No longer controlling their own destiny after losing two games earlier this month to NFC North foes, Saturday could not have gone much worse for the Seattle Seahawks in regard to their playoff aspirations.

To ensure next weekend’s rematch with the Rams would be an NFC West title game, the Seahawks needed their rivals to lose to the Cardinals on Saturday night. Unfortunately, however, a last gasp effort by Kyler Murray and Arizona to steal the game came up short when cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon intercepted the quarterback after an end zone throw bounced off of tight end Trey McBride’s helmet to secure a 13-9 win.

With Los Angeles improving to 10-6 and Seattle being 9-7, the two teams would be knotted up on five tiebreakers next week, making strength of victory the metric that will decide who wins the NFC West. But the Seahawks went into Saturday trailing the Rams by nine games in that category and the Broncos failed to help by losing 30-24 to the Bengals in overtime, making the odds of closing that gap even more improbable.

Going into Sunday, the Rams find themselves in an ideal situation, as they need only 2.5 combined wins from the Bills, Browns, Vikings, Commanders, and 49ers to clinch the division. If three of the teams in the early slate win, the result of the Lions/49ers game on Monday Night Football won’t even matter. As for Geno Smith and the Seahawks, to simply stay alive going into Week 18, they will need four wins to come from the Packers, Jets, Falcons, Dolphins, and Lions out of five games on Sunday.

If that manages to happen, the Seahawks still would need major help next week along with beating the Rams at SoFi Stadium, as winning their own game would still force the strength of victory tiebreaker to be used. They would need a bunch of games to go their way with the Bears, Broncos, Cardinals, Dolphins, Falcons, Lions, and Patriots holding serve in the final week to boost their strength of victory rate and hurt the Rams in that department.

In other words, Seattle may still have a shot at winning the NFC West, but it’s entering Lloyd Christmas territory in terms of probability with razor thin margin for error. So you’re saying there’s a chance? Yes, but it’s going to require so many dominos to fall their way starting on Sunday afternoon that such a result would be a major miracle if it happened.

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