THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Sunday, December 27, 2015

• The Seattle Seahawks will be the team to beat in the NFL playoffs.

What? A wild-card team that started 2-4?

Yes, but since then, Seattle has won 7 of 8, including five in a row. And their defense, which looked ordinary earlier in the season, now is looking like a unit that produced five Pro Bowl picks this season.

Now, whether they actually get the opportunity to play in the game is another question — they’d rather be gearing up for their third straight trip to the Super Bowl. Sure, they’ve lost Jimmy Graham and Thomas Rawls for the season, and Marshawn Lynch has missed a chunk of the year, but Russell Wilson covers up for all of that. His so-called “pedestrian” receivers seem to find a way to get wide open a lot, which means either a) they are sandbaggers, b) their coaches do a great job of scheming so they end up open, or c) all of the above.

Meanwhile the teams ahead of them, for the most part, keep getting banged up. Cincinnati and Denver lost their starting quarterbacks, Carson Palmer always seems one hit away from that Arizona offense being totally different, and Green Bay lost three in a row, and four of five, in the middle of the season.

New England is deep into rent-a-back mode, but still has Tom Brady, so ... see Russell Wilson above. Carolina is unbeaten and fairly unscathed — but also unfamiliar with being the top dog.

So for those bandwagoners bemoaning the Seahawks earlier this season, please — the team you follow could be in a lot worse shape than that.

• Gonzaga will once again storm through an overmatched West Coast Conference, and enter the NCAA Tournament with lots of momentum ... and lots of questions.

Last year was the exception — Gonzaga, with senior guards and talented bigs, was lauded as a Final Four team and nearly made it, losing to eventual national champion Duke in the Elite Eight.

Perhaps it’s a sign of how high the Zags have raised the bar, but home losses to Arizona and UCLA, and an almost-loss at home to Montana, and all of a sudden their talented new guards were too young.

But the reality is, when you play good teams — even at home — there’s a chance you can lose.

For the next two months, the Zags figure to face little resistance from the WCC. They might not steamroll everyone like they did Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount this week. But other than BYU, and maybe — maybe? — Saint Mary’s, there will be few roadblocks until March.

• The Idaho Vandals will go bowling for the first time since 2009.

The Vandals had a chance to do that this year, but coughed up two huge leads on the road in the fourth quarter on successive weeks, turning a potential 6-6 season into a 4-8 record — which still marked the most wins by Idaho in a season since 2010.

With nearly all of their offensive starters back, and roughly half of their defensive starters returning, the Vandals should be able to continue that momentum into 2016. Plus, with so many bowls this year that they needed some 5-7 teams to fill them, there should be enough room for Idaho if it comes in at 6-6 again. Though geographically, the Sun Belt Conference is a terrible fit for the Vandals, competition-wise, it’s a good fit.

Meanwhile, predicting their former rivals, Boise State, will go to a bowl isn’t exactly going out on a limb — the Broncos have done it 14 straight years now.

Watching Boise State destroy Northern Illinois in the Poinsettia Bowl before an estimated 40,000 empty chairs the other day, you wonder how the Broncos managed to lose four games this season, all of them to fairly run-of-the-mill teams. They just have way too many talented players — especially at that level — than their opponents.

Usually, Boise State is to the Mountain West in football as Gonzaga is to the WCC in men’s hoops.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.