5 days to define the season

The Seahawks are in the middle of their most important 5-game stretch of the season: at Lions, Chargers, at Rams, Packers, and at Panthers. A 3-2 record over that difficult portion of the schedule would be a very good sign for Seattle, even if they don’t make the playoffs. A 1-4 record and clearly some changes are needed if the Seahawks want to remain ultra-competitive in the 2019 and 2020 seasons. Seattle is now 1-1 in those games following an eight-point loss at home to the LA Chargers last week and today they are 10-point underdogs to the LA Rams on the road.

If the Seahawks don’t pull the upset, then every game from here on out becomes a must-win, for most intents and purposes. If they play to the best of their abilities and win in Los Angeles for the second time in as many years, then Pete Carroll has a good argument that the team will once again dominate significantly more in the second half of the season than they did in the first.

Regardless, Seattle is heading home for a Thursday Night matchup against Green Bay and Aaron Rodgers. While Rodgers is never a player you can write off, these are about the best conditions that the Seahawks could hope to face the Packers: the game is in Seattle, Green Bay is 3-4-1, and road teams on Thursdays this season are 2-8. The combined score in the last three TNF games is 128-47 for the home teams.

The Packers in particular are 0-4 on the road this year, losing 122-84 and allowing 31, 31, 31, and 29 points in those games.

If the Seahawks manage an upset on Sunday, then they might just have a chance to up their record during this five-game stretch to 3-1 with a road game in Carolina as the final major challenge for November. If they can get to December with a 6-5 record, then Seattle gets to end the season with two games against the 49ers, one against the Cardinals, and home games against the Vikings and Chiefs. While the Seahawks have not played nearly as well at home as we have come to expect, I would expect that to regress at some point and return to normal.

A 1-1 record in the next five days keeps the door open.

An 0-2 record pretty much shuts it.

A 2-0 record and Seattle is off to the “watch out” races once again.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, I just know that you rarely get to define a season in less than a week like the Seahawks will do beginning today.