The Seattle Seahawks come off their bye week to face the Arizona Cardinals on the road in the first game of a stretch of schedule dominated by division rivals.
Divisional games are always unpredictable, but the Seahawks have not been dominant against their division in the past few years, and the NFC West is now widely considered the top division in the NFL.
“I think this is as tough as it gets,” head coach Pete Carroll told reporters. “I don’t know that anybody’s got to play a row of teams like this. A month from now, we’ll have a pretty good feel for how everything’s fit.”
Despite the expected challenges in the weeks ahead, Carroll professed that it is enticing to see the division competitive again and that adds motivation to play every game like the season is on the line.
“It’s exciting to see the division come back around like this,” Carroll explained. “We’ve seen it go kind of up and down over the years, and it always seems to keep coming back strong, and we’re strong again—everybody can play football. Injury factors have entered into some of the play of the teams, and as everybody kind of finds their way gets back to balance, it’s a really difficult schedule for us. So we’ll take them one week at a time, and we’re going to play every one of them like it’s the only game in the world and go for it, and that’s what we’re doing this week.”
It certainly is interesting to see the NFC West stacked again, but it only makes the Seahawks’ margin for error thinner, even at 5-0.
