How nice was it to have DeMarcus Lawrence back on the field? The Seattle Seahawks were facing a 4-1 Jacksonville Jaguars team without three starting members of their secondary and still held the Jags almost two touchdowns under their season average. They did it in large part because of a dominant defensive line. DeMarcus Lawrence was a huge part of that effort.
Lawrence missed most of the Hawks’ Week 4 matchup with Arizona and then was unable to play in the shootout against Tampa in Week 5. In that game, the Bucs' Baker Mayfield had a field day, throwing for almost 400 yards. He was sacked just once.
Against Jacksonville, the Seahawks harassed Trevor Lawrence from the first play to the last. He was sacked seven times. One week after averaging 8.8 yards-per-attempt against Kansas City, the Jags’ QB managed just half that total – 4.4 – against Seattle.
DeMarcus Lawrence steps up big for the Seattle Seahawks in his return to action
Lawrence – DeMarcus, that is – was a beast, making Lawrence – Trevor, that is – miserable all day. He has five tackles and two sacks. He also has five quarterback hits, leading the Seattle defense that hit Trevor Lawrence an astounding 17 times in the game.
D-Law, and I’m only using that nickname to distinguish him from T-Law on the other team, had plenty of help. Uchenna Nwosu was almost as disruptive coming from the other side. In the middle, Leonard Williams and Byron Murphy, Jr. had their way with Jacksonville’s interior linemen, often collapsing the pocket while taking on double teams.
They set the stage for Lawrence and he was the finisher.
When John Schneider signed the veteran edge from Dallas this offseason, most of the league yawned. Everyone recognized that Lawrence was among the best two-way defensive ends in the NFL over the past decade, but he was turning 33 and coming off a season in which he played just four games. Many questioned what he had left in the tank.
Lawrence had played pretty well in Seattle’s first two games, but he was not getting to the quarterback. Through his first four games, he had yet to register a sack and had just one quarterback hit.
Let me just remind you, in case you forgot, that DeMarcus Lawrence had five quarterback hits against Jacksonville.
Mike Macdonald clearly planned on challenging Trevor Lawrence. As talented as Jacksonville’s QB is, he has always tended to falter when pressured. He gets happy feet in the pocket and makes inaccurate throws. To that end, Seattle blitzed more than usual and rarely let him get comfortable in the pocket. Even when he wasn’t being sacked, he was not very good.
Seattle expects to get strong play from Williams, Murphy, and Jarran Reed in the middle of the line. The question has been whether the edge rushers – Nwosu, Boye Mafe, Derick Hall, and Lawrence - can work in tandem with those interior linemen. Hall has been mostly invisible this season and was out with an oblique injury on Sunday.
But Nwosu and Mafe were available. Those two young players had to be at their best in order to keep pace with the old guy, DeMarcus Lawrence, who had one of the best games of his entire career on Sunday, showing his new team exactly what he can do.