Seattle still has a shot at playoffs
Beating Panthers on Sunday is key
SEATTLE Officially, the Seahawks dropped a spot in the NFC playoff standings Thursday due to the results of the three Thanksgiving Day games, which each featured two NFC teams.
But in the bigger picture, the standings at the end of the day were more favourable for Seattle than they were at the beginning. In fact, a scenario now exists for Seattle to officially be in the NFC playoff picture at the end of the weekend.
First, a caveat that this is written understanding that the biggest thing that needs to happen this weekend to help Seattle’s playoff hopes is for the Seahawks to win at Carolina.
A win for the Seahawks Sunday would not only make them 6-5, but would also deal a loss to one of the teams ahead of them in the standings. Carolina is 6-4, and if Seattle beats the Panthers the two teams will have identical records, but the Seahawks will have the head-tohead tiebreaker and move ahead in the playoff standings.
A Seattle loss, meanwhile, won’t mean making the playoffs is impossible, but it will make it a heck of a lot harder.
After Thursday’s games, the Seahawks have a 44 per cent chance to make the playoffs, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.
That’s down from 45 per cent entering the day.
And that one per cent drop is because after Thursday ’s results, Seattle is — for the moment — eighth in the NFC playoff standings. Seattle had been seventh entering the day.
But Dallas’ win over Washington shook things up a bit.
Dallas had been eighth entering the day, but the win over Washington means the Cowboys are now leading the NFC East (holding a divisional game tiebreaker on Washington), and as such now have the No. 4 seed in the NFC (the four division winners get the top four seeds with the two teams with the next-best records getting the two wild card spots).
Conversely, the loss dropped Washington to 6-5 and seventh in the NFC playoff standings, ahead of Seattle, which is 5-5 with a game to play this weekend.
Seattle will still be behind Washington at the end of the weekend no matter what it does against Carolina, since for the moment, Washington has a tiebreaker edge on the Seahawks due to a better conference record: 6-3 to Seattle’s 4-3 entering the Carolina game.
It’s because of the tiebreaker that Seattle would have preferred Washington beat Dallas.
The Seahawks will hold any tiebreaker on the Cowboys due to beating them earlier this season while Seattle does not play Washington.
But Washington also now faces a tough stretch the rest of the season, with three of its last five on the road.
As well, it has to play those games with backup QB Colt McCoy, who started his first game Thursday in place of Alex Smith, who is out for the season with a leg injury suffered last Sunday.
Washington’s playoff odds have dropped from 67 per cent to 39 per cent via FiveThirtyEight.com in the last five days due to those two losses (and as you can see, lower than Seattle’s, even though Washington at the moment is technically ahead of Seattle in the playoff standings).
The other two results helped Seattle a bit as Chicago beat Detroit and New Orleans beat Atlanta.