3 road playoff wins to Super Bowl? Why Seahawks think they are equipped to beat long odds
K.J. Wright looked up from his locker with a knowing nod.
No need to tell the longest-tenured Seahawk that what his fifth-seeded playoff team is trying to do this month beginning Sunday in Philadelphia is rare.
“Aren’t the Giants the last team to do it?” Wright asked Thursday.
Wright is right.
The 2007 New York Giants are the only No. 5 seed to make the Super Bowl by winning three straight road playoff games beginning in the wild-card round. That is since the NFL in 1990 expanded to the current, 12-team playoff format with two wild cards in each conference.
Even the sixth and final playoff seed has had twice times as many Super Bowl appearances: the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers that beat Seattle in Super Bowl 40, and the 2010 Green Bay Packers.
There have been 532 playoff teams from the 1970 NFL-AFL merger that established wild cards for the first time through last February’s Super Bowl. Only 10 wild cards among those 532 postseason teams in the last 50 years have played in a Super Bowl.
Those are the odds in the Seahawks’ way to Super Bowl 54 in Miami.
“We’re fired up to get going, get started,” coach Pete Carroll said. “The prep, we’re looking forward to. We understand what this trip calls for. ...
“We’ll have to see what happens, but we’re looking forward to this for sure. We’ve been waiting to be in the playoffs. We’re ready to go.”
This long playoff road is the cost of the Seahawks losing their final two home games, to Arizona and to San Francisco. Those defeats took away Seattle’s realistic hope of at least the No. 2 seed, a home playoff game and having this first playoff weekend off.
Teams with a first-round bye have advanced to the Super Bowl 79.3 percent of the time since 1990.
There hasn’t been a team that played in the first, wild-card weekend of the NFL playoffs reach the Super Bowl since 2013.
What makes these Seahawks think they are equipped to do the improbable?
Start with their 7-1 record on the road this regular season. It was the best road mark in franchise history.
Then consider two of those wins were in back-to-back games in November, at San Francisco and at Philadelphia. If the Seahawks beat the underdog, battered Eagles on Sunday they most likely will play the 49ers in Santa Clara, Calif., Jan. 11 in the NFC divisional playoffs.
Quarterback Russell Wilson is tied with Tom Brady as the winningest quarterback in a player’s first eight seasons in NFL history (86 victories). Wilson has proven his magic, home and away, of pulling out games the Seahawks sometimes have no business winning.
Plus, Seattle is in the playoffs for the seventh time in the last eight Januarys.
That’s why Wright, Wilson, All-Pro linbacker Bobby Wagner and running back Marshawn Lynch, the players on the active roster who have played in Super Bowls with Seattle, think those wild-card odds aren’t as long for the Seahawks as history says they are.
“I think our history throughout this season winning on the road is really good,” Wright said.
“I believe that when you’ve got Russell back there quarterbacking you’ve got a great chance of winning.
“We know what it is. We know what’s at stake. It won’t be easy. All games are hard in the NFL, as you can tell. But we’ll just see how it plays out. We get a ball or two to go our way, some good things will happen.”
There’s another reassuring factor for this particular Seahawks team: It is the first since the 1978 Houston Oilers to win 10 games decided by one score. Ten of Seattle’s 11 wins, plus two of their five losses—13 of its 16 games—have been within one score.
“Yeah, we’ve had a lot of close ones this year, but we’ve won a lot of them,” Wilson said. “To be able to win games when they’re close at the end of the game and having that confidence that we can, that we will, that’s a great feeling. I think that we’ve had that across the board all season.”
Wilson thinks the Eagles, and every other potential playoff foe this month, is well aware of the Seahawks’ recent and more distant histories of winning.
“We want to be able to establish that, to have that silent confidence and poise. I think, hopefully, other teams feel that, too,” he said. “That’s the reality. I think everybody who’s watching, they feel like, ‘Uh oh.’
“I think that’s just through experience and us being able to accomplish a lot of those wins and to find ways to do it throughout the whole time that we’ve been here. It’s been special, but it doesn’t mean anything. Right now, it just means one game. We got to win one game. That’s the focus, but hopefully we can use that experience and use that knowledge and understanding that confidence to hopefully help us win it.”
There is another factor the Seahawks believe is in their favor for these playoffs, an intangible that becomes very tangible on the road and in tense games. Carroll has been talking since May how this season’s team is uniquely bonded, with a supremely common motivation and willingness for each other without the cliques of past teams.
Many inside the locker room cite the closeness of this team for the 7-1 road record.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s been some small locker rooms that makes us closer,” Wagner joked.
“We’ve just been able to come together on the road. I’ve always thought it was a very fun environment when it’s just your group in the stadium that wants you to win, and everybody else is rooting against you. When you’re able to quiet 70,000 people—or however many people—that’s a pretty fun experience.”
This story was originally published January 2, 2020 at 4:09 PM.
