prove, and he’s going to take it out on the Seahawks and Pete Carroll, big-time,” suggested one gambling expert.

Bear in mind, the rest of the country generally considers Seattle and the Northwest to be something like a southern province of Alaska.

Hardly anyone knows what goes on in this part of the world.

So, naturally, the notion that the Seahawks might be competitive — or that Wilson might NOT rise to the occasion — simply never occurred to anybody.

Monday night was billed as “The Russ Show,” with the Seahawks as little more than mildly embarrassed onlookers.

OUT HERE in the boondocks, though, Carroll had a few ideas of his own.

First of all, he knew that the crowd (Seattle’s infamous 12s) would boo Russ to hell and back, and despite Wilson’s claims after a 17-16 loss that he was “locked in” and the noise didn’t bother him …

Results said otherwise.

Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt would be showing Wilson a 3-4 defense, unlike anything he’d seen in his Seattle years.

With the Hawks lined up in positions that called for changes at the line of scrimmage, Wilson twice let the play clock run out — and one of Denver’s critical goal-line fumbles occurred when the clock got down to one second and Wilson had to rush the snap and handoff.

Oh, and like all other opponents in Lumen Field, the Broncos were called for false-start penalties — three times.

As hard as this might be to believe, it actually seemed as though the whole setting — the noise, the emotion, the Seahawks’ relentless defense — seemed to catch Wilson by surprise.

Story after story, TV chatter on and on, podcasts ad nauseum all carried on about Wilson playing a great game, as though he’d basically carved up the Seahawks and won by four touchdowns.

Let me say this again: Russ was bang average out in the middle of the field, flipping the ball to wide-open receivers, but he struggled in the red zone, and he looked frantic in the final minute.

Russ also threw two passes that should have been intercepted, and one of them — to the end zone — caused TV analyst Troy Aikman to wonder what Wilson could have been thinking.

Denver coach Nathaniel Hackett has been blasted for electing to try a 64-yard field goal instead of allowing his zillion-dollar QB to convert a fourth-and-5 situation.

But, hey …

If you go back over Wilson’s throws and indecision on the first three plays of that same series, you can see what Hackett was thinking.

The coach’s real blunder was letting more than a half-minute run off the clock before calling time out prior to trying the kick.

The Broncos had all three timeouts when that whole mess began.

You’d have thought that saving 50 seconds or so might have been handy if Brandon McManus missed and Denver needed the ball back.

ALL THAT second-guessing, though, was much ado about a single decision that failed miserably.

Fair enough.

The bigger story, I think, was that the Seahawks — missing several injured players and losing safety Jamal Adams, perhaps for the season, after just 12 snaps — showed that they have the spine of a pretty good team.

I don’t think Geno Smith is the long-term answer at quarterback (despite a nice game Monday), but that’s a discussion for another day.

Despite what Carroll says about never rebuilding, this looks very much like a two-year project.

The Seahawks are trying to replicate their team construction of 2011 and 2012, when Carroll and GM John Schneider put together the Legion of Boom and kept adding crucial pieces to the puzzle.

They’ve clearly had an excellent draft this year, and they have Denver’s first and second picks in 2023 in addition to their own.

Having said all that, a lot of Seahawks looked terrific on Monday night.

Nobody’s thinking Super Bowl yet, but …

Yes, the first wave of talent has arrived.

It will be augmented, hopefully, by another group of draftees and free agents — all made possible because they traded Wilson as he hits his mid-30s and earns an astronomical salary.

That’s now Denver’s problem.

Out here in our forgotten corner of the country, meanwhile, things look just fine.

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press three days each week. He also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published weekly during the season, beginning in October.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”