Super Bowl for Seahawks no More or Less Tough

Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks finish a strong pre-season

Sports Illustrated Peter King speaks with conventional wisdom here (i.e., drawing on history) - Why the NFL’s Best Team Won’t Win the Super Bowl - but it's based on flawed logic.

In general, of course, it's tough for any team in any sport to win a championship. But unlike other major sports, football has one of the longest off-seasons (7-8 months). So removing the argument of wear-and-tear from a deep run in the playoffs, the Seahawks have just as good a chance to win the Super Bowl this year, as they did last year. In other words, just because they won it all last year, it doesn't make it any tougher, or less tough, to win it this year.

But the question remains: Will they win this year? The real answer is: No one knows. Moreover, no one knows that they won't, either (rf. King's flawed logic). But that said, here's another argument: Like any team going into a post-Super Bowl season, the Seahawks have a very effective, very recent "template" for winning. No other team in the NFL has that effective, recent template at their disposal. Can they apply it again this year? Of course they can! The challenge is how they adjust and strengthen that template for a new season, where the elite teams will be gunning for their backs.

By the way, the Ravens underwent way too many changes in their team, and it was too much for them to adjust their Super Bowl template. So they fell easily by the wayside in 2013-2014.

The Seahawks looked pretty strong in the preseason. In that last game, for example, Russell Wilson & Co. made the 2014 Bears defense (so far) look like the 2013 Bears defense. So with their proven template firmly on hand, I'd say they are an odds-on favorite to win this year.

Any team trying to repeat has a hard time, as for many teams playing them their game against Seattle will be their superbowl game, every opponent Seattle has will have their game against them marked well in advance, so dificult to repeat. 

Yep, I think teams will be very motivated to play the Seahawks, but whether they will actually beat the champs is another matter altogether. Again the challenge for the Seahawks is to elevate their game accordingly, which means adjusting and strengthening their championship template. It'll definitely be tough for them to win it all this year, but it'll no more or less so than winning it all last year.