Debunking Rumors: What 'they' said about the Seahawks before beating the Broncos

Rumors "DEBUNKED" and "CONFIRMED" after Seahawks beat Broncos, 26-20: Seaside Joe 2018

The Seattle Seahawks in some ways did and in some ways did not resemble the team that many of us and many outsiders expected them to be in Mike Macdonald’s first game as the head coach and Ryan Grubb’s first as the OC.

The Seahawks did play better defense (19.83 EPA is better than all but one game by Seattle in 2023), Kenneth Walker did finally rush for over 100 yards again (he only did that once last year), and Geno Smith did have to overcome playing behind one of the worst pass protecting offensive lines in the NFL.

But DK Metcalf, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and Noah Fant did not get off to a good start as receivers in Grubb’s offense, the Seahawks revamped defensive line did not “necessarily” dominate Denver’s offensive line for four quarters, and Bo Nix did not turn out to be capable of completing as many passes in his Broncos debut as he did as an Oregon Duck.

These are some of the things that “they” got wrong about the Seahawks going into the season, as well as what Seaside Joe got wrong because I was no less prone to errors than “them”.

‘Tyler Lockett is finished’

Rumor: DEBUNKED!

Expected to be no better than third in the pecking order, Lockett led the team in targets (7) despite being fourth in snaps (36) and fourth in routes run (20) among the Seahawks tight ends and receivers. In fact, Lockett’s 36 snaps were only four more than rookie tight end A.J. Barner.

I was pretty much just lucky to be able to write before the game that Lockett would catch the game-winning pass, but then again he did sort of play like I expected him to. I just expected Jaxon Smith-Njigba and DK Metcalf to be better.

I’m all in favor of Tyler Lockett and the advantage he gives the Seahawks on offense with the savviness and receiver expertise he brings to a team that honestly kind of lacks savviness with Metcalf and Noah Fant. However, I would not be surprised if this ends up as one of his five best games of the season. Lockett will continue to be a presence week after week; there will be times he has 30 yards and times he leads Seattle in receiving like he did on Sunday, but he’s putting it out there from the onset of the season that he hasn’t lost the elements that make him “Tyler Lockett”.

‘Boye Mafe didn’t stand out’

Rumor: DEBUNKED!

You can almost guarantee that every week in my post-game reaction article that I’m going to end up whiffing on a player or a play that was better or worse than my immediate take on it or him. In this week’s Hot, Medium, Mild, that player seems to be Boye Mafe.

It’s not that I said that Mafe was bad by any means, I just said that the edge rushers in general were underwhelming and that Mafe was probably more of a medium than a hot. That seems like a mistake given the number of people and stats that are defending Mafe as one of the NFL’s most dominant pass rushers of the week.

Perhaps Mafe’s extra work in the preseason is paying off. Sideways to that, an immediate reaction to a game like that could miss the boat on how much players helped without getting noticed, like whether or not Byron Murphy II’s presence is what opened up Mafe and Derick Hall for sacks and pressures. That’s something that we will gain more insight on later in the week after stats like “double-team rate” start to trickle out.

‘Seattle’s OL is in trouble’

Rumor: Confirmed

The Seahawks should be worried about their offensive line? No.

The Seahawks should have always been worried.

Jeffery Simmons could be the most powerful human being in the NFL and this play against Laken Tomlinson from training camp joint practices would still not be acceptable:

That’s as bad as an NFL offensive lineman can possibly look…until he starts in Week 1 against the Broncos and is arguably even worse.

Players having bad games isn’t a big deal. DK Metcalf had a really bad game, it’s not a big deal, he’s DK Metcalf and Sunday was no different than all the other ebbs in his career. The big deal is that Tomlinson and Bradford were expected to be bad. Stone Forsythe, if he had to come in, was expected to be bad. The Seahawks will likely need to continue to start Tomlinson, Bradford, and Forsythe for several more weeks.

They said that the Seahawks had a bad offensive line. It might be worse than that.

‘Running backs don’t matter’

Rumor: DEBUNKED!

Kenneth Walker made plays on Sunday that were not just “normal running back plays” that anyone could make, not even Zach Charbonnet. I can’t imagine that Malik Willis would have helped the Seahawks beat the Broncos this week.

Seattle is 1-0 with a lot of credit due to their running back. The Texans are 1-0 with Week 1’s leading rusher, Joe Mixon (while his old team, the Bengals, lost to the Patriots). The Chargers are 1-0 with 13.5 YPC JK Dobbins. The Patriots are 1-0 and Eagles are 1-0 with thanks to 100-yard rushers Rhamondre Stevenson and Saquon Barkley. And the Lions dominated overtime against the Rams by feeding David Montgomery.

QBs mostly struggled in Week 1, while RBs on winning teams were very solid.

Mike Macdonald said after the game that the team felt optimistic about his chances of a quick recovery from an abdominal injury, but the situation will need to be monitored day-to-day and probably right up until the game in New England.

‘Noah Fant is who he is’

Rumor: Confirmed

I got as much pushback for “Why I do and don’t think Noah Fant is going to have a career season” as anything else I wrote in the offseason, but Sunday was classic MF’ing Noah Fant to me. He was targeted three times in the first eight minutes of the game and at that point you might have thought that Fant would be a focal point for the offense in trying to beat his former team.

Instead, Fant was targeted one more time over the rest of the game and finished with two catches for 11 yards. At a critical moment late in the game, Fant caught a pass that could have sealed the win, but he was tackled short of the first down marker on third-and-11, which is usually what happens to Noah Fant near first-down markers…(The play never happened because of an offsides penalty, but Macdonald would have declined the penalty if Fant had gotten one more yard because Seattle would have won the game there.)

For anyone saying that this is being nitpicky, overly critical, or is asking too much of Fant, let me ask you one question: If it was George Kittle catching a third-and-11 pass against the Seahawks, do you think Kittle would have gotten the first down?

I do. That’s the type of play that you expect from great players and as a former top-20 pick, Fant has been expected to be a great player. Fant ran 21 routes—one more than Tyler Lockett—and had two catches for 11 yards. I don’t think that’s Ryan Grubb’s fault or Geno Smith’s fault.

As a matter of fact, A.J. Barner played 32 snaps, only 18 fewer than Fant. Was Barner less valuable than Fant? If he was a better blocker (as many think he is) he might have actually been more valuable than Fant.

By the way that’s another debunk…Brady Russell only played four snaps. It turns out that for now, Barner is actually TE2 and Russell is TE3, but if Pharaoh Brown returns this week then they’ll be TE3 and TE4.

‘Bo Nix is a plug-and-play winning QB for Sean Payton’

Rumor: DEBUNKED!

I wish I could say that a year from now that nobody is going to overreact to what happens in the meaningless preseason based on how the rookie quarterbacks looked in Week 1 (and a lot of other stuff that happened) but I know that people are still going to overreact to everything 12 months from now as if nothing was learned.

‘The Patriots are a Week 2 gimme’

Rumor: DEBUNKED!

The Patriots went to Cincinnati to face the Bengals in Week 1 and held Zac Taylor/Joe Burrow’s passing offense to 154 net yards with three sacks and one fumble. Even if Tee Higgins didn’t play and Ja’Marr Chase was limited after holding out in training camp, it’s not as though we should be surprised that New England has a defense.

Keion White, a second round pick in 2023 who went nine picks after Derick Hall (and certainly had some Seahawks fans wishing he’d go to Seattle), had 2.5 sacks this week. How is he going to look when he’s matched up on Stone Forsythe at Gillette Stadium?

If this ends up as a 15-13 type of final score then obviously it means that this is anybody’s game. But the Patriots being at home, what advantages do the Seahawks really have if New England’s defense is as good as Seattle’s? The Patriots have the better offensive line and if Walker is out, possibly also the better running back running behind them in a game that could be decided on the ground.

The Seahawks have far better receivers than the Patriots do, but Jerod Mayo has a talented secondary, in addition to a defensive line that looks even better than the Broncos defensive line that just dominated Seattle’s OL in pass pro.

What was once, “Yeah, the Seahawks should be 2-0 if they’re going to be a decen team this year” is probably, “If the Seahawks start 2-0, they might be good enough to win the NFC West”. That’s how significant I think it could be to beat the Patriots in New England on Sunday.

Pending Rumors…

Not yet confirmed, nor denied.

‘Seahawks defensive line is a top-5 NFL unit’

I think the Broncos OL managed to hold their own for most of the game against Leonard Williams, Jarran Reed, and Byron Murphy. That’s fine, Denver’s got one of the most expensive OLs in the NFL and it’s only Week 1, plus Seattle did stop the Broncos running backs for the most part. This is also a one-time-game-watch reaction, so I could be wrong, but I think that the Seahawks revamped defensive line was only able to crack the surface of what they can become in the weeks ahead.

‘DK Metcalf and JSN will have career years’

On DK, he’s always been pretty inconsistent and heavily-penalized. He had an even worse Week 1 game in 2023 against the Rams, but bounced back to have his best career season. Still, I have to pump the brakes on DK having a career year just because he knows that he could get a $30-$35 million/year extension in 2025 if he does; for one game, he’s been the same ‘bad’ version of DK Metcalf we’ve always known.

PFF notes that JSN played in 11 snaps out of 12 personnel after only playing in 16 such snaps over his ENTIRE rookie season. That’s a huge difference. But JSN pulled off an even worse disappearing act than Fant, catching two passes for 19 yards on Seattle’s third drive of the game and then getting targeted only two more times for the rest of the game (one of which was a defensive pass interference, so there’s that).

The increased share of reps is good news for JSN though, so he should be fine. I still expect Metcalf and Jaxon Smith-Njigba to finish the season with more targets, catches, yards, and touchdowns than Lockett.

‘The Seahawks have a better run defense’

The Seahawks held the Broncos to 99 yards on 25 carries and the most dangerous runs came by Bo Nix in the final four minutes. The Seahawks ranked 16th in EPA allowed on the ground in Week 1, which is good and negatively impacted by Nix running for a four-yard score with 2:09 remaining.

Seattle has had the worst run defense in the NFL lately, so being 16th would be a huge improvement. They definitely looked improved (there were times in the middle of the game when the Seahawks run defense was still a little suspect) but why not wait a little while before we decide how much Mike Macdonald’s presence has impacted Seattle’s run defense?

Like say, after playing Stevenson in Week 2, after playing the Dolphins (first in YPC in 2023) in Week 3, after playing Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs in Week 4, and after playing Christian McCaffrey in Week 6?

The Seahawks are about to play four of the most dangerous running teams in the NFL coming up soon (especially Miami, Detroit, and San Francisco) and after that chunk of the season we can talk about how improved Seattle’s run defense is at the start of Macdonald’s career. Is it a deal-bunk?