Playoff hopes at stake today
Loss to Cards would give Hawks long odds
RENTON, Wash. – Russell Wilson, who recently acquired the title of senior editor for Derek Jeter’s new website, hopes now to become one of the lead authors of a comeback tale for the Seahawks.
“The story’s not told,” he said this week. “We are going to have to write our own story and see what happens.”
If it is to have a happy ending, though, then Seattle has to beat the Arizona Cardinals today at CenturyLink Field.
To reset the stakes, Arizona comes in at 9-1, the best record in the NFL. Seattle is 6-4, which this week would have been good for the No. 8 seed in the NFC – and just six make the playoffs.
While Seattle would still be technically alive in the race for the NFC West even with a loss today, in all practicality the battle would be over, the Seahawks trailing by four games with five to go.
In fact, a loss would make even qualifying for the playoffs a risky proposition. The website 538.com, for instance, calculated this week that Seattle’s percentages of making the playoffs would fall from 45.2 to 24.7 with a loss (speaking to the rough road that’s ahead, Seattle’s odds of making the playoffs rise to only 53.3 percent with a win).
One reason the odds get so long with a loss?
Seattle not only would fall to 6-5 but then also plays three of its next four on the road, starting with a Thanksgiving night game at San Francisco. The other two road games come at Philadelphia and Arizona, sandwiched around a home date with San Francisco.
So yes, Seattle pretty much better win today or else the most likely outcome of this season is that the Seahawks become the fourth defending Super Bowl champ in the last six years to miss the playoffs.
Pretty desperate circumstances, no?
Nada, countered cornerback Richard Sherman, saying that the last time he felt desperate was his senior year at Stanford when he had minus-$38 in his bank account and no ride home.
That was the general theme this week in a Seattle locker room where the Seahawks said there would still be more games to play regardless of what happens against the Cardinals.
“There are no backs to the wall, no desperation,” middle linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “We understand the task at hand, but we are not going to make it harder than it needs to be.”
Still, this is an interesting time for a Seattle team that had a pretty straight-line path to the Super Bowl in 2013. Recall that a 4-0 start built a comfortable lead in the division, which then led to an 11-1 record that all but assured home-field advantage through the playoffs.
Until the playoffs, there really wasn’t any game that carried the or-else stakes of today’s contest against Arizona. (True, Seattle had to win the regular-season finale against the Rams to assure home-field advantage. But did anyone feel like that game was in question?)
As such, today’s game provides an interesting gauge of where the Seahawks are mentally.
Their surprising tumble from Super Bowl favorite to playoff outsider – if the season ended today – has sparked all kinds of stories about what’s gone wrong. Players insist, though, that there has been no proverbial Super Bowl hangover, no lack of hunger or desire. Instead, they say, it’s been a case of the more routine issues of injuries, personnel turnover and the football gods simply too often looking the other way.
“I think we’ve been more focused than ever,” defensive lineman Michael Bennett said.
“A lot of injuries have happened and I don’t know if that has anything to do with a Super Bowl hangover or football being a very violent sport,” Sherman said.
Or, as receiver Doug Baldwin noted this week, maybe the odds were against them from the start. Only one of 32 teams wins the Super Bowl. And only eight Super Bowl champs repeated.
“I think people forget how difficult it is to be a Super Bowl champion,” Baldwin said. “But we are 6-4. We have a winning record. We have played pretty decent football. The ball doesn’t always bounce your way. That’s football, just like it is in life. We are going to go out and continue to do what we are doing, and we’ll find a way.”
Which way they’re headed, though, is likely determined by what happens today against the Cardinals.