SEATTLE -- Pulled over his dapper shirt-and-tie combo, Leon Washington proudly wore a blue NFC West division champion T-shirt and hat.

Pete Carroll thought it was "pretty cool" to be going to the playoffs with a losing record.

Make jokes and laugh all you want at the Seattle Seahawks making the postseason as the champions of the weakest division in football, and with a losing record.

But they're not going to be embarrassed for setting some dubious NFL history on their way to the playoffs.

"There is no apologies for making it into the playoffs. The easiest way to make it to the playoffs is to win your division, period, point-blank," Seattle safety Lawyer Milloy said. "We did that."

The Seahawks became the first-sub. 500 division champs on Sunday night with a 16-6 win over the St. Louis Rams to wrap up their first division title since 2007. They secured a home playoff date with defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans on Saturday.

Seattle finished a laughable 7-9 and tied with St. Louis, but won the title thanks to a better division record than St. Louis, 4-2 vs. 3-3.

"I guess we won for all the teams that have a losing record and think they can't be champions. It can get done, you can do it," Carroll said. "Somehow it happened."

Critics have gladly taken shots about the NFC West this season and reignited the debate whether division champs should automatically be granted home playoff games. The New York Giants and Tampa Bay have better records within the NFC at 10-6 and both clubbed Seattle earlier this season.

But it's the Seahawks who are playoff-bound.

"It just shows that no matter what happens through an awkward year if a team sticks together they can have a shot at the end to accomplish what they talked about in the beginning," Milloy said. "We know it wasn't pretty getting here, but what we talked about was right there at the end and we took advantage of it. No body can take that away from us."