Inside the NFL Film Room: What is Wrong With Seattle?

After a Sunday night loss to Arizona, Russell Wilson and the Seahawks find themselves in uncharted waters: Fighting for their playoff lives.

By Joe Parello (@HerewegoJoe)

After back-to-back Super Bowl appearances, including a championship in 2013, Seattle now finds itself against the ropes in both the NFC West and conference at large.

With their loss to division rival Arizona Sunday, the Seahawks now sit at 4-5, a full three games behind the Cardinals (who own the tie-breaker over Seattle, for now) with just seven games to play. Perhaps even more shocking is that, if the season ended today, Seattle would miss the postseason. Seriously, the Seahawks are two games behind current Wild Card leaders Green Bay and Atlanta (both 6-3), and are currently losing conference tie-breakers with Washington, Tampa Bay and St. Louis, who would all be in line for the postseason before Seattle in a log jam of seven teams at 4-5.

So, what's been the major problem for Seattle? When you first look at the stats, it's not that easy to tell. Sure, many will blame the re-modeled offensive line for not protecting quarterback Russell Wilson, but Seattle's sack percentage (the percentage of pass attempts that end with the quarterback getting sacked) sits at 8%, or, right about where it usually is. In fact, Seattle allowed sacks on 8.4% of Wilson's drop backs during its championship season of 2013.

New England's Improbable Super Bowl Win Cements Brady & Belichick's Legacies

By Andy Dougherty (@AndyDougherty)

What a finish to the 2014 NFL season!

The Patriots thought they played the game of the year when they erased two 14-point deficits against the Ravens to reach the AFC Championship Game. Then Seattle outdid them with an improbable comeback against the Packers to book a place in the Super Bowl. But when the Patriots and Seahawks met on Sunday, they managed to produce an even more memorable game that will go down as one of the greatest Super Bowls ever played.

Super Bowl XLVIII Prop Bets

Spin the wheel and pick your favorite Super Bowl prop bets.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

Yesterday, we kicked off our Super Bowl Gambling preview with odds and picks for the player to score the first touchdown. I have more uncertainty surrounding those picks than I ever have before, and I fully expect to lose every penny I (would have) put down (if gambling were legal). The rest of the props, I feel a lot better about. On [insert semi-shady offshore gambling website here].com, there are pages and pages of different prop bets, way too many to list here. In all, there are over 450 different elements of the game you can bet on, up to and including whether or not Broncos' third-string Tight End Virgil Green will receive a pass. So instead of running through all of them (which would take days to write, hours to read, and may even exceed the character limit for a single post), let's only focus on the ones that are worth betting on.

Who Will Score First In The Super Bowl?

Will Marshawn Lynch be the first to score a Touchdown on Sunday?

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

I've nailed the "Who Will Score The First Touchdown?" Super Bowl prop bet in each of the last five Super Bowls, and I can even tell you who the winning players were - Anquan Boldin, Victor Cruz, Jordy Nelson, Pierre Garcon, and The Field (via Gary Russell).

My usual tactic is to identify two players on each team who seem likely to be involved early in the game, but this year that's a far too random proposition to be reliable. Denver has five players who are seemingly always on the field and always a threat - Knowshon Moreno, Demaryius Thomas, Julius Thomas, Eric Decker, and Wes Welker. All five of those players scored at least ten touchdowns in the regular season, and nobody else on the team had more than four. Meanwhile, Seattle has one clear pick - Marshawn Lynch - who scored nine more touchdowns from scrimmage (14) than any other player on the team (five - for Golden Tate, Doug Baldwin, and Zach Miller); after that, there's nobody on the team that has shown a penchant for scoring touchdowns regularly.

Long And Suite Preview: The NFC West

Pete Carroll (left) and Jim Harbaugh (right) already have the most intense coaching rivalry in football, dating back to their days in the Pac 10 (now 12). The stakes are even higher this year, as Carroll's Seahawks and Harbaugh's 49ers might just be the two best teams in the NFL.

 By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin) and Joe Parello (@HerewegoJoe)

The transformation that this division has undergone over the last three years is pretty incredible. In 2010, A Week 17 matchup between the 7-8 Rams and 6-9 Seahawks actually decided which of the two teams would HOST a playoff game the following week. It was pretty embarrassing. Now there’s an argument to be made that it’s the best top-to-bottom division in the league. Even 2012’s last place finisher Arizona had wins over Seattle and New England.