Rams win battle, Seahawks focused on war

Will Seahawks return stronger because of their mistakes against the Rams?

The extent of the Grey Zabel injury progressed from “looks really bad” to “doesn’t look that bad” to Mike Macdonald’s latest update on Monday afternoon, which is that the rookie guard might not even miss a start.

That’s a relief because look at this rep of Christian Haynes (64) against Jared Verse on Sunday:

Anthony Bradford is getting seriously lowlighted every week and Jalen Sundell is on IR so the extent to which the Seahawks can give Sam Darnold the type of protection he had in Weeks 1-10 would be significantly depleted without Zabel. Seattle maybe can’t run the ball that well yet (they have the fourth-highest “stuff%” rate in between the tackles at 20.6%) but Zabel still hasn’t been blamed for a sack allowed in his career.

If there’s a time to play it safe with Zabel it could be this week against the Titans. Perhaps you don’t want to mess around with Jeffery Simmons vs. Haynes and Bradford but the Titans are so bad at everything else that maybe the Seahawks could survive anyway.

But if Zabel doesn’t need a break, then don’t give him one. Great players play at ALL TIMES that they are available to play and Zabel has all the makeup to be a grey great player so I would expect him to play. Too many young players revel in days off…

Grey Zabel isn’t one of those guys.

Let’s talk about some more of your postgame comments from the Seahawks 21-19 loss to the Rams. (Part I if you missed it)

Gavin: First, I want to say how much more I love reading post-loss articles and comments on SSJ, compared to other sites. All of you, from SSJ on down, come across as even keeled and focused on improvement. Phew. What a relief when coming from a slew of catastrophic and condemning posts elsewhere. Thanks!

This is a reply to BEASTMODE808 and I just want to open with this because I agree: I love getting to interact with the Seaside Joe community during the week because it’s a good environment for debate without mudslinging. That’s all thanks to you fans and I appreciate it. Join the discussion if you haven’t already or at least be checking out the comments more often!

BEASTMODE808: Not to overreact, but Myers is probably gone next year right? Kudos to him for the first 4 fgs, but considering his salary and with kickers setting all sorts of records this year, that final attempt wasn’t even a squeeze. So disappointing.

Definitely not blaming Myers for the loss, 4/5 w a 57 yarder is a good outing. BUT, considering he’s one of the highest paid kickers, I would hope he had the leg to give it a chance. Way off and well short: just ugh.

Grant: At the very least the Myers should have some competition in training camp next year.

Because I wrote this bonus Seaside Joe article on Jason Myers on Monday, I wanted to visit this topic one more time and start with a clarification:

When a newsletter starts with the phrases “Myers missed a kick” and “the Seahawks should replace Myers” in such close proximity to one another, it is reasonable to believe that my premise must be that the Seahawks should cut Myers because he missed a kick. I just want to clarify that is NOT what I’m saying.

My thesis statement is that if Mike Macdonald wants to put his kicker in those situations next season, he better find a new kicker. Putting him in that situation is like putting DeMarcus Lawrence at safety.

Jason Myers “can” make that kick, but Jason Myers has never made that kick in that situation in his life and I’m not betting he’s going to do it if he’s put in that situation again. I’m not even betting on him to make that kick from 57 despite the fact that he made a kick from 57 this week!

As I wrote on Monday, Myers is 0-of-4 on game-winning or game-tying kicks under 2:00 minutes (and we could extend it with more time left than that too but I just didn’t) that are over 53 yards and he’s only 1-of-2 on those 53-yard tries. We’re not talking about Myers needing to be 2 yards closer or even 5 yards closer…I think we need to talk about Myers being at least 10 yards closer.

Even the one time that Myers made a kick from 61, he did it in 2020. What happened in 2020? Covid. What did that mean in the NFL? No fans. Jason Myers’ longest career kick came on the road but in front of zero fans.

We can’t talk about “hostile environment” out of one side of our mouth and “it doesn’t matter that there were no fans” from the other. I have no faith in Myers making a long distance kick in a crucial end of game situation and I’m basing that on the entire history of Myers in the NFL. This is not about one kick or two kicks. It’s a huge block of evidence that he’s not “that” kicker, so that’s why I say that if Macdonald wants “that” kicker he has to at least entertain new ones in 2026. The fact that the Seahawks would save $5 million to cut Myers (so about $4 million savings if they replace him with a minimum salary) is merely more incentive to be looking.

And finally let me frame it like this:

-If Myers had missed from 57, would you have wanted him to kick from 61?

If your answer changes from “kick” to “don’t kick” then we are basing our expectations on results and not process.

-He just missed badly from 61, so would you want him to be asked to kick a game-winner against the Titans from 61?

If your answer is “no” then again we are basing our answers on results.

-Let’s say that he gets another chance and misses his next game-winner too. Would you want Myers to be put in that situation again in the playoffs?

If your answer is “no” because then he would have missed multiple critical kicks this season, then you’re saying you will lose faith in Myers if it happens again. All I’m saying is that just because the misses didn’t happen in close proximity to each other, it doesn’t change the fact that Myers has never made those kicks.

If the Seahawks don’t want to risk losing a kicker who they can trust in over 90% of kicking situations, then keep Jason Myers. But if Macdonald wants a kicker who he can trot out at the end of the game to make the kick that Seattle attempted against the Rams, a change or a competition is the only logical thing to do next year.

(Also the article was more about the fact that the Seahawks wasted too much time on their second-to-last possession.)

zezinhom400: I’ve thought the same thing in all three losses: Seattle looked like the better team. On the road. The Rams were ranked by most scribes as the #1 team in football and Seattle more than held its own -- including 38 mins in time of possession despite the 4 interceptions. Without those, if he just throws those balls into the stands, do we end up with 40 mins?

Ok: the Rams did what they have done the whole season -- win the turnover game. So kudos to them. But I didn’t come away feeling like other Rams losses in past years where it was so hopeless. Quite the contrary: if it comes down to the last Rams game, we definitely have a great chance.

There’s something to be said for the performance of the defense to give the Seahawks a chance to win a game despite four interceptions. It was the first time since 1999 that Seattle held a team to 21 or fewer points while throwing at least 4 interceptions. Coincidentally those teams were also both good in November, the Bucs at 7-4 and the Seahawks at 8-3:

I do, however, think that the Rams get to come away saying that they’re the better team right now and arguably the best team in the NFL, largely thanks to coaching. You’ve got Sean McVay going to extremes of 13 personnel on offense and Chris Shula going to extremes with dime personnel on defense and the Rams rank top-5 on both sides of the ball in terms of points per drive.

I’ll give L.A. all the credit they deserve, although that doesn’t mean that they’ll beat the Seahawks the next time they play or in the playoffs if they meet a third time. As of mid-November, I’ll say that the Rams are better. Lucky for the Seahawks, the Super Bowl isn’t this week.

Randall Murray: I want to apologize. This game all on me. I kept my Defensive hat on all game. Well until mid 4th quarter. I didn’t switch. Then I started to switch and defensive was great and offense picked up. I’m truly sorry for not switching the defense vs offense hat sooner.

You’re a man of many hats. I think if Klint Kubiak wants to wear a head coach cap, he’s going to need to smooth out Seattle’s offense over the next games (Titans, Vikings, Falcons) leading into a critical final month (Colts, Rams, Panthers, 49ers). The Seahawks are first in rushing attempts, but 29th in yards per carry. They’re 1st in yards per pass, but 32nd in turnovers.

The Seahawks can win games turning the ball over. They can win the Super Bowl if they stop turning the ball over.

Grant: Soooo many field goals. Another useless Kallerup holding call. A couple of bad no-calls that would have helped us. The greatest punt I’ve ever seen.

Rozone: The player who got a holding penalty and negated K9’s touchdown did more to lose the game than Darnold, IMHO, of course!

I couldn’t quite tell at the time but it did seem like Nick Kallerup’s hold was fairly beneficial in Kenneth Walker’s score. So yeah, it could be the issue is that he wasn’t a good enough blocker or he was going to get a penalty. The Seahawks held onto Kallerup all this time and released Eric Saubert only to have these penalties happen…I wonder what coaches like so much about Kallerup that they had to keep him over Saubert. Is it just an age thing?

Chip Mac: Had to take the night off and recover from the game. As many noted, the defenses was great and LA punter had a dream putter at the end of the game.

zezinhom400: The tail of that damn ball nearly grazed the pylon, never seen anything like that in my life. Best punt in history and arguably what won them the game (despite the 4 int’s).

Raise your hand if you kinda want to see Michael Dickson do something like that and remind us why he’s the highest paid punter in the game. I mean, I don’t want to see Dickson at all (and we didn’t until 3:40 left in the third quarter!) but those ridiculous coffin punts he had in 2018 feel like ancient history.

In his defense, the Seahawks haven’t given him much to do this year. Only two punters have had less work this season (the guys on the Chiefs and Colts).

B Pearce: tush push on third-and-1 was the absolute worst call of the game

I don’t want to see the NFL turn into what the NBA did to three-pointers.

Chris H: In a prior discussion, we were discussing the Rams (FTR’s) use of 13 personnel, and what the Seahawks would do to counter. In the 4 games leading up to Sunday’s match-up, the Rams were using it 38% of the time, with a 4.7 yards/play average. On Sunday they ran it 36% of the time, for a 2.7 yards/play average. And as expected, the Seahawks stayed with their big nickel package, and played it tough.

Good stats, Chris! Macdonald was hired to be the McVay killer and despite the loss the Seahawks seem to have gotten what they wanted.

Seaside Joe 2451