Seahawks playoff seeding scenarios entering Week 17
By Keith Myers
The Seattle Seahawks must win this week or they drop in the playoff seeding. With a win, they could end up with a week off.
The Seattle Seahawks punched their ticket to the postseason a couple of weeks ago. The NFC West crown is theirs, but little else is decided. The final week of season will determine the road the Seahawks must travel if they hope to win another championship.
The Seahawks enter their final game as the 3rd seed in the NFC. They are a half-game behind Atlanta and a half-game ahead of both the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.
If Seattle and Atlanta both win this week, then Falcons get the first-round bye. The Seahawks would host the No. 6 seed in the Wild Card round. If Seattle wins that game, they’d then go on the road to Atlanta in the divisional round.
A Seattle win and an Atlanta loss to the Saints switches the seeding of those teams. The Seahawks would get the first-round bye, and Atlanta would host a Wild Card team.
If the Seahawks lose in Santa Clara this week, then they drop to the No. 4 seed no matter happens in the other games. Green Bay plays Detroit, so one of those teams will win and pass the Seahawks. If they tie, Green Bay wins the division with the same record as Seattle and holds the tiebreaker.
Not that it’ll happen, but a Seattle-SF tie is as bad as a loss for the Seattle. It drops them to the No. 4 seed unless the Packers and Lions also tie. The probability of both games ending in a tie has to be less than zero. That might be a mathematically impossibility, but so is both of those games ending in a tie.
The Seahawks would definitely benefit from being the highest possible seed they can get. This isn’t a season where it works out in a way that dropping to a lower seed means missing a hot team no one wants to play.
Whoever ends up with the No. 4 seed will face the Giants. Of the potential Wild Card teams, they are clearly the best of the group.
The No 3. seed will face Washington if they set the Giants this week. If New York wins that game, then the No. 3 seed faces the loser of the Detroit-Green Bay game.
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The advantages of the No. 2 seed speak for themselves. If the Seahawks get the help they need from the Saints, they’ll end up with a week off to heal up. After the bloodbath last week, the Seahawks would benefit from a week to heal.
Overall, they key for Seattle is to take care of business against the 49ers. A win in Santa Clara is the only thing the Seahawks can control.