ESPN Playoff Machine paints pretty playoff picture for Seahawks

The Seattle Seahawks have greatly enhanced their chances of making the playoffs after winning four or their last five games.

ESPN’s NFL Playoff Machine might be the worst thing to happen to workplace productivity since the NCAA basketball tournament. They unveil it about this time every year and it can be quite addicting.

Here’s how it works: You are in charge of selecting how all the remaining games will go the rest of the year, and the Playoff Machine is programmed to calculate how every team will finish, with all tiebreakers accounted for. So you instantaneously get to see what the playoff matchups will look like, based on the criteria you select. There are some preset options, for example you could have all the remaining games decided by winning percentage or how teams are ranked in the ESPN power rankings.

Or…. and this is where it really gets fun, you can actually pick every single game for the rest of the year. That’s what I did, and it yielded some very interesting results.

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Let’s look once again at what the NFC playoff picture looks like with this week’s projections, and then explore the Seahawks playoff scenarios:

SEAHAWKS RUN THE TABLE, FINISH 11-5:

They make the playoffs as the 5th seed and travel to face 4th seeded Washington, winners of the NFC East at 8-8.

FINISH 10-5 WITH LOSS TO VIKINGS:

No change. This might seem implausible with the “must-win” feel of this Sunday’s game, but this is all based on league-wide results. Based on my picks, the teams vying for the NFC East title and wild card spots beat up on each other. I’ve got the Redskins and Buccaneers both finishing 8-8. And the Packers continued slide takes them away as a challenger to the Seahawks.

FINISH 10-5 WITH LOSS TO CARDINALS IN WEEK 17:

No change. Furthermore, this is looking less likely with each week. The closest challenger 14-2 Arizona has to their #2 seed is Minnesota at 11-5. The Cardinals will have their bye wrapped up and will most likely keep many of their starters out of the game. I’ve also got Carolina going 16-0, so that would rule out any chance the Cards would have the #1 seed to still play for in their final game as well.

Now here’s where it gets interesting…….

FINISH 9-7 WITH ANY COMBINATION OF TWO LOSSES:

Make…… playoffs….. as……..the……..5th seed.

STILL no change! Even if you have them losing to the Vikings AND Cardinals, they’re still the 5th seed. Again, it’s due to how I picked the games. If the Packers pull things together and finish strong, or the Bears go on a big finishing run, it could greatly effect the Seahawks wild card standing. But for now, based on my picks, the Seahawks would be the 5th seed even with two more losses.

Next: Seahawks move up in the power rankings

That being said, beating the Vikings this weekend would help protect the Hawks in the event one of those other NFC wild card candidates were to win out.

But hey… let’s focus on Option A, shall we?

We’ll see you again next week.