Subscribe now
Seattle Seahawks

Seahawks face long road to Super Bowl

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (3) calls an audible against the Minnesota Vikings in the second half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 6, 2015 in Minneapolis.
Gregg Bell Tacoma News Tribune

MINNEAPOLIS – This opportunity for the Seahawks to be special is now extra special.

Throughout its uneven season, Seattle has alluded to its goal of becoming special. Since spring minicamps, this team has kept on its mind the chance to become the first team since the 1990s to play in three consecutive Super Bowls.

“We’re doing things that have really been unprecedented,” is how Darrell Bevell, Seattle’s offensive coordinator, put it last month at the height of his offense’s record-setting surge in yards, points and passing.

But poor pass protection and miscommunication defending the pass caused 2-4 and 4-5 starts to this season. Those not-so-special months of September and October are why the Seahawks (10-6) need to win three consecutive road playoff games to reach that goal of a third consecutive Super Bowl. They had the conference’s top seed and home-field advantage throughout the previous two postseasons.

Playoff road test No. 1 is Sunday at frigid TCF Bank Stadium against NFC North-champion Minnesota (11-5).

To reach the Super Bowl, Seattle would have to win more road playoff games than in the franchise’s 40-year history. The Seahawks have won two postseason games on the road: Jan. 6, 2013, at Washington and Dec. 31, 1983, at Miami.

It’s just one of many extra-special tasks for this edition of the Seahawks.

Seattle is this postseason’s sixth seed in the NFC, the conference’s second wild card. Since the league expanded the playoffs to six teams in each conference in 1990, sixth seeds have won 28 of 76 postseason games (a success rate of 37 percent). Sixth seeds have won multiple games in the same playoffs only four times in those 25 years (2005, ’08, ’10, ’13).

Only two teams seeded sixth have won the Super Bowl: The 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers, who beat the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL, and the 2010 Green Bay Packers, who beat the Steelers in that season’s ultimate game.

All-time, only four teams have won three consecutive postseason road games to reach the Super Bowl: those 2010 Packers, the ’07 New York Giants (as a fifth seed), those ’05 Steelers and the fifth-seeded, 1985 New England Patriots.

To which these playoff-tested Seahawks smile and say: Bring it on.

“We embrace this, for sure,” Pro Bowl middle linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “We feel like this is going to be fun.

“The first two (Super Bowl) years we had home-field advantage. This year is definitely something different. And we are going to embrace it. We look forward to it. We’ve had a lot of good games on the road, a lot of good victories on the road. I think we are ready for it.”

Wagner then brought up the difference between home and away games for Seattle’s defense, which this regular season became the first since the 1953-57 Cleveland Browns to lead the NFL in fewest points allowed for a fourth consecutive season.

It’s what the Seahawks think is a prime reason they’ve won five consecutive road games while allowing an average of 6.8 points. They’ve surrendered only one offensive touchdown in their last five away games.

That includes Dec. 6 at Minnesota, when Seattle held NFL rushing champion Adrian Peterson to his season-low of 18 yards on eight carries in a 38-7 rout of the Vikings. In the last month Seattle has won on the road by a combined 74-13 over two of the four division champions, at Minnesota and at Arizona.

That’s why the Seahawks are a five-point favorite against the Vikings, one of the largest favorites as a sixth seed in NFL playoff history.

“I think defensively it’s going to be easier for people to communicate,” Wagner said of playing away from the Seahawks’ earsplitting CenturyLink Field. “That’s going to make everything for us quicker and easier (this postseason).”