First of all, the east coast teams get more coverage because more people care about those teams. It starts with the basic difference in population. For example, the NFC East is home four of the eight largest metro areas in the United States: New York (1st), Philadelphia (4th), Dallas (5th), and Washington D.C. (8th). By comparison, the NFC West does not have a metro area in the top ten: San Francisco (12th), Phoenix (14th), Seattle (15th), and St. Louis (18th). If you compare the combined populations of the metro areas, the NFC East is home to over 35 million people, while the NFC West fails to top 14 million.
It doesn't hurt that Dallas has been to eight Super Bowls (winning five), Washington has been to five (winning three), the New York Giants have been to three (winning two) and Philadelphia has been to two (zero wins), including a close loss following the 2004 season as well as three straight NFC Championship games prior to that. Given the large metro populations, the history of the teams and the national and regional fan-bases built on that success, the NFC East should get at least three times as much coverage as the NFC West.
The Seattle Seahawks earned some of the lack of respect given by the media as well. Last year, the Seahawks won their first playoff games in 20 years. San Francisco and St. Louis got a lot of attention by the national media when they were making multiple trips to the Super Bowl.
Carolina is not in a major metro area, but they have won six playoff games in the franchise's 11-year history, including three trips to the NFC Championship game and a close loss in the Super Bowl after the 2003 season. It also helps that the Panthers went into New York (the largest market) and handed an embarassing 23-0 loss to the Giants - the team that everyone in those large metro areas watched win the NFC East. De'Shaun Foster had 27 carries for 151 yards in that game, which is a big reason everyone is so high on him.
Will Seattle get more attention if they keep winning and going deep in the playoffs? Of course. It is already starting to happen, but fans cannot expect the team to ever get more coverage than the teams in the largest metro areas because less people care. It will take more than one successful season for writers to forget the 19 seasons that came before.
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