Four Downs: Answering four questions from Seahawks win vs. Patriots | Analysis
How statistically rare was the Seahawks’ 23-20 overtime win at New England?
And how much have the Seahawks improved their playoff chances with just two wins (playoffs? Yep we’re talking playoffs already).
That and more in this week’s Four Downs with Seahawks beat reporter Bob Condotta.
The move to a 17-game season in 2021 means there’s a longer road left after two games than there used to be. Some may quibble that the Seahawks built their 2-0 start against two teams no one thinks are playoff bound.
A 2-0 start no matter how it’s accrued has proved to drastically improve a team’s playoffs chances.
Via The Sporting News, since the NFL merger in 1970, 262 of the 411 teams that started 2-0 made the playoffs, or 63.7%. In 2023, according to TSN, six of eight 2-0 teams advanced to the postseason and in 2022, all five did.
The Seahawks have had comparable percentages during their previous 48 years as a franchise. The Seahawks have started 2-0 12 previous times. Those seasons account for eight of the Seahawks’ 20 playoff appearances.
Here are the seasons they began 2-0 before this year: 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1994, 1998, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2013, 2019 and 2020.
The Seahawks made playoffs in every one of those years except 1985, 1986, 1994 and 1998. The only one of those seasons in which the Seahawks finished with a losing record was 1994 (Tom Flores’ last year, when the Seahawks began 3-1 then faceplanted to 6-10.) The 1986 team finished 10-6 but missed out on a playoff spot because of tiebreakers.
The 1984, 2013 and 2020 are three of the five times in team history the Seahawks have won 12 or games in a season. You may not need reminding 2013 was also the year they won their only Super Bowl (the Seahawks began that season 4-0).
Losing a few games obviously haven’t cratered seasons. As you can see, he Seahawks didn’t begin either of their other two Super Bowl seasons in 2005 and 2014 with 2-0 records, beginning each of those years 1-1.
They have twice made the playoffs despite starting 0-2, something often seen as a death knell, doing so in 2015 and 2018.
Since the NFL went to an expanded 14-team playoff format in 2020, only five of 32 teams to start 0-2 have made the postseason.
Nothing is guaranteed. But history shows that in a sport with relatively few games, every result matters greatly.
Q: How rare is it to allow 185 yards rushing and win as the Seahawks did Sunday?
A: Pretty darn rare.
Consider that he Seahawks allowed that many rushing yards or more just 24 times in Pete Carroll’s 227 games as coach.
The Seahawks won just six of those games.
One came last season when the Seahawks allowed 206 rushing yards at Arizona in what turned out to be Carroll’s finale, but won 21-20 when the Cardinals missed a late field goal.
They also went 2-0 in such games in the Super Bowl year of 2013 when the Seahawks had a weird midseason struggle against the run, allowing 200 and 205 rushing yards in consecutive games against the Rams and Tampa Bay.
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