After they beat the six-win Giants on Sunday, it is no longer much of a debate whether the Seahawks are among the NFC’s best teams through eight weeks.
Behind quarterback Geno Smith, they’re also “simply the best story in the NFL this season,” Times columnist Larry Stone writes.
“This is the real deal,” coach Pete Carroll said of Smith after Sunday’s victory. “ … It’s a thrilling story for the kid, who just hung in there so tough and outlasted it, and now he’s enjoying all the fun of it.”
The Seahawks have a chance to stretch their lead in the NFC West with matchups against two of the NFC’s more disappointing teams in the Cardinals and Buccaneers before their bye. Can they keep it up?
Here’s what national media are saying about the surprise Seahawks after Week 8.
CBS Sports’ John Breech gave the Seahawks a B for their Week 8 performance.
Not a pretty game here, but like the Giants, they haven’t always needed aesthetic victories to get real wins this year. You’d like to see more from the ground game early on — Kenneth Walker III was a virtual nonfactor until his late-game score — and they need to be less streaky to contend. But Geno Smith was once again poised in and around the pocket; he would’ve had three TDs if not for a Tyler Lockett drop. Their star receivers stepped up in crunch time. And the defense had no issue swallowing up Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley.
ESPN.com’s Brady Henderson believes the Seahawks must be legit.
It’s getting hard to consider the Seahawks anything other than legitimate contenders after their win over the previously 6-1 Giants, which keeps Seattle atop the NFC West standings at 5-3. Their defense neutralized Saquon Barkley and a strong Giants run game. Their special teams forced two takeaways. Geno Smith and their offense put the game away late after a rough start. It was only close through three quarters because Tyler Lockett made a pair of uncharacteristic blunders that he made amends for by catching the go-ahead touchdown pass.
The Washington Post‘s Jerry Brewer says the Seahawks “just needed to have the courage to let go.”
As the first half of this season has shown, the Seahawks weren’t stale because of their methods. They just needed to have the courage to let go. Once they did, it enabled the organization — which has been one of the NFL’s most stable since late owner Paul Allen poached Mike Holmgren from Green Bay in 1999 — to regenerate. Their new vibe is a familiar one. The personnel is full of fresh faces, but the philosophies are mostly the same. At an accelerated pace, they are showing signs of becoming an updated version of what they’ve always been during the dozen years Carroll and Schneider have been in charge.
One of Bleacher Report’s Maurice Moton’s Week 8 takeaways is that it’s time to believe in Geno Smith and the Seahawks.
Whatever you thought about Geno Smith from his time with the New York Jets, New York Giants and Los Angeles Chargers, forget it. His career has taken a positive turn, and he’s a 2022 Comeback Player of the Year candidate … With Smith at the helm, Seattle won 27-13 over one of the league’s hottest teams in the Giants, who came to Lumen Field with a 6-1 record. The Seahawks never fell behind in the contest and pulled away from a 13-13 tie with a couple of fourth-quarter touchdowns. … The Seahawks have won four of their last five games with double-digit margins in the last three victories.
CBS Sports’ Jeff Kerr believes it’s an overreaction to say the Seahawks are the best team in the NFC.
Seattle deserves to be in this conversation after a convincing victory over the New York Giants, but the Seahawks will have a much tougher challenge in this division. The San Francisco 49ers are figuring things out with Christian McCaffrey and the team is getting healthier. Geno Smith isn’t slowing down and rookie Kenneth Walker is going to be a force the rest of the year. The Seahawks aren’t going anywhere in the NFC playoff race, yet they have a major challenger for the division in the 49ers.
MMQB’s Albert Breer writes that “after a decade of having [Russell] Wilson, Seattle’s adjustment away from him has gone considerably smoother than Denver’s adjustment with him.”
And that is, in large part, because the Seahawks didn’t overhaul the position. They kept Geno Smith. They brought in Drew Lock, as part of the Wilson trade, to compete with him. And they kept the team mostly together, while adding an ultratalented rookie class to the roster. … All this has done is validate what the Seahawks thought they had in the summer — something they told everyone who would listen was there, even as most expected the first year post-Wilson to be a total rebuild, throwaway year. They believed it, because they saw it, and now everyone else can, too.