Seahawks rivals: The best NFC West team of week three

The Seahawks did not keep pace this week in the NFC West. Which of their rivals pulled away and had the best performance of week three?

Spoiler alert: the best NFC West team in week three was not the Seahawks. We’ve dissected their loss to the point of exhaustion, or close enough. But as our Colby Patnode explained, it isn’t exactly like the sky is falling for the Hawks. The Hawks made some critical mistakes, but they rolled up nearly twice the yardage as New Orleans. I simply can’t see all those miscues happening again. Their division rivals fared better this week – well, two of them, anyway. Which NFC West team played best? Read on.

Arizona Cardinals: Much like the Seahawks, the Cardinals hosted a team led by a backup quarterback. And like Seattle, Arizona couldn’t contain one of the league’s most versatile running backs. In this case, it was Christian McCaffrey. Unlike Alvin Kamara’s work in Seattle, the Panthers back did most of his damage on the ground, with 153 yards. Overall, the third-year Stanford product delivered two scores and 188 total yards.

If Arizona could have limited the damage to McCaffrey, they might have been okay. The real problem came from that backup quarterback. Kyle Allen totally outplayed his former teammate at Texas A&M, Kyler Murray. Allen threw four touchdowns and generally treat the Zona secondary like his kid brothers in the Panthers 38-20 win. The Cardinals hung tough in the first two games of the season, despite coming away without a win. This was the first time they were outclassed.

San Francisco 49ers. The Niners have now played two of the same three opponents as the Seahawks. As much as it pains me to say this, they’ve performed better than Seattle in both games. San Francisco demolished the Bengals in week two. In week three they took down the Steelers for a tough 24-20 win. Much like the Seahawks, the Niners almost beat themselves despite outgaining their opponent by nearly 200 yards. Five turnovers are not part of a winning game plan.

Jimmy Garappolo did not play particularly well in this game. He was picked off twice and fumbled twice, losing one of those. Unlike the Hawks, the Niners ground game bailed them out. Raheem Mostert and Matt Breida combined for 147 yards. Jeff Wilson handled the tough sledding in the red zone, punching the ball in twice on short runs. Any day you win despite five turnovers is a very good day.

Los Angeles Rams. The Rams haven’t looked like the offensive powerhouse that ruled the NFC West in 2018. They haven’t gone over 400 yards of total offense yet, a feat they accomplished in 11 games last year. On the other hand, they allowed over 350 yards of offense 11 times in 2018 as well. So far, the most yards Los Angeles has given up is just 343 to Carolina in week one. They continued that trend in week three in their 20-13 victory over the Cleveland Browns.

This was far from a dominating performance for Los Angeles, though. Todd Gurley only had 43 yards on 14 carries. Quarterback Jared Goff was adequate at best. He threw two touchdown passes but was picked off twice and lost a fumble. The star of the game for the Rams was wideout Cooper Kupp. He brought down 11 of his 12 targets and scored both Los Angeles touchdowns. Kupp is an absolute star. How did we let this guy out of the state? Anyway, the Rams played well on defense and did more than enough on offense to win.

The Cardinals played their worst game of the season against the Panthers. They were shredded by a quarterback with one previous career start. Regardless, they’ll play the Seahawks tough this weekend because they always do. The Niners managed to win in a very sloppy game. That isn’t easy, as any 12 can tell you. But this week, the best team was the Rams. Their offense has yet to really click, but their defense looks much better than last year. For week three, the best of the NFC West is the Los Angeles Rams.