Seahawks slight favorite over Vikings

The Vikings won the last meeting in Minnesota, 35-9, in November 2009.

Zimmer, though, has bigger plans than the North title. “I feel like it’s a great challenge for us”.

Fivethirtyeight.com has the Seahawks at 56 percent to make the playoffs this week, up from 45 percent last week, and has the Seahawks at winning just over nine games, also the highest projection the site has had for Seattle in a while. Only Barry Sanders (25), Jim Brown (22), and Walter Payton (20) are ahead of Peterson, and they are all in the Hall of Fame.

Another part of the recipe is a productive ground game. In the Vikings’ eight wins this season, Peterson has rushed for 1,007 yards on 198 carries and scored six touchdowns.

The Vikings rewarded him with a four-year, $14.8 million contract extension four days before the season opener, and with Adrian Peterson’s return to the backfield, the thoughts were that Wright and the rest of the Vikings’ receivers would find favorable matchups behind defensive fronts committed to stopping the running back.

“Well, I stayed prayed up, that helped me get through it”, Peterson said. “I’ll be able to look at those things after the fact”. Seattle’s rush defense is ranked fifth in the league, allowing an average of 93 yards per game. The big difference is that Atlanta still has two games left with 11-0 Carolina while the Seahawks play three teams who are 4-7 or worse – Baltimore (4-7), Cleveland (2-9), and St. Louis (4-7) along with Minnesota (8-3) and Arizona (9-2).

The 30-year-old running back averaged 127 yards per game and totaled 634 yards and five touchdowns in November. The following November, he gained just 65 yards on 21 carries with no touchdowns as the Seahawks beat Minnesota, again in Seattle, 41-20.

But if the playoffs started today, Seattle would travel to Minnesota for a wild card matchup. He has only two catches for 15 yards on the season. Graham landed awkwardly while trying to catch a pass in the end zone early in the fourth quarter against Pittsburgh, injuring the patellar tendon in his right knee. That means he’s doing exactly what the Vikings need him to do.

“We’ve been growing with him and you expect certain guys to do things and we’ve expected Jimmy to make some plays and do some special things so it will be a little different”, Carroll said.