The numbers don’t lie: NFL teams, start fast to get your first-round bye

You may think I’m a bit crazy for talking about the Seattle Seahawks getting a first-round bye in the 2018 NFL season, especially when consensus opinion is that Seattle may very well miss the playoffs again outright. We are going to shove that talk aside just for a moment, and focus on the potential best case scenario of the Seahawks returning to playoff form this year.

Seattle has been to two Super Bowls under Pete Carroll, and not coincidentally, they were the #1 seed both times. Add in the 2005 season and the Seahawks have a 100% success rate of winning the NFC when they have a first-round bye. It seems really obvious to point this out, but having that extra week off is a really good thing! Don’t believe me? Well maybe you’ll believe the table I created, which is just believing me in Excel format.

To expand a bit, 1990 was the first year that the NFL switched to the modern 12-team playoff format that we know today. The preceding system featured ten teams, and the top three seeds all received byes, with the #4 vs. #5 winner playing the top seed in each conference.

Of the 112 teams to get a first-round bye, 86 of them (76.8%) had winning records after four games, 21 (18.75%) went 2-2, and 5 (4.4%) rallied from 1-3 to get wild card weekend off. None of the 1-3 teams managed the #1 seed, and only the 2001 Patriots reached the Super Bowl (and of course win it). Incidentally, 6 of the 26 teams to clinch a top-two seed are the Patriots, including one from the Bill Parcells era.

A maximum of 56 of these 112 teams could make the Super Bowl, and 44 of them did, with 18 hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. Since the NFL introduced a seeding system in 1975, there has never been a Super Bowl without a #1 or #2 seed.

How does this all pertain to the Seahawks? Well the two main characteristics of Seahawks football under Pete Carroll are simple: Start slowly, finish strongly.

My immediate thoughts on this are:

1.) For individual games, this is actually bad, and Seattle found out the hard way that regression to the mean can be quite cruel.

2.) In terms of win-loss record, the Seahawks really... don’t... always... start slowly and finish strongly?

In 2012, the Seahawks started 2-2, and of course turned 6-5 into 11-5 with an unforgettable December. This fits the team’s reputation quite perfectly, to be honest.

The 2013 team may have “started slowly” in the sense that they eked out ugly wins over the Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans, but they still started 4-0 for the first time in franchise history. A win is a win is a win. In fact, they didn’t clinch the NFC West until the final week, as they lost twice in December against division rivals.

When 2014 rolled around, the Seahawks began the year 3-1, but did close superbly by rattling off a half-dozen consecutive wins to finish 12-4. That opening day win against the Green Bay Packers sure proved to be critical in determining the three-way tiebreaker among Seattle, Green Bay, and the Dallas Cowboys.

The 2015 squad memorably stumbled to 0-2, recovered to 2-2, were 4-5 in November, then sealed a wild card berth by winning six of their last seven. You could argue that this is as close as the Seahawks have come to mirroring the 2012 season.

2016 saw another 3-1 start, were 7-2-1 heading into Thanksgiving, but blew their first-round bye positioning by going just 3-3 down the stretch, certainly not helped by injuries to Earl Thomas and C.J. Prosise.

Then you look at last year, in which Seattle again went 2-2 through September, but completely collapsed out of the playoff picture, going from 8-4 to 9-7. Average start, horrible finish.

Seattle is 16-8 in “games 1-4” under Russell Wilson, tied for 4th-best win percentage in the NFL, then 14-9-1 in “games 5-8” (tied for 4th with Carolina), 19-5 in “games 9-12” (tied with the Patriots), and 16-8 in “games 13-16” (tied for 4th with Green Bay and Minnesota). It’s clear that their best work is in November, and they do win more in the second-half of the season than the first-half, but the W-L records in September and December are identical.

That said, their first-round byes came when they went a combined 7-1 so start 2013 and 2014, so that leaves them at 9-7 for the other seasons. This all sounds and reads like me finding a longwinded way to say “Win more, dammit!” And you’re correct, but that’s beside the point. It’s abundantly clear that the Seahawks cannot really afford to concede September/early October as if they were feel-out rounds in a championship boxing match. What makes the NFL simultaneously exciting and stressful is that the room for error is so small relative to other leagues that your season can be as good as sunk by mid-October.

For the 2018 Seahawks, it’ll be tough to come out of the gates quickly. Three of their opening four games are on the road, and Seattle has lost all but one road opener under Pete Carroll. It’d be an accomplishment to finish 2-2, and a real eyebrow-raiser if they’re 3-1 or 4-0. Going 1-3 is cause for concern and at that point you just hope for a playoff spot, while 0-4 is essentially the death blow to the season.

Championships are not won in September, but a good-to-great September undeniably boosts your chances of reaching the championship game.