The Seahawks’ task Saturday in Santa Clara is to do something they have failed at already twice this season — beat the San Francisco 49ers.
And as the Seahawks head south, they do so hoping some tried and true cliches — the third time’s the charm, and that it’s hard to beat a team three times in one season — will apply.
Seattle receiver DK Metcalf seemed to rely in part on that theory when he talked to the media earlier this week.
“It’s our third time playing them so I know it’s going to be hard to beat a team three times,” Metcalf said.
Asked specifically why he thought it would be hard for the 49ers to beat Seattle a third time, Metcalf said: “I’m just saying in general it’s hard to beat anybody three times.”
But is it really hard to beat a team three times in one NFL season?
Unfortunately for the Seahawks, the answer is “not really,” with the Seahawks themselves having once served as evidence.
Since the NFL and AFL merged in 1970, there have been 24 times when a playoff game has featured a matchup where one team beat the other twice.
The team that won the first two games has won the playoff game 14 times.
That includes a record of 6-4 for the team going for the three-game sweep since 2000.
Two of the losses by teams going for sweeps in the playoff have occurred in the past two years — Tampa Bay beating New Orleans in the divisional round in 2020 after the Saints won both regular-season meetings and the Rams beating the 49ers in the NFC title game last season after San Francisco had won both regular-season games (the 49ers carried a six-game winning streak against the Rams into that game).
The Seahawks have been featured in two of the 23 previous playoff games when one team had swept the other in the regular season — in 1983 against the Raiders and in 2004 against the Rams. Once as the sweeper and once as the swept.
Seattle went 0-2 in those two games, results that might help illustrate the danger in relying on past results much.
In 1983, the Seahawks advanced to the AFC title game as a wild card entry with a 9-7 record — a record built in part on 38-36 and 34-21 wins over the then-Los Angeles Raiders, who still had many of the key pieces of the team that had won the Super Bowl three years prior.
But the key to those wins for Seattle was an astounding 13-2 edge in turnovers, including 8-1 in the 38-36 victory, which offset that the Raiders had outgained them substantially in each contest, and by a combined 762-505.
In a regression that maybe should have been anticipated, it was Seattle turning over the ball five times when they met again for the AFC title in L.A., a key as the Raiders won 30-14 to advance to the Super Bowl, which they won over Washington 38-9.
Maybe, you could say, that proves that it’s hard to replicate the formula for beating a team three times, though relying on turnovers is always tricky — and the ‘80s were a different time.
In 2004, the Seahawks hosted the Rams in a wild card game, with Seattle having won the NFC West at 9-7 despite two competitive losses to the then-St. Louis Rams, who had gone 8-8.
The Rams had rallied from a 17-point deficit in the fourth quarter — and in fact, the final 8:42 — to win the first game between the two in overtime, 33-27. They then had built a 17-0 lead against Seattle in the second game and held on to win 23-12.
The Seahawks said all the right things before the playoff rematch about not losing to the Rams again.
“You can’t let the same team beat you that many times in the same year,” safety Ken Lucas was quoted as saying the week of the game. “That’s an embarrassment to us and the organization.”
Consider the Seahawks as having gotten embarrassed as the Rams — in what was their last playoff win for 14 years — beat Seattle 27-20 in a game remembered for Matt Hasselbeck’s fourth-down incompletion to Bobby Engram in the final seconds.
Maybe the Rams were just a little better, or maybe the Seahawks — who hadn’t won a playoff game in 20 years — simply weren’t ready for the big stage.
Or maybe it was just football, and each game is its own story and what happened in the past may not matter much.
After the Raiders beat Seattle in the 1983 AFC title game after losing to the Seahawks twice, L.A. coach Tom Flores was asked what was different about the playoff game than the regular-season matchups.
“The biggest difference is that we were a much better team today,” Flores said.
That’s usually what matters most.