The Seattle Seahawks are 5-3 and in a tie for first place in the NFC West. In Week 10, they play the Washington Commanders at Lumen Field. Washington is 4-5 and in third place in the NFC East, two games behind second-place Dallas.
At the trade deadline, Washington moved two of its better defensive line players. Seattle added defensive tackle Leonard Williams. One might have thought Seattle is trending up and Washington is trending down, but after seeing Washington win in Week 9 and Seattle lose badly, anything is possible in Week 10.
Seattle needs a win more than Washington as the Seahawks still have hopes to make the playoffs. A loss to Washington would be terrible, especially with the murder's row of teams that Seattle has coming up beginning in Week 12. Here are four things I think will happen.
Geno Smith has 350 passing yards and 3 touchdowns and zero turnovers
If I were to tell you before the season that by Week 10, and with both quarterbacks being healthy all year, Washington Commanders quarterback Sam Howell would have a better completion percentage, better quarterback rating, and better touchdown-to-interception ratio than Geno Smith would have, you might have thought I was even more stupid than you thought I was already. But all that is true. Sam Howell is better than expected and Smith isn't playing as well as hoped.
So far this year, Geno Smith has just two games with more than 300 yards passing (328 in Week 2 and 326 in Week 6) and three games with 157 yards passing or less. In his last four games, he has 8 turnovers. He has 7 interceptions in his last six games. Geno Smith is trending downward. But the Washington Commanders also aren't very good at defending the pass.
They have allowed 19 touchdown passes through the air (second-worst in the league) and have a quarterback rating allowed of 97.3 (26th in the NFL). Washington has allowed more than 300 yards passing just twice this year, though. Both times against the Philadelphia Eagles. But Geno Smith will want to show he is still worthy of being QB1 in Seattle and will have a fantastic game against the blitz-happy Commanders.