Just because the Seattle Seahawks won't face the Los Angeles Rams until late in the season doesn't mean they can't gain ground on their divisional rivals now. Sean McVay's team has been the most disappointing in pro football, and there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Everyone was quick to crown the Rams champions before any team played a single snap. Trading for Myles Garrett could've been a league-shattering move, but now that he's been hurt, they might be having buyer's remorse.
McVay admitted that they didn't know whether they would open his 21-day practice window soon. He's missed all but one game and didn't play well in his season debut, and all of a sudden, the almighty Rams are looking extremely beatable,
The Seattle Seahawks can still take over the NFC West
While injuries are never something to celebrate or mock another team/player about, this is just a brutal turn of events for Los Angeles. They thought that trading for the reigning Defensive Player of the Year would put them over the top, but the football gods had different plans.
The injury bug has also caught up to Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers (as usual), and they just suffered their first defeat of the season. That leaves the door wide open for the defending champions to overcome their slow start to the season and get back on top.
Of course, this doesn't mean that Garrett won't play at all this season. The Rams still have 10 games left, including two with the Seahawks, and they have no incentive to tank after trading their first-round pick to the Cleveland Browns.
But with Davante Adams also out for the long run, a team that has struggled on special teams, a regressing and aging quarterback, and a roster with more holes than initially seemed, they might not want to take many risks with their star defensive end late in the season.
If Garrett continues to struggle with this knee injury, which has been bothering him since last season and the Browns were well aware of it, who's to say they won't shut him down early? Or even if they don't, he won't be 100 percent healthy this season.
This should be a lesson to everyone out there who rushed to say the Rams would crush everything in their sight this season. It takes much more than making big moves to succeed in this line of business, and we've seen stacked teams look great on paper and struggle to meet expectations way too many times in the past.
Hopefully, Garrett will make a full recovery eventually; the game is always better when the best are on the field, and he's a joy to watch, even for opposing fans. But the way things look now, the Seahawks might be the biggest winners from the recent string of injuries in the division, especially after adding Quenton Nelson to the mix.
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