Seahawks’ path to a Super Bowl win isn’t easy, but it’s possible

The road to the Super Bowl is never easy.

It’s even more difficult when it includes three straight road games.

That’s the gauntlet that Seattle will have to run through if it is going to become the third franchise in NFL history to reach the Super Bowl in three successive seasons. It’s also a run that has been accomplished with more frequency over the past decade.

Since the NFL playoffs expanded to a 12-team field in 1990, there have been five teams that entered the postseason as a wild card and went on to win the Super Bowl: Denver (1997), Baltimore (2000), Pittsburgh (2005), the New York Giants (2007) and Green Bay (2010).

The fact that three of those five wild-card champions have occurred in the past 10 years tells you it has become more common, but even that doesn’t tell the whole story.

No. 5 and No. 6 seeds playoff records
	1990-2004	2005-2014
Wins	20	31
Losses	60	37
Win percentage	.250	.456
Super Bowl wins	0	3

From 1990 through 2001, there were actually three wild-card entries in each conference as the NFL was still divided into a total of six divisions. That meant that the top wild-card entry would be seeded No. 4 and would host the fifth-seeded team in the wild-card round of the playoffs.

Both the 1997 Broncos and 2000 Ravens were seeded No. 4, meaning they hosted their wild-card playoff game before going on the road the following two weeks.

So from 1990 to 2004, no team won three consecutive playoff road games to reach and then win the Super Bowl yet it has happened three times in the past 10 years alone. That should be at least a little encouraging for Seattle.

Over the past 10 years, the No. 5 and No. 6 seeds in the playoffs have been almost twice as likely to win the Super Bowl as they were over the previous 15 seasons.