Seahawks must have a '#1 Goal'

Seahawks request Dan Quinn, 3 others for HC interview, but are they shooting high enough? Seaside Joe 1779

The Seattle Seahawks have put in interview requests with Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, Dolphins offensive coordinator Frank Smith, Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris, and Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero. Quinn is the most expected name in the league to get a request from the Seahawks, but is he the best?

With the wild card playoffs signaling that another season is almost over, it has me thinking about just how important it is for the Seahawks to get this decision right…but also to change their mentality back to being the best of the best.

Every year, there are 272 regular season games and 13 playoff games.

I think we can all agree that the NFL has determined that every season a champion will be decided by the practice of playing football games. Makes sense.

But we treat it as though the postseason matters way more than what happens before it—understandably, as you can’t lose a playoff game and also win the Super Bowl—despite the fact that the regular season comprises 95.4% of those contests used to determine an ultimate winner.

With that knowledge, the playoffs now look like a ‘Next Rest Area - 70 Miles’ sign when you’ve already been holding it in for the past 30 minutes.

When I thought about that number—only 13 playoffs games—the “quick stop” of the postseason tourney seemed almost inconsequential compared to the full season journey…and so far in the distance that it’s probably gonna be too late by the time that you get there anyway.

It’s not lost on me that a team can make the playoffs as a wild card and win the Super Bowl, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded how rare that is compared to number one seeds and division winners. The only wild card to make the Super Bowl in the last 12 years is the 2020 Bucs, a team quarterbacked by a seven-time Super Bowl champion.

Of those 24 Super Bowl teams since 2011, that makes:

• 14 #1 seeds

• 5 #2 seeds

• 0 #3 seeds

• 4 #4 seeds

• 1 #5 seeds

• 0 #6 seeds

• 0 #7 seeds

Then in 2010, you had another anomaly with the six-seed Packers beating the Steelers, who had been the two-seed in the AFC, which back then meant you got a bye week.

It seems almost unfair to let a champion be determined by the playoffs when you consider that it is a single-elimination tournament that makes up less than 5% of all the games, until you see that the top-ranked teams in the regular season consistently DO make it to the Super Bowl.

With that in mind, the Seattle Seahawks need to have a mentality of being the most dominant team in the NFL again when searching for the next head coach and preparing for the upcoming offseason transactions. They can’t just hope to “get back to the playoffs and compete”.

No.