Seahawks Schedule: Predictions for Every Game
By Ben Renner
The Seahawks schedule was released yesterday, and with it… we get to wait five months until the games actually start. To help us wait, I’ve taken the liberty of predicting the outcome of all 16 games.
The Seahawks schedule was released in maddeningly piecemeal fashion yesterday, and with it, speculation and observations abound. The Seahawks will start the season with their third trip to Green Bay in three years to face Aaron Rodgers and the Packers because, well, the Roger Goodell and the NFL schedule makers hate Seattle.
To their credit, however, the NFL powers that be did bestow the Seahawks with the most favorable record in the NFC by their opponents’ 2016 records. Seattle’s opponents in 2017 had a combined .455 winning percentage in 2016, although five of their opponents in 2017 made the playoffs last season.
Let’s run down the schedule, make some predictions, and see where we can expect the Seahawks’s regular season record to stand after 16 games.
Week 1 — at Green Bay Packers, Sunday Sept. 10th 1:25PT, FOX
The Seahawks have lost seven consecutive games at Lambeau Field, including the 38-10 debacle last year. At least we’ll get this annoying annual road trip out of the way early in the year, before the snows descend on eastern Wisconsin for the winter.
Last year, the Packers caught five interceptions from Russell Wilson in what was one of the Seattle quarterback’s worst games of his career. I don’t see that happening again with this date circled on Wilson’s calendar months in advance. It’s just difficult to pick off five passes in a game. Last year, several of those picks came off of deflections, which are by their nature difficult to replicate or predict.
For this Week 1 contest, Rodgers looks human, tossing a couple early interceptions before settling down and nearly leading the Pack on a miracle comeback in the fourth quarter…only to have the final Hail Mary pass swatted down by Richard Sherman, who, despite all the trade rumors and bluster, remains in Seattle.
This feels like a “Mike McCarthy Game” in which the Packers’ head coach makes some kind of coaching blunder to help his team lose. Green Bay chokes in Week 1, but of course rebounds and makes the playoffs as usual.