Even if they fall to 6-8, Seattle Seahawks still have a path to the playoffs

The road gets easier for Seattle in Week 16. Easier, not easy.

Let's look at the chances of them matching last year's record first. After they close out the Murderers' Row section of their schedule, the Hawks will face the last two teams of their AFC Central tour, the Titans and the Steelers. So far, the Hawks struggled against the division. They lost to the Bengals in a baffling game that now serves as a microcosm of their season. As noted, The Hawks barely pulled off the win versus the Browns. Seattle will then finish their season on the road at Arizona.

At 7-6, the Steelers are the class of that group. Or they were until they somehow lost to the dogmeat Patriots. They've been well-coached by Mike Tomlin, but they haven't been much more consistent than the Seahawks (see Patriots loss ). Pittsburgh owns a win over the Ravens, but they also lost badly to Arizona just four days before losing to the Pats. It's certainly a winnable game, but so was Dallas.

Tennessee is 4-8 and has lost four of their last five games. As they face the Dolphins and Texans before they host Seattle, they'll likely be just 4-10. An early-season 27-3 win over the Bengals was the only game they've played in which they resembled anything close to a dangerous team. All signs point to a Seahawks win over the Titans. Sadly, we all know how badly those signs can mislead us, don't we, 12s?

So the Seahawks could very well reach the season finale versus the Cardinals with their playoff chances at stake. Arizona does have a pretty dismal record at 3-10. Still, they did just handle the Steelers and handed the Cowboys one of their three losses. But they'll face much the same brutal schedule as Seattle before that final game. They'll sandwich games against San Francisco and Philadelphia around a trip to Chicago, so they'll likely be pretty banged up when they try to play spoiler to Seattle's postseason hopes.