Being a journalist and being a fan, especially of the Seahawks, often come into conflict with each other when one reports on the team they root for. It’s a lesson I have had to learn the hard way on multiple occasions.
Once again, I find myself reeling at the stark contrast between what my beloved Seahawks told me they could be last week when they blindsided the Denver Broncos, widely believed to be one of the better teams in football, and what they were this Sunday afternoon, as they came out flat as a board against a division rival they had a chance to deal a serious blow to.
Seattle possessed the ball about half as often as the 49ers, ran the ball at efficiency clips we haven’t seen since before Pete Carroll took over, when the offense was trotting out the shambling corpses of Shaun Alexander and T.J. Duckett, and the defense was hard-pressed to make a single stop without leaving laundry on the field.
Seahawks learned some hard lessons in Week 2 loss to the 49ers
This predictably resulted in a 27-7 loss that would have looked more at home on Jim Mora’s 2009 squad than anything Pete Carroll has fielded to this point.
When will I learn to let things play out before I start letting my mind, and subsequently my words, wander to places far beyond reality, and I start dreaming of a Cinderella squad that can ride a 30-year old career backup QB and a smattering of role players and rookies on defense to a plausible playoff berth?
So, I suppose I learned that lesson all over again. What else did we learn?
The Seahawks run fits still look terrible.
One thing that stood out in a negative sense in the season opener was just how bad Seattle looked against the run. Seattle’s defensive front had more holes than a doughnut shop, and they showed off just how porous they were again on Sunday.
Even without Trey Lance giving the 49ers yet another running option, the Seahawks still allowed almost 190 rushing yards, many of which came from being unable to wrap up or close the key gaps, despite running, for the most part, a larger front than they have under Carroll’s prior 4-3 scheme.
In particular, Poona Ford has completely disappeared as a difference-maker, and regular rotational pieces like Bryan Mone and Quinton Jefferson aren’t affecting the point of attack at all. Shelby Harris was one of the key pieces Seattle got back in the Wilson trade, and he didn’t show up on the stat sheet anywhere — not even a single shared tackle from him.
When nose tackle Al Woods is third on the team in tackles, and a significant portion of them are as close to the line to gain as they are to the line of scrimmage, something isn’t working.
Cody Barton and Jordyn Brooks shared the game lead in tackles, but when three different 49ers are ripping off runs of 15+ yards, it’s a little tougher to see that as a positive thing.
Granted, this is a brand-new scheme the Seahawks are running, many of the players veteran to Carroll’s defense have never run out of a 3-4 base before, and the linchpin of the defense, Jamal Adams, perhaps the reason they switched to a 3-4 in the first place, is once again hurt and done for the year.
There are plenty of reasons they might still be piecing the scheme together. But it’s hard not to think of the last few years of waiting for Ken Norton’s defenses to finally start gelling at season’s end when any hope of being a serious contender was already well off the table.
Uchenna Nwosu is for real, but he still needs a partner in crime.
Now, for all that hand-wringing over the run defense, for the second week in a row Uchenna Nwosu has looked the part in the pass rush. He hit the QB three separate times, deflected a pass, and has generally looked like the best player on Seattle’s defense to open the season. At the bargain-bin price Seattle got him at relative to the rest of the pass rusher market, there’s some Chris Clemons in his game.
We still have yet to see anyone really create pressure from the other side, though. Darrell Taylor has looked completely lost in the pass rush thus far, and now in his third year and 25 years old, one would expect him to be quite a bit further along.
Boye Mafe turned in a respectable performance, picking up a sack and four tackles, including one stuff, so there’s a chance that simply tossing him into the fire as a rookie might not be the worst idea. As raw an athlete as he is, we’ve seen before how much Carroll seems to prefer his veterans to his youth when it comes to the pass rush.
This is evidenced by his utter refusal to play Alton Robinson in any regard in the last two seasons (he was on the injured reserve list this week, for anyone curious), contrasted with starting the feckless Benson Mayowa for entirely too long.
But whatever Carroll or defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt decide to do, someone has to step up and keep Nwosu from catching every double-team and chip block the opposing offense can throw at him, or else it’s going to be another long season for the Seahawks’ front seven, who have lacked an impactful pass rush ever since the Legion of Boom broke up.
Seahawks QB Geno Smith can’t do it alone.
I mean, really, one would think that heading into a monsoon game against one of the best defenses in all of football would prompt a game plan other than “Let’s give Geno Smith two-thirds of the offensive snaps, keep everything in front of the sticks, and let him figure it out.” It would be logical to reason that it might be a bad idea to effectively force a career backup to win a game in the pouring rain without any semblance of a running game.
And yet, Seattle ran 47 plays in total, 33 of which were dropbacks (one of which wasn’t Geno’s, but don’t worry, we will get to that), and Smith managed a paltry 6.6 yards per attempt.
The running game, for their part, managed just 2.6 yards per carry, but in fairness to them, it’s hard to get any sort of rhythm going in the run game when you can’t stay on the field. Seattle seemed utterly unable to do this, for a myriad of reasons.
These reasons range from their refusal to feed their vaunted running game to many of their biggest plays of the game being called back by penalties, most notably a massive DK Metcalf reception at the end of the first half being called back for Abe Lucas blocking his assignment too far downfield.
Pete Carroll said on Monday that they now feel more comfortable opening up the playbook for Geno, so we may see a few more daring throws in the weeks to come, which is a good thing for Seattle’s offense, but it will also be incumbent that the Seahawks come equipped with better offensive game plans going forward.
What in the Sam Hill were the Seahawks thinking with that Wildcat pass?
I understand the need to mix it up on offense. The Seahawks just about made that happen in a huge way with that flea flicker to Metcalf that got called back. But there’s mixing it up, and then there’s getting, way, WAY too cute.
And, much like the rest of the 2009 vintage that Seattle showed up to this game with, they decided that a Wildcat package was the way to fool this 49ers defense, whose biggest strength is their elite LB corps that can make plays on any part of the field.
So, why, then, with the idea in mind that they trust Geno Smith with the offense, did the Seahawks think it was a good idea to take the ball out of Smith’s hands and let Deejay Dallas, a halfback who has never completed a pass in his professional career, throw an absolute duck to, or rather, in the general direction of, a well-covered DK Metcalf blanketed by a cornerback and guarded by another DB sitting back in zone?
I remember LaDainian Tomlinson completing a few passes off of toss plays in the prime of his career. Here’s the thing, though: LaDainian Tomlinson was, bar none, the best running back in football at the time, and every time he threw the ball, it started out looking like a pretty conventional run play, again, to a halfback that would absolutely take your lunch money if you didn’t close out on him within seconds. Dallas is reasonably quick and has some power in his legs, but he’s no LT.
Maybe go with the guy you’re paying money to put the ball on target next time. Oh, by the way, that guy runs pretty well, too, if that’s really the only play you want to call in that situation.