That's right, you can count Charlie Whitehurst on your list of QBs hosting a playoff game this upcoming Sunday. Thanks to a four-yard CW TD pass to Mike Williams, a dominant defensive effort and a handful of Olindo Mare field goals, the Seahawks won their Sunday Night Showcase matchup against the Rams by a score of 16-6. The win put both the Seahawks and Rams at 7-9 for the season, and with the Seahawks owning the tiebreaker with the head-to-head W, New Orleans will indeed travel to Seattle for a first-round NFC post-season matchup.
The Seahawks earn the somewhat dubious historical distinction of being the first-ever NFL team to win their division despite posting a negative win-loss record. "Pretty cool" was the phrase first-year coach Pete Carroll used to describe the phenomenon. Imagine most non-Seattle NFL fans would find a different term for it.
Seems to me that this will inevitably represent some sort of tipping point for a new approach to playoff seeding in the NFL. After a division winner this embarrassing--and one that we expected to be miserable pretty much all year--I don't see how Roger Goodell and company could possibly let a division winner like this make the playoffs again. Add a flex wild card, enforce a minimum number of wins needed to make the playoffs, do something, but don't let a 7-9 team earn the privilege to host a playoff game again.
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Then again, with the three years of almost peerless misery that Seattle sports fans have suffered of late, I guess they're owed at least the little bit of cheap good fortune here. Can't really hate too much.