Seahawks piling up wins - and injuries

Yep, the Seahawks can still win the NFC West.

The prize would be home field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.

What’s more, the two games the Hawks must negotiate — against Arizona and then the fearsome 49ers — will be at home in Seattle.

That’s convenient, because at the rate the Seahawks are losing players to injury, one of you 12s may wind up starting at linebacker.

“Hi, K.J., I’m Joe, a plumber from Montana. Where do I line up?”

Bring your shoulder pads to the games, folks, and maybe lift a few weights for the next couple of weeks.

I haven’t checked every roster, but I’ll make a damn good guess that no NFL team is as battered as Seattle right now.

The Hawks opened Sunday’s 30-24 win at Carolina without four defensive starters — ends Jadaveon Clowney and Ziggy Ansah, cornerback Shaquill Griffin and linebacker Mychal Kendricks.

By the time they’d settled in for the flight home, two more players had been added to that defensive casualty list, safety Quandre Diggs and middle linebacker Bobby Wagner.

Diggs and Wagner both suffered ankle injuries.

We don’t yet know the seriousness level…but I’m pretty sure about the panic level.

THE HAWKS got out of Charlotte with a victory almost entirely because the Panthers defense couldn’t stop a 1937 Ford — not even with four or five guys yanking on the handbrake.

Russell Wilson carved up a terrible secondary with TD passes to Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf (who fought off a cornerback who looked like his little brother), and was the beneficiary of a phenomenal catch by Josh Gordon.

The word on Gordon is that he has the strongest hands in the league, and after that long, over-the-shoulder bomb on which he laid out, then grabbed the ball with little more than his fingernails on the laces, uh…

I’ll go out on a limb and say it reinforced the tale about Josh’s mitts.

And then…

When things got tight at the end, the Seahawks ran out the clock — despite two holding penalties — with Chris Carson (133 yards rushing) simply trampling the exhausted Panthers and Wilson producing some of his usual third-down magic with a throw on the run to Lockett.

Oh, and it helped that Carolina QB Kyle Allen found three Seahawks open enough to hit them in stride.

Allen only avoided another calamity when Ugo Amadi couldn’t quite hold what would have been a pick-six.

Bottom line, the Seahawks had to get out of sunny Charlotte with a win to go 11-3, and to hell with any style points.

BUT LET’S not kid ourselves.

The makeshift defense that Carolina nailed for two touchdowns in the last few minutes is not going to take the Seahawks roaring into the playoffs.

Yeah, I know, they were playing a pillow-soft zone.

Still…

It seemed like you could only spot a couple of true Seattle playmakers anywhere on the field.

And remember, even at full strength this Seahawk defense is ranked near the bottom of the league in more categories than you want to count.

We’ve got a pretty simple equation here.

Maybe, just maybe, the Seahawks can outlast Arizona with a defense full of backups next week.

But after that comes the showdown with the 49ers, and Seattle would need its full No. 1 defense playing out of its mind to win that game.

THERE ARE lots of stories about guys coming out of nowhere to star in amazing playoff runs.

Green Bay got famous for using the phrase “Next man up!” after a rash of injuries hit the team in 2010 — and then saw James Starks, a sixth-round draft pick who had spent the entire year on the Physically Unable to Perform list, get healthy in time to run wild in the playoffs and help haul the Pack to a Super Bowl win over Pittsburgh.

Starks went from total unknown to Green Bay legend in just a few weeks.

But please remember that these stories of sudden heroes are very, very rare in the unforgiving NFL.

Also, it’s worth noting that the Pack’s injuries that year didn’t all hit the same area — not quite like canyon into which the Seattle defense has tumbled all together.

Look, games late in the year generally are won by teams with the best players.

And at the moment, six of Seattle’s best defensive players are hurt. Recall that the list includes Wagner, the unquestioned leader.

So here’s reality…

The Seahawks have to get that entire defense back on the field — just to have a fighting chance.

I don’t see much rehab time, either.

Do you?

Email: [email protected]

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball each Tuesday.