Seattle can win NFC West tonight
Seahawks face lowly Rams, who fired their coach Monday.
SEATTLE — For all of their wild inconsistency this season, the path is straightforward for the Seattle Seahawks.
Seattle can wrap up its third NFC West title in the past four seasons with a win over the listless Los Angeles Rams tonight.
At this point, the Seahawks clinching the division title is a formality, holding a threegame lead over Arizona with three games remaining.
The Rams can only dream of that kind of success after another lost season that culminated with this week’s decision to fire coach Jeff Fisher.
“We realize that there’s a lot at stake with every one of these games, as it has always been,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. “But now you know you have a chance to make some noise in your division.”
The more important task for Seattle is trying to regain control of the No. 2 seed in the NFC and a coveted firstround bye in the playoffs.
The Seahawks (8-4-1) are a half-game behind Detroit in the NFC standings but face a far easier schedule than the Lions over the final three weeks.
While Seattle closes with Los Angeles, Arizona and San Francisco, the Lions finish off the season at the New York Giants, at Dallas and home for Green Bay.
While the immediate focus is taking care of the division, there is a decent chance if Seattle can finish 3-0 it will end up with a bye.
“Owning the division has been something for a long time first off, it’s the first thing that you get a shot at, and we want to focus at what’s closest at hand,” Carroll said.
“Also, when you win the division, you play a playoff game at home. This is such a decisive advantage, we feel, to play here.”
While Seattle i s all but assured of a fifth straight pl ayof f a ppearance, t he Rams (4-9) are without direction after the decision to fire Fisher.
The hype that surrounded t he Rams’ re t ur n to L os Angeles has been replaced by apathy after four straight losses and just one win since Oct. 2.
Couple Fisher’s firing with the short week, and there’s no telling how motivated — or indifferent — the Rams will be even with a threegame win streak over the Seahawks.
“The players are just super resilient,” interim Los Angeles coach John Fassel said. “I anticipate they’ll go out there and put it all on the line for themselves, the team and coach Fisher.”
Seattle will be trying to recover from a rarity: a blowout loss. The 38-10 loss to Green Bay on Sunday represented the first loss by 10 or more points in Russell Wilson’s career and most lopsided Seattle setback since the 2011 season.
“That’s not the norm for us,” Wilson said. “We want to get back to playing great football, which is being very efficient and score as much as we can.”
For the past few weeks, the Seahawks’ pass rush has disappeared. Over the past three games, Seattle has just one sack, that coming when Aaron Rodgers fell down in the third quarter of last Sunday’s blowout loss.
The Seahawks have five total sacks over the past five games. This would seem a good week for Seattle to try to get the pass rush started a g a i n. L . A . qu a r t e r bac k Jared Goff has been sacked 10 times in the past three games.