Seahawks power rankings roundup, Week 16: WaPo, SB Nation, slow to forgive Seattle for Green Bay blowout

The NFL Power Rankings are out! The NFL Power Rankings are out!

With that, the Seattle Seahawks are fourth almost across the board: Y!, B/R, CBS, USA Today, NFL.com all placed the Seahawks at four. Pete Carroll’s biggest fan? That would be ESPN, who has Seattle third behind only the New England Patriots and Dallas Cowboys, the clear frontrunners right now. The Oakland Raiders are third almost everywhere else.

However, the Washington Post has the Seahawks at ninth. Why so low? I had to read it three times, I still can’t believe it:

There were some issues Thursday night, from the ill-advised fake punt that put Jon Ryan in harm’s way to the pass play from the 1-yard line that put conscientious objector Richard Sherman at odds with the coaching staff.

WaPo writer Mark Maske is docking Seattle points for a fake punt play that gained a huge chunk of yardage and worked. And for the fact that Sherman chimed in as far as what he thought the Seahawks should do to score some points, which they did on the way to a 24-3 win, giving them the two-seed in the NFC and ranking them second in points allowed.

It’s not even so much the ranking I would take an issue with — they’re behind the Steelers, Falcons, and Packers, who I would believe are all a minor bit worse than Seattle (yes even with Green Bay’s dominant win) but nothing to quibble about for too long -- but what an odd set of reasons to give.

The other outlier would be SB Nation, who has the Seahawks eighth. SB Nation ... more like S-Be-Hatin’!!!! Of course, I don’t think that Seattle necessarily is the fourth-best team just because a bunch of other writers said so. That’s pretty meaningless. A solid argument can be made for seven or eight teams ahead of the Seahawks, and luckily Adam Stites didn’t make the argument that it was because they ran a successful trick play.