Seahawks defensive grades vs. Lions: Jarran Reed imposes his will

The Seahawks defense gave up little to the Lions on Sunday. Here are the grades from Seattle’s week 8 win.

The Seahawks defense has exceed expectations in 2018. After losing Kam Chancellor and others this offseason, Seattle was expected to take the proverbial step back. They haven’t really. And the young guys are playing well.

Here are the grades for Seattle’s defense in their week 8 win over Detroit.

Defensive line

Frank Clark had a sack. He now has 6.5 on the season through seven games. In fact, it is a bit of a disappointment when Clark doesn’t get a sack in a game now. Clark was double-teamed nearly the entire game against Detroit and still supplied pressure on Matthew Stafford.

Jarran Reed continued the best season of his career. Reed had a strip of Stafford that led to a Seattle recovery. Reed was credited with just one tackle but Detroit was forced to account for him and this allowed other players, like Shamar Stephen, to have an impact.

All four of Seattle’s quarterback hits came from the line. And Dion Jordan had a nice gane with four tackles and a quarterback hit.

Grade: A

Linebackers

Bobby Wagner led the team with 8 combined tackles. K.J. Wright had five tackles in his return with a pass defended.

But basically, this unit stopped the Lions from being able to run the ball and forced Stafford to throw the ball 40 times.

Grade: A

Secondary

The young secondary was exposed a couple of times by Stafford. This happened on Detroit’s first drive when Stafford got Tedric Thompson to play off of Marvin Jones and Stafford hit Jones for a 39-yard touchdown pass.

Thompson, though, forced a monumental turnover when he hit Ameer Abdullahon a kick return causing Abdullah to fumble. Seattle turned this into a quick touchdown and the game was never the same.

Bradley McDougald was once again seemingly everywhere on the field and when he went out for a short time with an injury his absence was felt.

Grade: B+

Overall

The great thing about Seattle’s defense is that it should conceivably get better. There are so many young players, especially in the secondary, that are playing well and getting lots of snaps that late in the unit the group could be even better. Ken Norton Jr. is going a fantastic job with his defense.