Playoff probabilities for Seahawks at the bye

For the first place in the NFC West Seattle Seahawks, it’s the bye week, and that means relaxing while hoping that they can maintain their perch atop the division. In order to do that, they will need the Arizona Cardinals to defeat (or tie) the San Francisco 49ers, otherwise the Niners move into a tie and take over first place by way of their Week 2 victory over the Hawks.

Whether or not the Hawks keep their first place positioning through this weekend, the performance over the first ten weeks of the season has them positioned for a surprise playoff berth. Nothing, of course, is guaranteed, but it’s the time of the season when playoff probabilities begin to have a little more clarity, so here is a smattering of how their postseason probabilities look from a trio of different models.

First up is the model of the New York Times, which has the Seahawks making the playoffs in just under two out of every three simulations.

Up next is 538.com, where the modeling puts Seattle in the postseason in a hair over three out of four simulations.

Over at Football Outsiders, they project the Seahawks as the team most likely to make the postseason from the division.

And, of course, no discussion of the playoffs is complete without linking to the ESPN NFL Playoff Machine, which users can use to determine how playoff seedings would work out given different outcomes for games down the stretch.