The brand new Christmas sweater the Seattle Seahawks put on their wish list didn’t get unwrapped Monday night, so now they’ll have to wait six more days to see if they get a gift.
The Seahawks, who stayed in the playoff hunt with a 28-10 win over Arizona on Sunday, could have taken hold of their own playoff destiny had Rick Mirer and the Oakland Raiders knocked off Green Bay on Monday.
The Packers’ 41-7 victory leaves them tied with Seattle and Minnesota, all at 9-6, in the hunt for the final wild card spot. Either Green Bay or Minnesota will win the NFC North, while the other team holds the tiebreaker in any potential wild-card dead heat with Seattle.
“Obviously, you want to be able to control your own destiny. But we can only do what we can do,” Seahawks guard Steve Hutchinson said after the win over Arizona.
Heading into Saturday’s road game against the San Francisco 49ers (7-8), the Seahawks know that they have to win to have any shot of making the playoffs. In addition to a Seattle victory, either Green Bay or Minnesota, or both, has to lose on Sunday.
A more complicated scenario would involve all three teams winning over the weekend, the 10-5 Dallas Cowboys losing on Sunday, and a few other results around the NFL altering the opponents’ winning percentages of Dallas, Seattle and Green Bay so that the Seahawks and one other team would win out in a three-way tie.
Green Bay and Minnesota could clinch Saturday if San Francisco wins, thereby knocking Seattle out of playoff contention. With a win-or-miss-the-postseason ultimatum hanging over the Seahawks’ head, they won’t be lacking motivation heading into the season finale.
“It’s definitely going to be a playoff atmosphere,” linebacker Anthony Simmons said. “Everyone knows we’ve got to win this game just to get a shot. We don’t know what’s going to happen – it may work out for us, and it may not work out for us. But right now we’re going to take this game as a must-win game because we have to win it.”
The Seahawks knocked off San Francisco 20-19 at home in October, but the 49ers have gone 5-4 since then, including four victories at home. The 49ers have a 6-1 record at 3Com Park, where only Cleveland (a 13-12 loss in Week 3) has beaten them this year.
The 49ers’ most impressive victory of the year came Sunday, when won a road game at Philadelphia despite losing star wide receiver Terrell Owens to a broken collarbone in the first half.
The Seahawks, meanwhile, are winless in their lasts six home games. So before they can even think about getting help from either Denver (at Green Bay) or Arizona (hosting Minnesota), Seattle has to take care of its own business on the road.
“We just need someone to win,” running back Shaun Alexander said. “But first things first: we have to go have a great game in San Francisco.”
The Packers, Vikings and Cowboys weren’t in a giving mood over the past three days, yet one of them could very well trip up this weekend. That would put the Seahawks in position to make their first postseason appearance since 1999.
If, that is, they can take care of business in San Francisco.
“We have to win that, and then we’ve done what we could do, and then hopefully it will work out for us,” coach Mike Holmgren said. “Our playoff season starts (Saturday). It’s sudden death, and we have to do it.”
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