We didn’t waste too much time talking about the Jets or Giants games. We got into some bigger topics. Check out the latest podcast below…
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Rob Staton
Hot topics
- Why the Seahawks are already facing a critical period under the new regime
- Instant reaction: Don’t be fooled, this was an embarrassing loss
- Curtis Allen’s week six watch-notes (vs San Francisco)
- Scouting notes week six: Eye-catching O-liners, a player the Seahawks might target, Luke Lachey notes, Cam Ward is what he is & more
- Video: 49ers preview with Puck Sports and an honest debate about the Seahawks after the Giants loss
Call me morbid, call me pale
I’ve spent six years on your trail
Six long years on your trail
Call me morbid, call me pale
I’ve spent six years on your trail
Six full years of my life on your trail
That one lost me, Cha. I went and watched the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OW6Pgd4ojk) and don’t get the reference.
The Smiths
Right, that was the link I included. Sorry, I’m a Blues guy (Joe Bonamassa is my dude to rock with along with most Blues rockers, including Led Zep)
Here we go, this is what I want this weekend…Redemption! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDe-dI3c5d0
I still haven’t made it to one of his shows which is unforgivable especially considering he usually plays the Schnitzer which is an outstanding place to see a show. I will go next time he’s in town. I assume you’ve seen him Tom?
No, I haven’t seen him either. I missed the Schnitz concert a few years ago and he hasn’t been back since. I was supposed to go see him at Red Rocks in Denver (the one they recorded for the album and video) with my brother and family but I wasn’t able to get out there. Hopefully he will come back to the NW sometime soon.
Seeing a show at Red Rocks is on my bucket list for sure. The Gorge is close but Red Rocks looks even more beautiful.
You have excellent taste.
Haha hell yeah, I love Morrissey.
Rob, when ever I watch your podcasts I always wish I could be sitting in a pub with a glass of Guinness debating with you. You come across so differently on your podcasts vs. your responses online. To me it is night and day and I think it would be a hell of a lot of fun!
It would be fun.
As for the comments section, I just don’t fanny about.
True! Cheers mate!
I agree, the body language sometime tells more about the issue you are discussing. Most of the time written comments are the not able to tell complete story. Great podcasts as always.
They did use Ryan Neal in the “Jamal Adams role” in the Minnesota game, but probably not exclusively.
87 snaps
5 blitzes
3 hurries
3 pressures
0 sacks
8 tackles
5 missed tackles (ouch)
Neal makes things happen, Wish they could get him on the field more… some way some how.
3rd Quarter Report Card
Record: 2-2
Thoughts
What a perplexing performance this quarter. A frustrating loss at Los Angeles, a restorative win against the Cardinals, a ‘harder than it should be’ win against the Eagles and an embarrassment against the Giants. Instead of building momentum for a strong run at capturing the #1 seed, the Seahawks find themselves drifting towards a wild card spot at best and watching the playoffs on the couch at worst.
MVP
1.DK Metcalf
His star continues to grow. He’s on track for a monster season, even with his drops. He showed yet another new trait this quarter: an ability to goad his intimidated counterparts into taking stupid penalties. The performance in Philly was dominant, a strong and major response to not having a good game vs Jalen Ramsey. Seeing Darius Slay, and All-Pro is among the top paid CB’s in the game, so thoroughly and consistently beaten by DK he openly apologized to his teammates was a sight.
2.RW
He’s still the Seahawks’ 2020 MVP, but this 4 game stretch was one of the worst of his career:
He must rebound if the Seahawks are to play better.
3.Jamal Adams
4 sacks, 30 tackles, 4 TFL and 5 QB hits this quarter.
Rookie of the Quarter
1.Damien Lewis.
Carve the 2020 ROY award for the Seahawks in stone, Lewis has got it locked up. The Seahawks don’t have many draft picks next year, but if there is another Damien Lewis type pick, they’ll be doing very well. Lewis was the choice to fill in at center in the Arizona game. And while it seems very odd they felt the need to move a player in his rookie season from his natural position to one he has never played at any competitive level, it speaks to the extreme level of trust he’s earned from the coaching staff this early in his career. The Seahawks have their starting right guard for the next few seasons locked.
2. Jordyn Brooks.
24 tackles and 2 passes defensed this quarter. He appears to have gotten over his injury trouble and the rookie growing pains. Taking a big next step in the 4th quarter would be a really nice positive for the Hawks to propel them into the offseason with one less question mark on the defense.
3.Everyone else.
Alton Robinson, Freddie Swain and DJ Dallas had minimal contributions this quarter. Dallas had a chance to make a huge play vs the Giants with the blocked punt, but the ball slipped through his hands. Colby Parkinson is healthy finally but hasn’t gotten on the field much, or recorded any targets or catches.
Pleasant Surprises
1.Defensive Improvement
4 games in the quarter, the 4 lowest point totals conceded of the season to date. 3 of the 4 lowest yards allowed totals of the season to date. They recorded a total of 19 sacks through 2 quarters – and tallied 14 more sacks in this quarter alone. There is still much room for improvement, but the defense has stemmed the tide of setting a pretty horrendous record for yards allowed and is finally giving the team a fighting chance.
Carlos Dunlap arriving and getting in tune is a big part of the reason. The other is players getting healthy and finding some chemistry to work together. Another reason is…
2.Poona Ford
His play took a noticeable step forward in the 3rd quarter, and he helped key the defensive improvement.
Ford accomplished this without a major increase in snaps. The coaching staff have occasionally moved him around the defensive line and he has responded with the play many fans have hoped he was capable of. He has an utterly unique body shape – a low center of gravity to get under the pads of blockers and a huge wingspan to redirect runners into teammates’ waiting arms. Add in the occasional burst off the snap and he’s delivered on the promise he showed in college. He’s a restricted free agent this offseason, and it’s only a question of what round they’ll tender him at.
3.ST improvement
The Special Teams unit has been sparkling this year. How could they possibly get even better? Well, they did.
This unit continues to astound and is playing at a championship level.
Biggest Disappointment
1.Rams game strategy and play.
17 points conceded by the defense on their first 3 drives. Ballgame. McVay is – wait for it – undefeated when the Rams have a halftime lead. 33-0 in his career. And here Pete Carroll plays it conservative on 4th and inches. A game plan that doesn’t protect RW from the fierce pass rush. No designed roll outs. No quick passes to Lockett or DK to take the 4-5 yards they were routinely being given. RW was so shaken, he forced bad throws and was imagining pressure that wasn’t there. He couldn’t keep his head up long enough to find DK Metcalf. It was a demoralizing loss for a team that really needed a win against the Rams to build some confidence and get a leg up on their biggest threat in the division this year.
2.Turnovers.
They had 5 giveaways in their 2 losses, and zero giveaways in their two wins. Add in being 0 for 4 on 4th downs this quarter and that’s an awful lot of opportunities, potential points and field position conceded.
3.Injuries
The Seahawks got hammered this quarter. 14 games missed by starters. 9 more games missed by key backups. Darrell Taylor and Rashaad Penny were still not available to so much as practice with the team. Press conferences devolved into just injury questions. Why doesn’t Pete Carroll just start them by listing players who are hurt? Because then he doesn’t have to answer tough questions.
4th Q goals
1.Beat LA
The Seahawks will need to consider this a playoff game. Not only do they need to win this game, they need to show the Rams they can’t just mark up a win when they see Seattle on their schedule. Because there’ll be a pretty good chance they’re going to meet sometime in the playoffs this year.
Thankfully the Seahawks have something working in their favor: A bunch of players should be available that were not in the first meeting:
Carson, Hyde, Gordon, Pocic, Griffin, Dunbar, Mayowa
Maybe Rashaad Penny as well.
There’s also a rumor going around that Russell Wilson will show up for this game.
2.Refocus.
This year has had so many ups and downs. Video game numbers from both the offense and defense, injuries to key players, the acquisition of Carlos Dunlap, DK making one of the worst and best plays of the year, the continual too-light-use of the tight ends, the game in Arizona that defies logic….we could go on and on. It’s been a year.
If Pete Carroll can somehow get this team and coaching staff to dig deep, and find a game plan and in-game decisions that enhance the players’ physical talents and prey on opponents’ weaknesses, it’ll be a master stroke. Because at the moment, this team is distracted, shaken, and lacking confidence. They must avoid another whimpering exit to the season.
3.Stay Healthy
Injuries battered the Seahawks in the home stretch last year. The only solace they had was that Philly was worse off than them for their first playoff game. Green Bay didn’t have that problem, and handled the Seahawks the following week. Here’s hoping the stretch of injuries in the 3rd quarter was the worst they’ll have to endure this season.
And many of us have rolled our eyes at all the COVID protocol questions asked of Pete Carroll. But now is when all that hard work and attention to detail pays off. The Seahawks have only placed one player on the COVID reserve list and that wasn’t for a positive case. Keeping that streak alive could actually prove to be a real advantage in the fourth quarter and the playoffs.
4th Q prediction: NYJ home, @ WFT, LA Rams home, @ SF
3-1
Washington game is the season. Win it, you control your destiny, lose it…. WC
Honestly, win each week, don’t worry about the future until you get there.
Stay Healthy. Paramount. Get the RB stable right and the CB stable right. Keep the LT and RT healthy as well…. ort as close as you can. I’m convinced the LT is playing through some significant injury, he isn’t moving quite right, trying to gut it out.
I would have included game planning / willingness to adapt earlier in games. HC, OC, RW… doesn’t matter to me, they need to be able to pull the trigger faster and get more up tempo into the game plan as well.
“There’s also a rumor going around that Russell Wilson will show up for this game.”
That would be a good idea. So freaking sick to death of Pete being utterly owned by McVay
good write-up . . .
Hoping they can put the stink of the NYG game behind them.
Well done, Cha. Who do you think the lose will be? LA or SF? I’m hoping we find or mojo for LA and I have a feeling the SF game will be as tough as nails, giving us a clean split of 3-3 in our division.
Stay healthy Hawks!
WFT
Some crazy futuristic concepts they could try on offense:
– Uptempo: PC always says “yeah, it works, we should do more” and they rarely do. But it works. Much better to hurry up a bit than taking delay of game penalties, unnecessary timeouts or just let the defense figure it out and communicate easily.
– Rollouts: Just watch the KC-DEN game. Seemed like Mahomes rolled out or they moved the pocket on at least half the snaps. RW has the arm strength to throw to the middle or maybe even to the other side even when he rolls one way. And they have speedy receivers who can win early in the routes. And rollout will give Russ more time
– More play-action: They do it, but they could do much more and more hard fakes. Estabilish the run, do a hard fake handoff, roll a bit to one side and RW should easily have 4-6 seconds
– Involve DK in the backend: Screens, jet-sweeps. He’s strong and quick. I bet he could be at least as good as Lockett ever was, or Moore doing right now. Yeah he won’t likely have 30-40 yards from these, but it will give him more rhythm in the game and more touches
– Middle/deep crossing routes: They were always good using these concepts…Are they even using it anymore? It feels like they almost totally abandon it.
– Deeper drops with quick releases: Stole that from KC too. Mahomes sometimes drops 7-10 steps for longer routes but pulls the trigger almost instantly at the end of his drop. It’s almost like a 5 step drop with couple seconds holding the ball but the drops are creating more space the defender has to cover, so a sack is less likely.
– Designed QB runs: If Russ is healthy they should include at least 2-3 QB run in a game. Especially if they do some rollouts. That would make the defense think +1 thing before snap and they should maybe include even a spy. Plus on regular rollouts the LB would have harder decision to close on Wilson because if it’s a designed run and Russ jukes him the LB could lose contain on the edge and RW could break out a bigger run. They could even use Carson as an option. Carson lines up next to Russ, on snap he starts to run to the boundary, Russ delays his run by 1 sec, then also move to the sideline. If a defender moves parallel with Russ he could contemplate a throw to the WRs. If he tries to close on RW he can decide to run, or if the defender is closing too fast he could pitch to CC. If they roll out too far Carson could start to run forward a bit (4-5 yards) and turn/come back, so Russ could throw to him if needed.
– Forget hard count: It just doesn’t work. RW is not good at it. I think we had more false start penalties than neutral zones from it
They did most of these already to some extent. It worked most times. It works for most teams in the NFL. Why don’t they do these more?
“Deeper drops with quick releases”
I swear, every time I see this occur, Russ completes a 50 yarder to whichever receiver he is looking at. Probably my favorite type of play because you just know it is going to be big play.
Can we get some of this, please? The last time I remember something similar happening at this level of chess match was the Penny TD run last season. That was a long time ago…
https://twitter.com/sayneykid/status/1336779993507041287
Now Wagner got a sore hammy too? Uh oh… If he aggravates it during the game, do you guys think they would slide Brooks over or play Barton at MLB?
Sit him this week. He’s much more needed for the following 3 games.
I agree but doubt Bobby does. KJ could also move to MLB and bring Kendricks up from the PS
As for Adams, I agree with you Rob on most part…I might be even harder on him.
I think if you can get at least a mid-late R1 next year and an R3 for 2022 you take it, and be really happy that you got back some picks and kept 16-20m APY for yourself. Start Neal/Blair next year in SS and put that 16-20m apy into a really good DE, or an elite CB, or a good CB and a good rotational DE or DT.
You won’t blitz that much, you don’t put your secondary to danger as much and your sacks will come from a DE or with a good CB you can manufacture more coverage sacks.
I’d even trade him for a mid 2nd and a mid 3rd. Maybe even for a single R1. If he wants 20m I’d be fine with even an R2. Why?
We played against a ton of backup QBs or bad QBs. Good QBs will react amazingly to Adams blitzing and make a quick checkdown or call a different play if they see Adams lining up close to the LoS. If Adams drops in coverage they will analyse the situation quickly and attack him. Against good QBs he’ll be a liability more times than not.
Against mediocre/bad QBs he can affect their play and get sacks. But sometimes those QBs will get lucky and make a good play and react well to the blitz.
Adams could work well within some systems. A 3-4 might be better for him and just use him as an LB basically. A team with a very creative DC might work for him. Disguise blitzes, run stunts, create opportunities for him where his coverage is good, etc.
He’s not good for Seattle…not when we have major holes, no money and no picks. He can’t plug those holes. If he’d be OK with 12m APY then maybe, but even then it’s only a maybe from me, especially when we could get an R1 and an R3 for him. We need cheap, young, good talents or even durable, good vets. We need resources to plug many holes.
CB, DE, maybe DT, future LT, future LG, maybe future RT, RB, WR3, a good returner, maybe a TE. Most of these are big needs. Without CAP and picks Seattle will be in huge trouble.
If they sign Adams there won’t be much CAP (especially if they re-sign Griffin and Carson) left, and unless they trade multiple players there won’t be picks either.
Agree 100%
Nice “oven ready” reference, bracing for Brexit 😮
Well, the phrase did exist before Brexit!
One more 2017/2020 mirror Rob:
Seahawks selected a DL in the 2nd round they were really counting on contributing and he hasn’t played a snap in his rookie season. The Seahawks have to make a trade to fill his vacant spot on the DL.
Great point!
Guys, this is honestly breaking my brain. What ?
Mason Rudolph likes that.
Wellllllllllll, it is an award for performance and “dedication to the community”. Guessing Rudolph doesn’t live in Cleveland. 🙂
I wish we had another season to evaluate Jamal. I have maintained that I think his negatives can be improved by coaching and the realization that he doesn’t have to be the “be all, end all” guy on this defense. I still believe it. He is 24 and not a finished product. You would in part be paying for upside. I think you short him a little by saying he is getting sacks by pure volume. He has a legit skill. Its like when you talk about Clowney and sacks. Great pressure, can’t get the guy on the ground. He is really good at it. Now, they need to do a better job replacing his zone but that is not his fault. Maybe play more dime like they did at times Sunday. I’m not sure if trading Jamal and signing a guy like Keanu Neal is better than working to improve him (Neal in particular because he is hurt all the time).
From a culture standpoint I don’t know but I’m not gonna kill a guy for trying. He is not Kam but he could be more of a motivator than Bobby which is the current guy. I will say that Kam was a great leader but dudes on that D were very self motivated.
Like you said it a definite discussion that needs to happen and no great answer yet.
Disclaimer, have not had a chance to listen to the Pod yet (catching up on new Oh Sees albums!).
Viewed from a bubble, without context, I really like Jamal Adams the player. Aggressive, active, fired up. He’s a lot of pass rush pressure to a defense that lacks it. If you drafted that player, and chose to utilize him in that role to play to his strengths, and make up for a lack of pass rush, it would be smart, and ok way of covering your butt for failures elsewhere on the defense.
Viewed outside of the bubble (ignoring the forthcoming contract demands) I hate the fact you traded a ransom, to cover your butt, and leave the rest of the secondary with too much ground to cover because part of your secondary is a default LEO.
For those who care I did some stat comparison of the first three quarters of the season.
Games 1-4 (1st Quarter):
Offense:
Pass Yards average…303
Run Yards average…113
Total Yards average…416
Scoring…35.5
Defense:
Pass Yards Average…401
Run Yards Average…76
Total Yards average…477
Scoring…27
Games 5-8 (2nd Quarter):
Offense:
Pass Yards average…293
Run Yards average…121
Total Yards average…414
Scoring…33
Defense:
Pass Yards average…323
Run Yards average…112
Total Yards average…435
Scoring…33.5
Games 9-12 (3rd Quarter):
Offense:
Pass Yards average…211
Run Yards average…116
Total Yards average…327
Scoring…20
Defense:
Pass Yards average…205
Run Yards average…121
Total Yards average…326
Scoring…19.5
According to what Rob said on the podcast, in the past 4 drafts the SH’s have passed on not just a few quality players in rounds 1&2 in order to draft the likes of Penny, Ifedi, Taylor, McDowell, but multiple starting and very effective players. It’s inexcusable, IMO. And thus management has to dumpster dive in FA or try and develop later round projects into quality starters to put a roster together.
Some of it is very hindsight. I remember that Ifedi was very talked about on this blog and many were happy we got him at the time. It didn’t work out. Fair process, bad result. McDowell was a potential top 10 talent with questionable work ethic. They thought Pete and the vets could get him going and then he got hurt. Fair process, bad result. I can’t defend Penny as I wanted either of the Georgia running backs. Taylor TBD. It is fair to look back but you can miss more ways than you hit on a pick.
I would never criticise the Ifedi or McDowell picks (and I haven’t). They needed a right tackle and Ifedi ticked every physical box you look for. He took it to Alabama in his final year at Texas A&M. It didn’t work out but that happens.
With McDowell, he wouldn’t have been my choice (I wanted TJ Watt, that’s on the record) but I can see why they made that move.
What I can criticise though is this idea that the Seahawks have put out that they ‘can’t’ get amazing talent without top-10 picks so that’s how they’re justifying the Adams trade. Those great players are available in the late first or early second every year. The Seahawks simply haven’t drafted them.
That’s on them, not the draft classes they’ve picked from. And it’s NO justification for spending as much as they did on JA.
🤔
PC’s take on why we lost:
Shaq’s take on why we lost:
When I hear Griffin say stuff like this, he is talking about himself. If he is that arrogant then I don’t want him around next year. You’d never hear Sherm say something like that…he’d be pissed off.