3 quick takeaways from Seahawks Week 3 loss to Falcons

The Seattle Seahawks fell to 1-2 with a loss to the Atlanta Falcons in Week 3 27-23. What might we have learned from the game?

We could have assumed the Seahawks weren’t going to be good this year. But after losing to the Falcons on Sunday – one of Seattle’s most (on paper) winnable games, this season seems to be on a course for being even much worse than expected.

Once again, penalties crushed some of the Seahawks hopes – Seattle had 6 but several of them were extremely untimely. Late in the game during a play that saw Geno Smith throw to Rashaad Penny that would have set Seattle up inside the Atlanta 10, Damien Lewis was called for a hold. This eventually forced Geno Smith to throw into coverage and be intercepted which basically ended the game.

So what did we learn from Week 3 and another Seahawks loss? Here are three quick takeaways.

Three takeaways from the Seahawks 27-23 loss to the Falcons

The run defense is horrible and there seems to be no way to fix it

I understand that in theory, the Seahawks have switched to more of a 3-4 base but this isn’t really the case on most plays. Seattle still plays a 4-3 many times. I bring this up because last year the run defense was stout but this year it gets shredded. What’s the difference?

For one, some players have been their worst ever. Poona Ford has been awful. Yes, he made a tackle out wide on one run but opposing offenses seem to have no issues run the ball up the middle. And Bobby Wagner isn’t there to clean up.

The reason Seattle won’t get much better against the run this season? They simply don’t have good enough players.

The Seahawks secondary is truly bad

The Falcons set the stage for what they wanted to do in the second half by what they did in the first. Often they threw deep patterns and stretched the Seahawks defense. In the second half, Seattle was simply run over as the back end of the defense had to account for the deep throws by Marcus Mariota.

Jamal Adams was not good in coverage but he was definitely better than Josh Jones and Jones has been horrific. Adam’s is done for the season and likely, so are the Seahawks.

Geno Smith isn’t the problem

Smith played another good game. Was he perfect? No. He threw the late interception but he was forced to do something. The good by Lewis put Seattle’s offense in that position. Smith finished 32 of 44 for 325 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus the interception at the end.

But Smith threw enough passes on target that the issue with the second half offense – Seattle has now scored 3 points in three second halves combined – is the inability of the Seahawks to adjust at halftime.

The worry is that even if the Seahawks choose a quarterback high in next year’s draft, things might not be much better. No rookie is going to come and be any better than Smith has been through the first three games.