FanPost

Holding Out for a Seed

Last season's NFC Championship game, which featured all the drama one could hope for, which exposed Michael Crabtree as the mediocre receiver he truly is, which vaulted Richard Sherman and the Legion of Boom into the fore, was easily, for me, the Single Greatest Football Game Ever.

Fast forward to the aftermath of the Seahawks-Chiefs game a few weeks ago. We're 6-4. Everyone thinks we're cooked. We don't look like the same team that played in that NFC Championship game. "Season over", said more than one of my diehard friends.

Then Bobby Wagner comes back, Kam Chancellor comes back, something comes together, and... BOOM. We emerge from a grueling 3-game stretch with 3 dominating victories. Legion restored.

And now, this:

A lot of people I know were rooting for the Rams over the Cardinals last night, the idea being that it makes it easier for the Seahawks to win the NFC West. People are hoping that the rest of the NFC suddenly collapses, leaving a cakewalk for our coronation as the rightful #1 seed. Last night, in the moment, I was one of those people.

But today I've changed my mind.

Conventional wisdom is that we want and need the #1 seed in the NFC. That happens in several scenarios, the most likely being that we win our remaining 3 games, while Green Bay loses at least once. The problem with that hope is that Green Bay needs to win all 3 to keep the top seed, so they're going to keep trying, and the teams on their remaining schedule are all, shall we say, "lacking quality wins". It just isn't very likely that the Packers will lose again in the regular season.

In the much-more-likely scenario that Green Bay wins out, they get the #1 seed as the only 3-loss team in the NFC. If we also win out, we'll hold the relevant tiebreakers over all of the other 12-4 teams in the NFC, so we then get the #2 seed.

In this still-desirable scenario, we get a bye week, then we host in the divisional round. And if we win there, we likely go play for the NFC Championship at Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

Which brings us, at last, to this:

I don't know if we can ever come close to the awesome sense of drama and achievement that we reached last year against the 49ers. I don't know if our pride in our team can ever be that high again. But here's something I know for sure: beating the Packers on the hallowed ground of Lambeau in January to advance to our second consecutive Super Bowl would be our greatest achievement to date.

I'm rooting for that.

EDIT: Previously, this post incorrectly referred to the Lions and Bills as "among the league's worst", rather than "mediocre at best, if you think strength of victory is something that matters". The new version uses an abbreviated form of their actual standing.