The Seahawks are at a crossroads in their 2022 season after falling to 2-3 with a 39-32 loss Sunday at New Orleans that appeared to further cement what this team has — an offense good enough to score points on just about anyone, but a defense lax enough for Seattle to lose to just about anyone.
In our weekly Four Downs feature, Seahawks beat reporter Bob Condotta reviews four key questions lingering from Sunday’s game.
So is the defense really this bad?
Unfortunately, at this point it just may be.
After Sunday’s games, the Seahawks are now allowing the most yards allowed per play in the NFL — 6.6 — the most yards allowed per game (430) and the second-most points (30.8). The yards and points allowed per game would break team worsts — the 2000 team holds the mark for most yards allowed per game at 399.4 and the inaugural 1976 team holds the mark for most points allowed per game at 30.6. That the Detroit Lions got shut out by the Patriots on Sunday a week after scoring 45 on Seattle doesn’t make anything look any better.
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Saints 39, Seahawks 32
At this point, it’s just hard to figure out what major moves Seahawks can make to fix it.
Seattle changed its scheme following last season and the firing of defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr., going with a 3-4 as its predominant look instead of a 4-3, and for now seems committed to it.
And the Seahawks have tinkered with personnel through the first five games of the season — Seattle on Sunday started Ryan Neal at strong safety in place of Josh Jones, who had started the previous three games after a season-ending injury to Jamaal Adams. Seattle also started rookie Boye Mafe at outside linebacker and played former Bears and Lions starter Christian Jones some at OLB, as well, after elevating him from the practice squad. And the Seahawks have continued to rotate at left cornerback, with Artie Burns getting 16 snaps there in place of Michael Jackson, who got the other 61 (a week after Sidney Jones IV rotated in at that spot with Jackson).
Widespread personnel changes are not really possible during an NFL season. Who the Seahawks are playing with right now is logically who they will have for the rest of the season.
Seattle has to hope for improvement from within.
But that’s been the hope all season and it has yet to happen. Now that we’re almost a third of the way through, it’s tempting to wonder if it ever will.
Can Geno Smith really keep this up?
If the defense is the sad broken record to this season, the play of Smith is the happy one.
Smith turned in another sterling performance against the Saints, completing 16-of-25 passes for 268 yards and three TDs, with a passer rating of 139.7 that was the best of his Seahawks career.
“There’s no doubt,” coach Pete Carroll said on his radio show Monday on Seattle Sports 710 when asked if Smith can sustain his hot start. “… He’s doing everything that we could ask of him right now.”
Indeed, Smith’s 113.2 passer rating leads the NFL and he also now is third in yards gained per attempt — 8.3 — seeming to answer the one big question that hovered the first few weeks (for comparison’s sake, Russell Wilson averaged 7.8 per attempt during his Seahawks career).
“We’re not going to be easy to stop,” Carroll said Monday.
They’d better not be at this point.
How much will the Seahawks miss Rashaad Penny?
In what is becoming another unhappy broken record, it feels like every offseason people wonder why the Seahawks have so many running backs. Then during the season, things happen, and it seems as if they have too few.
Seattle lost Chris Carson in July — something the team anticipated from the moment he was injured last season — and now has seen Travis Homer go on the injured reserve with a rib injury and Penny lost for the season with a broken fibula. It’s the latest unfortunate injury for the team’s 2018 first-round pick whose comeback from his previous injuries to become one of the best running backs in the NFL had been one of the more heartwarming stories of the last year for Seattle.
That leaves the Seahawks with just rookie Kenneth Walker III and third-year player DeeJay Dallas available on the 53-man roster for the moment. Homer has to sit out at least two more games.
Penny has just a one-year contract, worth up to $5.75 million, making his Seahawks future uncertain.
Walker has shown tantalizing flashes so far, most notably his 69-yard TD run Sunday. But the Seahawks had hoped to rotate Penny and Walker this season. As good as Walker may be, having to take over the hulk of the duties just six games into his career will be a heavy undertaking.
And Seattle will miss Penny’s big-play ability — he ends this season averaging 5.69 yards per carry for his career, the best mark in Seahawks history, ahead of the 5.55 of Wilson.
Is there any hope left for this season?
If there is to be, then the Seahawks pretty much better beat Arizona at home Sunday and not fall to 2-4 and what would be a worse record than at least two other teams in the NFC West — the 49ers are 3-2 and the Seahawks, Cardinals and Rams all 2-3.
Seattle’s playoff odds via FiveThirtyEight.com are now just 14%, better than only seven other teams in the NFL
And Sunday’s loss was obviously a big one in going from potentially a game over .500 to a game under .500.
Despite having played its last two games on the road, Seattle is still in a tough stretch, with three of its next five and four of its next seven away from Lumen Field.
That makes the home games in that stretch must-wins if the Seahawks are to stay in the playoff hunt, starting with Sunday.