Seahawks’ challenge: Only two No. 6 seeds have ever won a Super Bowl

This opportunity for the Seahawks to be special is now extra special.

Throughout its uneven season, Seattle has alluded to its goal of becoming special. Since spring minicamps, this team has kept on its mind the chance to become the first team since 1994 to play in three consecutive Super Bowls.

“We’re doing things that have really been unprecedented,” is how Darrell Bevell, Seattle’s offensive coordinator, put it last month at the height of his offense’s record-setting surge in yards, points and passing.

But poor pass protection and miscommunication defending the pass caused 2-4 and 4-5 starts to this season. Those not-so-special months of September and October are why the Seahawks (10-6) need to win three consecutive road playoff games to reach that goal of a third consecutive Super Bowl; they had the conference’s top seed and home-field advantage throughout the previous two postseasons.

Playoff road test No. 1 is Sunday at frigid TCF Bank Stadium against NFC North-champion Minnesota (11-5).

Over the next three weekends, Seattle is going to have to win more road playoff games than it has in the franchise’s 40-year history. The Seahawks have won two postseason games on the road: Jan. 6, 2013, at Washington and Dec. 31, 1983, at Miami.

It’s just one of many extra-special tasks for this edition of the Seahawks.

Seattle is this postseason’s sixth seed in the NFC, the conference’s second wild card. Since the league expanded the playoffs to six teams in each conference in 1990, sixth seeds have won 28 of 76 postseason games (a success rate of 37 percent). Sixth seeds have won multiple games in the same playoffs only four times in those 25 years (2005, ’08, ’10, ’13).

Only two teams seeded sixth have won the Super Bowl: The 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers, who beat the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL, and the 2010 Green Bay Packers, who beat the Steelers in that season’s ultimate game.

All-time, only four teams have won three consecutive postseason road games to reach the Super Bowl: those 2010 Packers, the ’07 New York Giants (as a fifth seed), those ’05 Steelers and the fifth-seeded, 1985 New England Patriots.

To which these playoff-tested Seahawks smile and say: Bring it on.

“We embrace this, for sure,” Pro Bowl middle linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “We feel like this is going to be fun.

“The first two (Super Bowl) years we had home-field advantage. This year is definitely something different. And we are going to embrace it. We look forward to it. We’ve had a lot of good games on the road, a lot of good victories on the road. I think we are ready for it.”

Wagner then brought up the difference between home and away games for Seattle’s defense, which this regular season became the first since the 1953-57 Cleveland Browns to lead the NFL in fewest points allowed for a fourth consecutive season.

It’s what the Seahawks think is a prime reason they’ve won five consecutive road games while allowing an average of 6.8 points in them. They’ve surrendered only one offensive touchdown in their last five away games.

That includes Dec. 6 at Minnesota, when Seattle held NFL rushing champion Adrian Peterson to his season-low of 18 yards on eight carries in a 38-7 rout of the Vikings. In the last month Seattle has won on the road by a combined 74-13 over two of the four division champions, at Minnesota and at Arizona.

That’s why the Seahawks are a five-point favorite against the Vikings on Sunday, one of the largest favorites as a sixth seed in NFL playoff history.

“I think defensively it’s going to be easier for people to communicate,” Wagner said of playing away from the Seahawks’ earsplitting CenturyLink Field. “That’s going to make everything for us quicker and easier (this postseason).”

This road dominance, starting with the 20-3 crunching in late October of the 49ers in Santa Clara, California — site of next month’s Super Bowl 50, by the way — spanned the Seahawks losing at home on Nov. 15 to the Cardinals. That essentially ended the Seahawks’ chances of winning the NFC West for a third consecutive season.

So Seattle got into a pack-your-bags state of mind for these playoffs long ago. The Seahawks showed it last weekend. They thrashed Arizona on its home field, 36-6, despite both teams already having playoff spots clinched.

“Weeks back, you could see it kind of coming. So we’ve been setting our sights on preparing to get really right on the road, so that we can max out our opportunities when they come,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “So we’re looking in that regard, yeah, really excited about doing it.

“We know what it’s like to do it when you have a bye and you’re playing at home, and you have two games to win. That’s a pretty good shot.

“This is different. It’s more challenging. There’s three games to get through it … so we’ll see.”

They’ll see it with Marshawn Lynch still out. The lead running back, who hasn’t played since that loss to Arizona nearly two months ago, decided on Friday as the team was leaving for Minneapolis that he would be unable to play Sunday.

That surprised the team, given he had practiced fully all last week and Carroll has said the Seahawks were “very optimistic” he’d be full go for the Vikings. Lynch had abdominal surgery on Nov. 25 and rehabilitated for all of December with his personal trainers in the Bay Area.

Now backup Christine Michael, not Lynch, will get what Bevell said will be a full workload of perhaps 20 or more carries Sunday.

Those will come against a Vikings defense that will have four key defenders back from injuries, all of whom missed the Seattle game last month.

That running game, and the Seahawks’ defenders staying patiently in their assigned gaps against Peterson, as they did so decisively last month, will likely be the determining factors in this playoff game.

The temperature is forecast to be near zero for the kickoff Sunday, with a wind-chill factor of near 10 below.

That could make this the coldest Vikings home game since 1972, at old Metropolitan Stadium. Only nine NFL games have been played when the temperature didn’t get above zero.

The cold will likely turn footballs into rocks. Harder to throw, catch and kick — but not to run with.

Historic cold? Just another (ice) chip to put on the shoulders of a Seahawks team already set on doing what record books say probably can’t be done.

“It’s going to be a great challenge, but I think we are poised for this situation,” Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett said. “We are a team that’s got a lot of older guys. I think our team is ready.

“We’ve already been through it (to the Super Bowl) one way. Why not try another way?”

This story was originally published January 9, 2016 at 9:58 PM with the headline "Seahawks’ challenge: Only two No. 6 seeds have ever won a Super Bowl."