Will Seattle Seahawks stop a Carolina Panthers upset? – NFL Playoff Predictions 2015
By Dan Salem
Will the Seattle Seahawks stop a Carolina Panthers Divisional Round upset? NFL Playoff predictions 2015 goes wild as the defending champions take on a team with a losing record and a lot of mojo. Dan Salem and Todd Salem debate in today’s NFL TD Sports Debate. Two brothers from New York yell, scream and debate the NFL and sports.
DAN:
This Divisional round match up perplexes me. The Seattle Seahawks are defending champions and appeared at the top of their game at the end of the regular season. The Carolina Panthers muddled in obscurity for three quarters of the season, before finding themselves and winning their division. After handling what was once a dominant Arizona team, do we have ourselves a game?
I know your feelings on the Arizona Cardinals, but even you would have placed them ahead of Carolina. Yet the Panthers handled Arizona, and looked like a team reborn in the process. Cam Newton and the Panthers have a chip on their shoulder, stemming from the “Nobody believes in us” factor and their below .500 record, and I like it!
I’m getting scared. Because Seattle had a week off and because the Panthers look good again, I’m finding it easy to talk myself into a Carolina victory here. Conventional wisdom says it’s the Seahawks at home; no way they lose this game. But conventional wisdom also had the Panthers sitting at home this postseason, if not losing to Arizona at the very least.
I’m calling the upset. The Panthers do enough to stop the Seahawks’ running game, forcing them to win through the air. That’s not their game plan, holding Seattle to less than three scores. The flip side is Carolina’s offense, which will need to play out of its mind to overcome the top unit in the NFL. Defending Super Bowl champions rarely prosper in the playoffs the following season. Look for an upset to roll through the Pacific Northwest this weekend.
Carolina 17 – Seattle 14
TODD:
You are all out of sorts in regards to this game.
First, nobody thought/thinks Carolina is any good, but everybody believed in them in the wildcard round against Arizona. The Panthers were a touchdown favorite even with that 7-8-1 record. With Arizona putting up the ugliest offensive performance in postseason history, the line seemed warranted even though Carolina itself looked awful at times.
Which brings me to the Seattle game. I know the NFL is super weird and impossible to predict, but I refuse to believe that the fact that nobody believes in a team is reason enough to think they will win. You know why nobody believes in Carolina? Because they stink!
Granted, the defense has been superb compared to where it was earlier in the year. Combined with the Seahawks’ sketchy offensive performances lately, this is likely a low-scoring game, which makes your narrative at least possible albeit not plausible.
You know who has problems winning through the air? Carolina. Cam Newton completed fewer than 60 percent of his passes this season and continued that trend in round one. Kelvin Benjamin‘s awesome talents are only outweighed by his proclivity for dropping easy catches. Seattle may lack upside on the outside, but at least there is reliability there.
You can have the team that nobody believes in. Give me the top seed, with Russell Wilson, at home, playing the best defense in the NFL these days.
Seattle 20 – Carolina 6