Seattle Seahawks: Bring on the Vikings
By Keith Myers
The Seattle Seahawks will travel to Minnesota to take on Vikings in first round of the NFL Playoffs.
The NFL Playoffs are here. The Seattle Seahawks punched their ticket to postseason two weeks ago, but only now do they know who they’ll be playing. Bring on the Minnesota Vikings.
With their 20-13 win over the Green Bay Packers on Sunday Night Football, the Vikings won the NFC North. Their reward is to host the NFL’s hottest team.
Seattle and Green Bay have the same record, but the Packers beat the Seahawks back in Week 2 of the season, so they claimed the No. 5 seed. The Seahawks end up as the No. 6 seed.
That means that Seattle must travel to Minnesota for Wild Card Round of the playoffs. Green Bay travels to Washington.
The Seahawks are 9-5 all-time against the Vikings, but none of those games have come in the playoffs. The recent history is rather one-sided in favor of Seattle.
These two teams have played three times in the Pete Carroll era. All of them have been double-digit wins for the Seahawks. Only one of those games has been on the road though.
That road win came earlier this year, with the Seahawks running up the score for a 38-7 blowout. This was the second game of Seattle’s 5-game dominant stretch in in the second half of the season.
It is difficult to draw to many conclusions from that game though. The Vikings were without their three-best defensive players for that game. All of them are healthy now.
On the other side of the ball, things do get more interesting. The Vikings were unable to do anything on offense, and the Seahawks will be as healthy on defense this week as they’ve been all season.
Adrian Peterson rushed for just 18 yards on eight carries in that game. Seattle was without DT Jordan Hill that week, and run stuffing DT Ahtyba Rubin played only 16 snaps.
Overall, the Seahawks are likely to be favorites in this game, but another massive blowout is unlikely.