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.
Boye Mafe gets 3 sacks
Mafe is having a breakout season as he has 6 sacks in seven games, and that number of sacks ranks in the top 20 of the NFL. He is tied for third in pass-rush win rate at 27 percent. Basically, what he's getting down isn't gimmicky like edge rusher Darrell Taylor who only gets his sacks in bunches, isn't consistent, and can't stop the run. Mafe will be Seattle's best edge rusher for the next seven years, most likely.
But while Mafe does have 6 sacks, he doesn't have more than one in any single game. He did have 4 quarterback hits against the Cleveland Browns, but for the most part he only gets one of those a game too. So while Mafe is the opposite of Taylor in his consistency, he also hasn't truly been consistently explosive.
Washington, though, isn't good at pass blocking. They have allowed 44 sacks, 12 more than the third-worst team, and their sack-allowed percentage is 11.1, also second-worst in the league. Maybe Sam Howell holds on to the ball too long, but Washington also doesn't have any offensive linemen in the top 20 of pass-rush win rate. The Commanders appear weakest in the middle of their line as well.
My guess is that the Seahawks use a lot of stunts and use Mafe to attack the middle of the Commanders offense. Mafe will finish with 3 sacks and 5 quarterback hits and a forced fumble. He will also earn NFC Defensive Player of the Week honors.
Seattle allows 450 total yards defensively
While Boye Mafe will have a great game, the rest of the defense is still a bit of a mess. Seattle being Jekyll and Hyde defensively happened in 2022, too. After being terrible through the first five games last year, Seattle then had a stretch of four games where they gave up no more than 329 total yards and had two games of 262 yards or fewer. We thought the Seahawks' defense might have been fixed then, too.
After looking pretty bad through the first three games of 2023, Seattle had a three-game run of being solid and looking fixed. Then the Cleveland Browns came to Seattle in Week 8 and even with a backup quarterback ran for 155 yards and gained 385 total yards. Then the hammer fell in Week 9 and Seattle allowed 515 total yards to the Ravens including 298 rushing yards. Seattle went from being one of the best teams in the NFL in yards allowed per rush to 21st in two weeks.
The Commanders have a good offensive coordinator in Eric Bieniemy and he will know how to exploit any defensive weakness of Seattle. Washington is capable of running fairly effectively and throwing the ball. Plus, if Washington gets some decent blocking when Sam Howell drops back, Washington can score 30 points on the Seahawks which might be enough to win.
Washington is 12th in rushing yards per attempt (4.3) and Howell is completing 66.6 percent of his passes. Seattle has lots of talent on defense, but they haven't played cohesively in the past two weeks. That trend likely continues into Week 10 and the Seahawks surrender a ton of yards.
The Seattle Seahawks move to 6-3 with a comfortable win
So that last slide might not imply I think Seattle will win comfortably, but I still think Seattle does. While Washington has some decent numbers offensively, they also struggle in other areas. For one, they are 21st in time of possession per drive at 2 minutes and 38 seconds and the Commanders are 24th in third downs converted at 36.0 percent (Seattle is 30th at 31.9).
Washington is 11th in turnovers per drive (13.2 percent) and 24th in scoring percentage per drive (32.1). The problem for Washington is they simply have not been efficient enough. They can score, but inconsistently. Washington is 22nd in average points in the first quarter (3.3) and 25th in average points in the first half (9.8).
I think Seattle starts fast in this game, gets out to a two-touchdown lead in the third quarter, and maintains a 10-14 point lead into the fourth quarter. Washington is 11th in average points scored in the fourth quarter (6.8) so I do think they chip away at the lead a bit late, but there is no real threat to them coming back to win.
Seattle will be 6-3 after the game with another winnable game in Week 11 against the Los Angeles Rams. They could be 7-3 before a tough four-game stretch against the 49ers (twice), Eagles, and Cowboys.