Yes, there is always plenty of chatter about our perennial Super Bowl hopefuls. But I also find that there is always some angle to Seahawks coverage that just doesn’t seem to get enough airplay. This column is dedicated to that “elephant in the locker room.”
“In truth, I think the 6-2 Seahawks will go 4-4 in their last eight games,” wrote Jim Moore at MyNorthwest.com this week, “finish 10-6 and earn a wild-card playoff berth, just like last year.”
Moore freely admits he’s a click-bait journalist, trying to be just controversial enough to draw eyeballs to his columns, but not so idiotic that people stop reading. Still, no one put a gun to his head when he continued: “But if you forced me to go to one extreme or the other and asked: ‘Hey, Jim, do you think they have a better chance of going 8-0 or 0-8 the rest of the way?’ I’d go with 0-8.”
Wow. Really?
Of course, he’s not pulling this opinion out of thin air. He’s right in observing that “the combined record of their first eight opponents is 25-34-1, and the six wins came over teams with a combined record of 13-31-1.” And it’s true that over their remaining 8 games, the Seahawks will “play the NFL’s toughest schedule.”
And Moore is not alone in his assessment. The general consensus around the league is that, while the Hawks are 6-2 and in the hunt for a division title–and even controlling their own destiny for a share of the conference’s best record at 14-2–they are not “6 and 2 good.”
I think that’s a crock.
And it doesn’t matter whether the 6-2 team in question is Seattle or Minnesota. Bottom line: there are only 4 teams in the NFL with a better record, and there’s a lot of football left to be played. I’m pretty certain that none of these 6-and-2 downplayers project the Hawks to be 8-0 at the midpoint–so what’s all the crying about?
Every team that’s 6-2 is 6-2 good. Every team that’s 8-0 is 8-0 good. Every team that’s 0-8 is 0-8 bad.
And can the Seahawks help it if they significantly contributed to the 13-31-1 record of the teams they beat? Duh. One of the reasons those teams have 31 losses is… the Seahawks!
As Chuck Knox regularly declared, you play the hand you’re dealt. So let’s just see how the hand plays out, shall we?
And if you want to get your hopes up, you go right ahead. We only get one 2019 season.
