By Bob Condotta / The Seattle Times
DETROIT — Now we begin to really find out what the Seattle Seahawks are made of.
The Seahawks pretty much did what they needed to in the first six games of the season, getting in position to be in position, as coaches often say, which was no small feat after an 0-2 start.
Seattle rallied from that sordid beginning to get to 3-3 heading into its bye and right smack in the middle of the playoff mix in the NFC.
Not that there isn’t a lot of company there.
Eight teams in the NFC this week have exactly three wins, and only three of 16 teams in the conference seem out of it — the 49ers, Giants and Cardinals, all 1-6
Conversely, only one team seems assured a playoff spot — the 7-0 Rams.
That leaves what the NFL wants — a crowded and likely chaotic race for the rest of the NFC playoff spots the rest of the regular season, 12 other teams besides the four mentioned above all thinking they have as good a shot as anyone else in the conference for a postseason berth.
Where Seattle stands at the end of the season could well be determined by the next five games, a stretch that begins with Sunday’s 10 a.m. kickoff at Detroit.
In fact, the season now appears to be breaking into three pretty distinct parts — a challenging beginning, a murder’s row middle and a soft landing.
Consider that Seattle’s first six opponents have a current record of 18-22 with only one team, the Rams, having a winning record.
The next five opponents, beginning with Detroit on Sunday, currently have a combined record of 22-9-1 with all but one having a winning record, the 3-3 Lions (the others are the Rams again, the 5-2 Chargers, 4-2 Panthers and 3-2-1 Packers).
If the Seahawks can get through that stretch with at least three wins, then the final month sets up well — four home games in December with the only trip to San Francisco and five games against teams that are currently a combined 13-21-1 and only two games against teams with winning records (the 6-1 Chiefs and the 4-2-1 Vikings, which at least are each at home).
Get through November with six wins, then win the two against the 49ers and the one against the Cardinals in December, and win one of the two home games against the Vikings and Chiefs, and there you go — 10 wins and a likely playoff spot.
But to get to that, the Seahawks have to take care of business over the next month in which four games — all but the return visit against the Rams, in which the home team figures to be a 7- to 9-point favorite or so — appear as tossups.
That includes Sunday’s game against Detroit, which a few weeks ago loomed as one of the least interesting matchups on Seattle’s schedule save for a reunion with three popular former Seahawks who were part of the 2013 Super Bowl team — Golden Tate, Luke Willson and DeShawn Shead.
But as Seattle dug itself out of an 0-2 hole, so too has Detroit under first-year coach Matt Patricia, the well-bearded, pencil-equipped former New England defensive coordinator.
When the Lions were 0-2, stories were already littering national NFL sites that Detroit players were rebelling against Patricia’s Belichick-ian ways.
Instead, right as disaster already appeared looming, something suddenly clicked and Detroit has shown the best running attack it has in years behind rookie Kerryon Johnson to combine with the always dangerous Matthew Stafford-and-Tate-powered passing attack to score 26 or more points in each of the past four games, including wins over the Patriots and Packers.
Seattle will counter Sunday with a defense that has held three of its past four opponents to 17 points or less — despite the loss of Earl Thomas along the way — as well as re-establishing its own running game.
But if the secondary has been a surprise so far — at least to those who figured it would collapse without any founding members of the Legion of Boom — we are about to find out how authentic its re-emergence really is.
Not only does the Detroit game begin a stretch of five in a row against winning or at least .500 teams but also a stretch of facing five of the best QBs in the game — Stafford, Philip Rivers, Jared Goff, Aaron Rodgers and Cam Newton.
Seattle coach Pete Carroll one-game-at-a-timed-it this week when asked about the stretch of games coming up, but noted that this is also the fifth time in seven games to start the year the Seahawks have gone on the road — another reason a win against the Lions could prove so pivotal.
“If we can get a game here and win one against these guys, it’s going to be a really good statement for us that we’ve again gone on the road and played another good football game,” Carroll said Friday. “We have our expectations very high. We realize it’s going to be very difficult. Coming out of it, it will be a really good accomplishment because of the makeup of their team.”
A 4-3 record with what would technically be three road wins and now having six of nine at home?
There would still be a long road to go to get to the playoffs. But it would be a heck of a lot easier to see a clear path.
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