KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Seahawks did their best on Saturday to show they were impervious to the bitter cold. Wide receivers coach Sanjay Lal posed with his beaming position group, shirtless, during pregame warmups as the temperature barely crossed the zero threshold – below, if you factor in wind chill. An inordinate number of players chose to go sleeveless.

But the Seahawks weren’t impervious to the lapses, mistakes and letdowns that have systematically undermined their once-promising season, falling 24-10 to the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium. As they have after every mounting loss, player after player talked about how they just need to clean up this, fix that, and the outcome will surely change. Coach Pete Carroll put it succinctly when he said, “It is everything. We need to do a little bit better everywhere.”

The only problem is, of course, that the cleanup portion of the season is officially over. And the adjustments, if they are finally accomplished, may well be too late. The Seahawks still have a mathematical shot at the playoffs, but they need help, always a dicey place to be.

And they have only themselves to blame. You can point to a series of highly winnable games – Falcons, Saints, Bucs, Raiders, Panthers, you name it – that they let get away. And when they got to the portion of the season that wasn’t so winnable – the 49ers and the Chiefs the last two weeks – the outcome was all too predictable.

So while the team on Saturday pointed optimistically to a much-improved defensive showing, and a second-half offensive surge fueled by running back Kenneth Walker III (yet tellingly absent the accompanying points), the pall settling over their season only increased. The Seahawks are 7-8 and after five losses in their last six games, running out of time to get things right.

Yet that’s still the goal the Seahawks are clinging to, as they must. In a season that would be viewed as a success in light of preseason expectations, but may well be remembered as much for the gradual crushing of new expectations, it has come down to a simple equation: They have to win their final two games against the Jets and Rams, both at home, or it’s all over, even without the requisite help.

Again, two winnable games. But as we have learned, no game is winnable when you are making mistakes such as the one that sunk them most dramatically Saturday, an end-zone interception by Geno Smith in the fourth quarter. The Seahawks were driving toward a touchdown that would have pulled them within one score, but instead Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce promptly did their thing, matriculating down the field for a put-away Chiefs score.

Characteristically, Smith took full blame for the pick – he has spoken in the past about being a thumb-pointer and not a finger-pointer – even though it looked like he and the intended target, Marquise Goodwin, weren’t on the same page. Smith absolved Goodwin of fault and said he simply made a bad throw (“I put it in the wrong spot.”).

That’s admirable, but some of Smith’s magic has begun to wear off. The Seahawks’ lone touchdown came with 2:25 left, and when the outcome had been decided. It didn’t help, of course, that Smith was under constant pressure much of the game as Seattle lost the battle up front. Nor did it help that the Seahawks were playing without Tyler Lockett, which allowed the Chiefs to double-team DK Metcalf.

Metcalf still finished with seven catches for 81 yards, but Metcalf was kicking himself afterward for not coming down inbounds on a potential touchdown throw at the back of the end zone in the first half – one of five times the Seahawks drove into Chiefs territory and didn’t get into the end zone. Three times, they lost the ball on downs by failing to convert on fourth down.

“It was extremely frustrating,” Smith said. “I think that is something that we’ve been trying to correct the entire season. We’ve had our ups and downs. We’ve had our really good times and we’ve had our times where we couldn’t get it done.

“I’m always very optimistic about the guys that I’m playing with. I really believe in these guys and that we can get these things done if we just do things right. We’re really going to try and find ways to correct it because we obviously have the guys. We have the guys and we know what to do. We’re just not getting it done right now, but we’ll turn it around.”

Again, the time for such an epiphany is dwindling, if it hasn’t expired completely. Along the same lines, the Seahawks were rightfully excited about Walker’s turnaround from a completely ineffective first half (9 carries, 16 yards) to being a major factor in the second (17 carries, 91 yards). Carroll said the Seahawks essentially challenged themselves to prove that they could run effectively – something they hadn’t done at all during this losing stretch.

“It was a real commitment in the second half to see if we could turn the game around,” Carroll said.

But again, the most apt time for such a statement would have been, oh, about a month ago. Just like it would have been timely to have seen much earlier the defensive effort that held Mahomes and the Chiefs – the leading quarterback and most explosive offense in the NFL – well below their season average.

Now the Seahawks have one last chance to gather all those threads of improvement and unleash it for two final games. It’s their only hope – along with a few timely losses by the teams vying for the same wild-card spot.

Carroll said he hoped that the high points of their performance against a Super Bowl-contending team like the Chiefs give the Seahawks a template for maximizing their potential – a never-ending goal that has an expiration date in 2022.

“Our guys sensed what we were able and capable of doing. I didn’t want them to miss that,” he said. “Because we were able to do it all. We could stop them, we could run the football, and we could protect and we could throw it. We could do all of those things. This team needs to stay in touch with what we are capable of doing. Because we’re not quite there yet. But it’s there for us. And they can feel it. It’s there in truth.”

But for the Seahawks, it’s a truth with consequences.