These three Seahawks will have the biggest impact on a Week 1 win
By Lee Vowell
We are almost here, 12s! The Seahawks kick off the 2022 season against the Broncos. Here are three Seattle players that will have the most impact on Week 1.
I probably say this every football season but it is difficult to believe that the Seahawks first game is just a week away. The offseason in the NFL is really long but with enough important things, like the NFL draft, to keep building anticipation for upcoming seasons that are still a ways off.
But now Week 1 is a week away and Seattle still has a lot of questions that need to be answered. How good will the quarterback play be? How about the cornerback play?
And the most important question in Week 1 is can the Seahawks defeat former quarterback Russell Wilson and his new team, the Broncos? Here are three Seattle players will have a definite say in whether the team wins or loses.
Three Seahawks that could be the most impact in Week 1 of 2022
Quarterback Geno Smith
Woo-hoo, Lee! Really going out on a limb here, right? But here’s why I have Smith on this list. He might have a game where he keeps passes to around 25, doesn’t have a turnover and leads a plodding Seahawks offense. But I am hoping there is more to him than this.
In the three games he started for the Seahawks in 2021, Smith only threw 24 passes in one of those games once. Seattle just didn’t seem to trust Smith to do much. Instead, Smith was mostly stuck throwing relatively short passes while handing the ball off a lot and trying to turn the ball over.
This put Seattle in a position to try to win two close games against two decent teams, the Steelers and Saints, and it almost worked until Smith had some late-game poor play. There was simply a lot of pressure on him to do Russell Wilson-type things (that is, pull out a miracle late in a game) and Smith isn’t Wilson.
The Seahawks need to let Smith be a bit freer earlier in games and see if the offense can score enough early where the defense and run game and clock-control the game after halftime. If Seattle’s offense looks a lot like the three games Smith started in 2021, the Seahawks are going to lose a lot of close games in 2022.