Disappointment in Seattle?

While sitting here in my post-turkey nirvana, I find my mind wondering to some unexpected places. One of those places included an internal debate on how many wins the Seahawks need down the stretch to avoid the season being “disappointing.” The answer to that was much more difficult to find than I thought it would be.

Initially, my thoughts were all about “improvement.” I didn’t realistically think that the Seahawks were a playoff contender going into this season (though in a division as bad as the NFC West, you never know who’s going to sneak in). What I really wanted to see this season was improvement. So that means at least 8 wins. Problem with that is that after the 2-6 start, for the Seahawks to go 6-2 down the stretch isn’t just avoiding disappointment, it’s amazingly good football after a rough start. No, I think 8 wins is too many for the cut off point. 8 wins seems like a fairly impossible goal at this point.

7 wins? Again, that means that the Seahawks followed up the rough start with a strong finish, going 5-3 in the 2nd half of the season and beating some good teams. I’m not sure if that’s the right point either.

6 wins seems like a disappointment. That’s just 2-4 over the rest of the season. It’s also just one more loss than last season, and considering all the changes made to the offense, and no offseason in which to make those changes, only one more loss seems reasonable, and reasonable should be considered disappointing.

Hopefully you can understand why such a simply question is giving me such a tough time. Perhaps I should just look at these last 6 games use only them as the criteria for decided if the year ends up being a disappointment. But even then it isn’t easy.

If the Seahawks go 3-3 down the stretch, but lose to St. Louis I think I’ll be disappointed since 4-2 was a possibility. At the same time, if the Seahawks go 2-4 down the stretch, and keep it very close but still lose against SF, Phili, Chicago and DC, and win in convincing fashion against the Rams and Cards, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

How messed up is that? 3-3 is disapointing but 2-4 isn’t? Something is clearly wrong with my brain this week.

It occurred to me during this mental debate that all 6 of the remaining games are winnable games. And not in an “any given Sunday” sort of way. The Seahawks should be favored against DC, AZ and St. Louis (not that they will be, but they should be) The Eagles aren’t as good as people expected, and without Vick they’ve been pretty bad. The Bears will be without Jay Cutler. The Niners aren’t nearly as good as their record. They could lose 4 of their last 6 and I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

So with 6 winnable games, I’d like to think that the Seahawks can win 4 of the six, especially with 4 of the games being at home. If the Seahawks do win 4 of 6, then they end the season at 8-8. Maybe it isn’t such an impossible goal after all.