RENTON, Wash. -- Doug Baldwin was reflecting on what has been the most trying season of his NFL career last week when he made the type of frank acknowledgement that you don't often hear from a professional athlete.

The Seattle Seahawks' long-time No. 1 receiver quickly answered in the affirmative when asked if the injuries he has dealt with -- five of them since the summer -- have him feeling like he's on the downside of his career.

"Oh, I am on the downside," he said. "I'm 30 years old."

Maybe so, but a reminder that Baldwin still has plenty of good football left came two days later, when he caught a pair of first-half touchdown passes in Seattle's loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

For the first one, he made an over-the-shoulder grab with his arms outstretched on a floating pass from Russell Wilson toward the back corner of the end zone. The second one had a higher degree of difficulty, with Baldwin leaping and twisting his body in midair to pluck a Wilson scramble throw before diving across the goal line through contact.

All four of his catches for 77 yards came on third down. The game might have never made it to overtime had there been a fifth. On a third-and-15 play on Seattle's final possession of regulation, Wilson had Baldwin running open deep down the seam but instead threw incomplete to David Moore near the sideline.

"Doug was spectacular today," coach Pete Carroll said postgame.

"I felt good," Baldwin said. "I think this has been a long time coming. We've been working diligently trying to get my body right. It's just been a process. ... I'm finally feeling like my normal self. I think we figured out tonight, before the game, we figured out the last component to making sure that my body is staying healthy."

If that sounds familiar, it should.

Six days after Baldwin scored his first touchdown in Week 11 against Green Bay, Carroll said he was feeling the best he had felt all season. To that point, Baldwin had missed a month of training camp with a patellar injury in one knee and two-and-a-half games after he hurt the MCL in his other knee in the opener, which snapped his streak of 89 consecutive games played. Against the Raiders in London in Week 6, he hyper-extended his elbow and suffered what he called a tear of his ulnar collateral ligament, which he's been playing through.

On the day Carroll declared Baldwin to be as healthy as he has been, Baldwin hurt his groin in practice. Injury No. 5 -- this one to his hip -- came nine days later. He was able to play in Seattle's first meeting against the 49ers but was inactive against Minnesota the following week.

"It's been really difficult," Carroll said of Baldwin's season. "For a guy who lives with such high expectations and has such a tremendous work ethic and just an amazing toughness about him, too, he just will not accept that he can't go, can't play. He's broken the time frames at every injury that he's had to get back just because he's worked at it, of course. He's rehabbed diligently, but he's just kind of willed it to happen.

"That was great to see him have a big game and look so effective for us. It's just been frustrating for him. He just has not been able to get it going with the consistency he knows he can do and we know he can do, so it's a big deal. You can see he and Russ were really hooking up and made some great plays [Sunday], crucial third downs and big plays and all that. It's good to have him back in action."

The Seahawks (8-6) need Baldwin to remain in action as they try to secure a wild-card berth over the season's final two weeks. Just look at the difference in Wilson's passing numbers with and without Baldwin this season. With Baldwin off the field, Wilson's completion rate is more than 6.5 percent worse, and his passer rating is almost 40 points lower.

To be sure, some of that is due to the strong defenses Seattle has faced in the three-and-a-half games Baldwin missed (Chicago, Denver, Minnesota and Dallas all rank in the top nine in Football Outsiders' Defensive DVOA). But as Wilson put it, having Baldwin "makes a huge difference" for Seattle's offense. That's true even though he's having one of the least productive seasons of his career, with 41 catches for 465 yards and four touchdowns, all of which he has scored the past four games.

"He's a playmaker, and we've played so much ball together," Wilson said. "He's one of my favorite guys to ever play with just because he's a competitor. He knows how to do everything right. He's smart as it gets. He's as talented as it gets."

And he hopes he's finally healthy.

Baldwin struck a cautiously optimistic note in that regard.

"I felt more like myself," Baldwin said of Sunday's game. "My body is starting to respond to the treatment, and hopefully it stays this way. I've got to give a lot of credit to our training staff. They've been working with me for over four months now trying to get my body right, so I'm just thankful to be feeling good again."