Finer Carolina

As the Carolina Panthers ran roughshod over the NFL this season, finishing a league-best 15-1, questions lingered. Sure, quarterback Cam Newton was performing like a most valuable player and the team’s defense was among the league’s best, but the Panthers also had one of the easiest schedules, and they barely escaped with wins against teams like the New Orleans Saints and the Giants, who had losing records.

So the Panthers were out to show on Sunday that their regular-season record was no fluke. And they were determined to do it against the Seattle Seahawks, who had won the N.F.C. title the past two seasons.

The Panthers let it be known they were about to erase all doubts, dominating the Seahawks from the first play en route to a 31-24 victory that earned them the right to host the N.F.C. championship game next Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals.

“At the beginning of the season, nobody gave us a chance except for the guys in this room, and it was like that throughout the year,” said Mike Tolbert, the Panthers’ fullback. “We didn’t listen to it, and this pretty much puts a stamp on the type of team we are.”

The Seahawks did not go quietly, mounting a furious second-half comeback that fell short yet raised questions about Carolina’s defense.

Still, the win amounted to a changing of the guard in the N.F.C., lifting the ascendant Panthers and knocking the Seahawks down a peg. The Seahawks were trying to become the first team in the era of the salary cap to reach the Super Bowl in three straight seasons. Instead, they will go home wondering how to avoid another slow start that forced them to run uphill the rest of the season. The Panthers will try to reach the Super Bowl for only the second time in their history.

On Sunday, the die was cast early, and early plays from scrimmage for both the Panthers and the Seahawks offered a preview of how both teams would fare in the latest installment of their burgeoning rivalry. The plays involved each team’s best running back, returning from injury.

After receiving the kickoff, the Panthers gave the ball to Jonathan Stewart, who sat out the last three games of the regular season with a foot injury. Stewart broke through the line and sprinted into the open field, running 59 yards to the Seattle 16-yard line. A few plays later, he carried the ball 4 yards into the end zone to give the Panthers a lead less than three minutes into the game.

When the Seahawks went on offense, they gave the ball to Marshawn Lynch, who had not played since mid-November because of an abdominal injury. Lynch was thrown down for a 3-yard loss. On the next play, quarterback Russell Wilson, under pressure as he was throughout the game, threw an interception to Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly, who returned it 14 yards for a touchdown.

Less than four minutes into the game, the Panthers were up by two touchdowns, and it looked as if the Seahawks were in for a long afternoon. Jet lag? Still thawing out from their wild-card game a week earlier in Minnesota?

The rout continued when Wilson threw another interception.

Carolina settled for a field goal to go ahead, 24-0, but a few minutes later, Newton hit tight end Greg Olsen with a 19-yard pass to push the lead to 31-0.

The Seahawks seemed to gain some composure as the clock wound down in the first half, but they came up a yard shy on fourth down and later missed a field-goal attempt as time expired. Thirty minutes, no points.

The last time a team overcame a deficit of 31 points or more in the playoffs was in 1993, when the Buffalo Bills came from 32 down to beat the Houston Oilers at home.

Still, the Seahawks were determined to give it a try, and for most of the second half, they looked like the inverse of themselves in the first half. Helped by a 15-yard penalty against the Panthers, the Seahawks scored less than two minutes into the second half, when Wilson hit Jermaine Kearse with a 13-yard touchdown pass.

On the next drive, Seattle’s defense finally got to Newton, dropping him for a 10-yard loss and forcing the Panthers to punt.

After overthrowing Doug Baldwin on the next drive, Wilson found Tyler Lockett for a 33-yard touchdown. Suddenly, the Seahawks trailed by only 17 points.

In the fourth quarter, Wilson engineered another scoring drive, the key play coming when he hit Lockett for 27 yards as he fell out of bounds. The pass was ruled incomplete, but the call was reversed after a review. Wilson then hit Kearse, tight end Luke Willson and Kearse again. After scrambling away from trouble, he found Kearse in the back of the end zone to draw the Seahawks to within 31-21 with a little more than six minutes left.

Back on offense, the Panthers continued to try to drain the clock by running the ball, but they failed to put together any sustained drives, which kept the Seahawks in the hunt. The vibe at Bank of America Stadium turned edgy.

“We needed a little bit more of that in the second half,” Newton said. “There were a lot of guys playing with their butts tight, coaches with their butts tight. Hell, at one point, fans and myself were butt-tight, too.”

With a little less than three minutes left, Wilson hit Baldwin, Kearse and Willson to get to the Panthers’ 37 as the two-minute warning arrived.

Wilson, who led the Seahawks to the Super Bowl last season by engineering a thrilling comeback against the Green Bay Packers, seemed to be working on another storybook ending. But penalties pushed them backward, so the Seahawks settled for a 36-yard field goal.

In contrast to last year’s game against the Packers in the divisional round, Seattle was unable to recover the inevitable onside kick, which left the Panthers to run out the clock and the crowd to sing along to James Brown’s “I Feel Good.”