Seattle Seahawks: 5 takeaways from dominant win over Jets

Death by a thousand cuts

The NFL is a week-to-week game. As Russell Wilson stated in his post-game presser last week, each game has its own history. The one good thing about history is that you can learn from it. If you see a problem that arose in the past, you may now know how to avoid it or solve it if it were to arise again. Well, last week against the Giants, the Seahawks offense was stagnant. They tried to hit the big-time plays down the field and weren’t successful. They didn’t take what the Giants were giving to them, which was the short, intermediate routes.

Well, against the Jets, we saw a very efficient Seattle offense. Not only did they get back to running the football and building off play-action fake, but they also focused on the short routes. D.K. Metcalf ran a lot of hitches while Tyler Lockett just found the soft spots in the zone. Seattle didn’t take too many deep shots down the field. What they were doing — as they call it in the NFL — was death by a thousand cuts. Essentially meaning, slowing dissecting the defense. The New Orleans Saints are well known for running this style of offense.

What is pivotally important to remember here is that the Seahawks offense has three guys who can make the explosive plays down the field: D.K. Metcalf, Tyler Lockett and Josh Gordon (when he plays). If they are able to incorporate this type of slow, methodical offense along with the play-action game stemming from the run, they will be very hard to stop. The defense will have to play real honestly and if they choose to play it safe, then Seattle can slowly work their way up the field with the run game and the hitches, etc. If they play it aggressively, then the best deep-ball passer in the league will make them pay.

A lot of overreaction stemmed from the Seahawks loss to the Giants last week. Some may say it was constitutional as the Giants had a backup quarterback playing. But, I had mentioned it last week in my 5 takeaways article that, losing games are teaching moments. There is a reason people touch upon finding success in failure. You learn from your mistakes and build upon them moving forward. The Seahawks did exactly that in Week 14 against the Jets. We could very well see them use the same strategy moving forward against Washington and Los Angeles, who will most likely play it safe and try to take away the deep ball.

One last note, the second touchdown of the game came on a beautiful fade route to D.K. Metcalf. I have been long waiting for this.

When the Seahawks get down in the red zone, this should be a go-to for Metcalf since he has such great size and stature.