I’ll keep this short because it’s gone 7am and I need sleep.
It’s very pleasing the Seahawks won, especially at home, improving their record to 5-2. No team has a superior record in the NFC and they pulled level with the 49ers and Rams in the NFC West, which is really important.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Leonard Williams were again outstanding. Nick Emmanwori’s promising start to his career continued. The defense, by and large, were smothering and dominant. They gave CJ Stroud no time to settle and he looked flustered all night. I can’t wait to see how many pressures they tallied.
Third and fourth down defense was elite — as was the run defense.
However, there are things that put me on a downer as this game concluded. Once again, the Seahawks got in their own way. This has been a weekly trend with the exception of the Saints blowout. They make individual mistakes, questionable play-calling decisions and seem incapable of managing a game properly for 60 minutes.
The sequence that turned 14-0 (and should’ve been 21-0 but for Drake Thomas’ fumble) into 14-6 at half-time was frustrating enough. That they came out in the second half and turned the ball over three times, continued to throw when the situation called for runs and did everything to give the Texans a chance to get back into it was maddening.
We’ve gone from the pointless Jalen Milroe package to now asking Cooper Kupp to throw the ball on trick plays instead. Resist the trick play. Just run your offense. You’re good.
There were also clusters of individual mistakes, including Anthony Bradford penalties, Charles Cross getting beat off the edge, the turnovers and Josh Jobe dropping two interceptions.
They need to fix these issues during the bye. They need a better plan to finish games when they are winning in the fourth quarter. They need to stop getting tricky and cute with their play-calling.
They need to get out of their own bloody way.
Achieve this and they can be a serious contender. If they don’t fix the problems, they’ll drop important games in the coming weeks they have no business losing. That will be massively frustrating when the NFL is wide-open this year and a great opportunity is seemingly emerging.
