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Seattle Seahawks need a miracle to stay in NFC West hunt

Posted on by Taylor Reeves
Seattle Seahawks need a miracle to stay in NFC West hunt

After losing two games to NFC North opponents earlier this month, the Seattle Seahawks were no longer in control of their own destiny and couldn’t have turned out much worse for their playoff ambitions on Saturday.

To ensure that next weekend’s rematch with the Rams would be an NFC West title game, the Seahawks needed their rivals to lose to the Cardinals on Saturday night. Unfortunately, a final attempt by Kyler Murray and Arizona to steal the game failed when cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon intercepted the quarterback after a throw in the end zone bounced off tight end Trey McBride’s helmet to secure a 13-9 victory.

With Los Angeles improving to 10-6 and Seattle improving to 9-7, the two teams will meet next week in five tiebreakers, making strength of victory the metric that will determine who wins the NFC West. But the Seahawks entered Saturday with a nine-game deficit to the Rams in that category, and the Broncos didn’t help, losing 30-24 to the Bengals in overtime, making the chances of closing that gap even less likely made.

Heading into Sunday, the Rams find themselves in an ideal situation as they only need 2.5 combined wins from the Bills, Browns, Vikings, Commanders and 49ers to win the division. If three of the teams in the starting slate win, the outcome of the Lions/49ers game on Monday Night Football will not matter. As for Geno Smith and the Seahawks, to simply stay alive in Week 18, they need four wins from the Packers, Jets, Falcons, Dolphins and Lions from five games on Sunday.

Should that happen, the Seahawks would still need big help and a win against the Rams at SoFi Stadium next week, as a win in their own game would still require using the strength of the win tiebreaker. They would need a series of games to get their way, with the Bears, Broncos, Cardinals, Dolphins, Falcons, Lions and Patriots holding serve in the final week to boost their win percentage and hurt the Rams in that department .

In other words, Seattle may still have a chance to win the NFC West, but as far as probability goes, it’s entering Lloyd Christmas territory with a razor-thin margin for error. So you’re saying there’s a chance? Yes, but so many dominoes are bound to fall starting Sunday afternoon that such an outcome would be tantamount to a major miracle if it came to pass.

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