(My first FanPost. Be gentle.)

Winning on Sunday gives Seattle its first playoff game in three years. So why wouldn't we want that to happen?

Of course, considering this team and how it's performed this year, it has come up for discussion whether winning the upcoming Sunday night game against the Rams would actually do more harm than good in terms of draft positioning - to say nothing of the almost certain thumping either team would receive at the hands of the Wild Card opponent (likely the Saints).

Well, here are the reasons I can think of why a Seahawks win would be beneficial for this team:

1) No such thing as bad publicity. The Seattle Seahawks rank among the Los Angeles Clippers, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Charlotte Bobcats as one of the most nondescript teams in American professional sports. As much as we revile the Cowboys and the Steelers for their oversaturation of media coverage, the fact of the matter is if the Seahawks were getting that kind of coverage we wouldn't mind at all. In the past five years, the only two things the Seahawks have done that received more than a passing mention on ESPN were reaching the Super Bowl and hiring Pete Carroll. Winning on Sunday would grant the Seahawks its third nationally televised game of the season - however ugly it might end up being - and the infamy of being the first team since realignment to qualify for the playoffs despite a sub-.500 record. I dunno about you guys, but I like the thought of this team having done something no other team has done.

2) This team has more holes than one pick can fill. There's a lot of worry about dropping from a top 10 pick to 21st for the sake of perhaps drafting Andrew Luck or Jake Locker before the Bengals and Cardinals steal them away. But as important as the QB position has become in this league, this team has so many problems elsewhere that we can't reasonably expect to plug any young QB into this offense and expect it to suddenly turn into a 11-5 powerhouse. Our secondary, apart from Thomas, is practically nonexistent. As is our running game. As is our linebacker corps. If we miss out on the stars of the QB class in this upcoming draft, we can still work on all the other needs that this team has. There will be QBs in the 2012 draft, too.

(And we're not even taking into account the growing possibliity of a lockout shortening or even cancelling the entire season.)

3) You never know.  The Seahawks lost to the Saints 34-19 on Week 11, representing our only margin of loss this year of two possessions. Granted, that game saw us getting run ragged by Chris Ivory rather than a now healthy and close to 100% Pierre Thomas and Reggie Bush. But you never know. Maybe Hasselbeck can muster one last ounce of veteran grit and jump out in front of the Saints long enough to make this a contest. Maybe they can do that a couple times. If they win, they'll have that chance, infinitesimal though it may be. You never know.

If Seattle loses on Sunday, having a top-10 pick to continue the rebuild we began last year will certainly make a nice silver lining. But it's not something to root for. We can win next week and improve our team in the future; one does not rule out the other.