Mike Celizic

There aren’t many places in the NFL where a team can lose three out of four games and still be in first place, and the Seattle Seahawks have to be darned glad they inhabit one of them.

Look at the Steelers, the team that beat Seattle in the Super Bowl just last February. They’re stuck in the AFC North with the Ravens and Bengals, tied with Cleveland for last place at 2-6 with as much chance of defending their title as Borat has of getting a rave review in the Kazakhstan Tribune.

By comparison, the 5-3 Seahawks are in better shape than Scarlett Johansson. Like the Steelers, they’ve had an injured quarterback, with Matt Hasselbeck out of action instead of merely missing in action, as Ben Roethlisberger has been. They’re also without the reigning MVP, running back Shaun Alexander.

And, yet, while the Steelers have been awful, the Seahawks have been just good enough to maintain top billing in the woeful NFC West.

They took sole possession of first place Monday night by virtue of a 16-0 victory over the Raiders. It wasn’t a thing of beauty or a game that kept you up past your bedtime, but it was the kind of win over an inferior opponent teams that want to play in January have to win. The Steelers fell to the same Raiders last week and that pretty much sums up what has happened to last year’s Super Bowl teams.

Both teams have had devastating injuries, but the Seahawks have managed not to totally lose their composure, while the Steelers have played the game as if they’re the reincarnation of the 1950s version of themselves.

You can give either credit or blame to the annual ebb and flow of fortune. For the Seahawks, being forced to share a division with the woeful 49ers, the terminally deceased Cardinals and the thoroughly middling Rams is payback for all the years Seattle had to try to climb into the playoffs over the backs of the 49ers’ old dynasty and the great Rams teams in the last ‘90s and early ’00s.

In those days, there was no hope of winning the division, and with all the great teams elsewhere in the NFC, not much of a shot of picking up even a wild card.

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So if the NFC West has become the NFC’s crud-factory, you can’t blame Seattle for not apologizing for getting closer to the playoffs simply by throwing uniforms on 53 guys and showing up at the stadium every week. If the Steelers have to put up with tougher opposition, it’s not Seattle’s problem.