Grades for the Seahawks in their important win over the Packers

A Seahawks win is a Seahawks win. Thursday night’s game wasn’t always pretty. But the grades are mostly positive.

The first quarter for the Seahawks on Thursday was pretty rough to watch. Chris Carson fumbled. Russell Wilson missed an open Doug Baldwin in the end zone that would have been an easy touchdown. And the defense looked overwhelmed.

Then, slowly, the game began to change. After being down 14-3 after the first quarter, Seattle outscored the Packers 24-10 the rest of the game. If I had had to write grades after the first quarter, they would have been sad and ugly.

Of course, if had to write grades about just the second half, the defense might have gotten all As. Once again, Seattle gave up very little to an opposing offense. The Packers scored just 3 points after halftime. Whatever changes Ken Norton Jr. is making to his unit at halftime are working.

Seattle’s defense gives up an average of 8.2 points in second halves in 2018. Take away the two Rams games and that number falls to 4.7. I am not saying this defense is as good as in previous years but it is good enough to win with. And the defense was one big reason Seattle was in a position to defeat the Packers in week 11.

As for Wilson, he played better than Aaron Rodgers did in the fourth quarter. There isn’t much else you can ask from your NFL quarterback than to be better than his counterpart when it matters. Wilson was better than Rodgers late.

Here are the grades for each unit following Thursday’s win for Seattle.

The offense

Quarterback – Russell Wilson

As I mentioned, Wilson was a mixed bag on Thursday, starting awfully and finishing grandly. Thank goodness. In fact, early on it was almost as if Seattle might lose because of how poorly Wilson was playing.

And Wilson made some bad throws and made odd decisions throughout the first three-quarters of the game. He caught a batted pass he threw and took an 11-yard loss in his own territory. And while the clock was running out in the second quarter, Wilson scrambled and then threw a forward pass in an attempt to throw it backwards to Nick Vannett.

But after the first quarter, Wilson was 18 for 23 and threw two touchdown passes. Including the game winner to tight end Ed Dickson. And, as I said, Wilson was better than Rodgers and that is good enough.

Grade: B-

Running backs

Carson had a costly fumble on Seattle’s opening drive that put the Packers in excellent field position. Green Bay scored a touchdown three plays later. But Carson was mostly his great self and ran for 83 yards on 17 carries and a touchdown. Rashaad Penny had a crazy great run for 30 yards and Mike Davis finished off the game with yards on Seattle’s final drive as the clock expired.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1063245776917164033

Grade: B+ (Would have been a solid A if not for Carson’s fumble)

Receivers/tight end

Doug Baldwin got his first touchdown reception of the season on a beautiful route to the corner of the end zone. Tyler Lockett continued his excellent season with important catches on the game-winning touchdown drive in the fourth quarter. And Dickson had the game-winning catch.

Grade: A

Offensive line

The line was called for four false starts, though Justin Britt was upset by the Packers trying to sync Seattle’s cadence. (Not legal, Green Bay!) And Wilson did get sacked three times (one could have been called Wilson’s fault, however). But once again, the Seahawks churned up yards on the ground. Against the Packers, Seattle ran for 173 yards and a 4.9 yards-per-carry average. Just think about how much better this line is than 2017. Thank you, Mike Solari!

Grade: B

The defense

Defensive line

This was a tale-of-two-halves story. In the first half, the Packers moved the ball with relative ease and Rodgers had lots of time to throw. In the second half, however, Seattle got four sacks. And the fact that Seattle limited Green Bay to just 3 points. Two sacks came from rookies Jacob Martin and Rasheem Green. Good stuff.

Frank Clark has two more sacks and now has 10 on the season. Sign the man!

Grade: B+

Linebackers

K.J. Wright couldn’t play so Austin Calitro was asked to do a lot. Probably too much, including sometimes playing safety. Bobby Wagner had his second tackle-for-loss on the season and led the team with nine tackles. In other words, he was Bobby Wagner.

Grade: B

Secondary

This is a weird one. Bradley McDougald and Shaquill Griffin both got beat for long plays, both over 50 yards. McDougald’s was worse as he gave up a touchdown reception to Green Bay’s third-string tight end. But then there was lots of downs where Rodgers simply had to eat the ball as he had no one to throw to.

Grade: C

Special teams

Punter – Michael Dickson

Four punts with an average of 52 yards per. Yep, that’s our Dickson. He did have one iffy punt that went just 40 yards when the official kept running up the sidelines trying to decide where the ball went out.

Grade: A

Kicker – Sebastian Janikowski

Janikowski was better than the Packers kicker as Seabass made all his kicks and Mason Crosby missed a field goal. In a game that was decided by 3 points, that’s huge.

Grade: A

Returns

Lockett had no punt returns and returned two kicks. One was poor and gave the Seahawks bad field position. He simply has gotten a lot of chance to show how great he is at returning kicks this season.

Grade: C