💊Devon Witherspoon is injured
Plus Jalen Sundell is the steal of the 2024 undrafted free agents! Seahawks film studies from Week 1 vs 49ers
The Seahawks shared some good injury news on Wednesday’s first practice report of the week, as both Uchenna Nwosu and Jake Bobo were full participants. Unfortunately, does a ‘spoon full of sugar help the medicine go down?
Devon Witherspoon did not practice because of a knee injury which means that he is in some danger of missing Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Witherspoon has played in 20 consecutive games without a miss and the Seahawks are even more reliant on his availability now as Mike Macdonald was noncommittal on Wednesday when asked about Tariq Woolen’s job security as a starting cornerback, simply saying, “We’ll see.”
In addition to those injury updates, Dareke Young, Jarran Reed, Ernest Jones, and Julian Love were limited participants, while Nick Emmanwori unsurprisingly did not practice; Macdonald said that the team is still taking time to decide if Emmanwori should go on IR or not. If Emmanwori is put on IR, he will be eligible to return against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 6.
Should Woolen be benched?
On the Steelers side, cornerback Joey Porter, Jr. missed practice with a hamstring injury and safety DeShon Elliott was held out with a knee injury. Those players are listed as starters but Pittsburgh has one of the most experienced secondaries in the NFL, including Jalen Ramsey, Darius Slay, Chuck Clark, Miles Killebrew, Juan Thornhill, and Jabrill Peppers, who was signed by the team on Tuesday.
There is a lot of film to review this week — it seems like YouTube analysts are multiplying faster than Waymo cars* — for both the Seahawks and their next opponent, the Steelers, so I want to share them with you now.
*Maybe this isn’t happening where you live, but where I live these Waymo cars (self-driving Ubers without humans operating them) have seemingly gone from nonexistent to everywhere overnight!
I’ve also got some really interesting non-Seahawk Xs and Os breakdowns that I think you’re going to really like. Subscribe to Regular Joes for only $5 (wtf?! that’s a steal!) and never miss a newsletter or a film breakdown!
More of what went wrong with the Kenneth Walker run game
Our best friend All-22 did a quick 5-minute breakdown of how the 49ers checked into the perfect run defense after watching Robbie Ouzts go in motion on this toss play to Walker that was stuffed for a loss:
Two major problems for Walker on this play:
Fred Warner is an All-Pro linebacker
The 49ers out-smarted the Seahawks on this play
Seattle wasn’t able to block this run correctly because San Francisco expected what was coming and executed their game plan so that they outnumber the Seahawks blockers and bumrushed Walker for a loss of one. I don’t think any hindsight of cutting it inside would have helped either.
Let’s check into a lot more footage relevant to the Seahawks this week: