Seahawks-49ers: What fans are saying after the game and what you should believe
The Seattle Seahawks entered their Week 15 contest against the San Francisco 49ers without many people giving them very good odds of winning in spite of the fact that the Seahawks were at home and facing a seventh round rookie at quarterback throwing to a receivers group sans the best player. Not even Seahawks fans were especially hopeful.
Sometimes things actually are as they expect.
I’ve noticed that in the immediate aftermath of Seattle’s 21-13 defeat at the hand of the 49ers that some fans are clinging to a belief that Thursday wasn’t that bad after all.
“The defense only allowed 21 points!”
The defense gave up a 55-yard run at the end that would have led to a touchdown if the game wasn’t already over. The 49ers missed a field goal. San Francisco was 6-of-13 on third downs. The 49ers averaged 6.2 yards per play—the only team in the entire NFL averaging more than 6.2 yards per play is the Kansas City Chiefs… Seattle’s Week 16 opponent.
Sorry, no, I can’t accept that anyone watched the game and is under the impression that the defense gets a pass after nearly allowing 31 points at home to a Brock Purdy offense and 170 yards on the ground; the fifth game in a row over 160 rushing yards allowed.
You want “positivity”? There’s nobody more optimistic than Seaside Joe, that’s why the message all offseason was to preach patience for a team that had very little identifiable talent going into the year. Nothing about that message has changed.
But if you want lip service, there are plenty of Seahawks writers out there more than willing to just tell you what you want to hear.
Seattle’s defense was atrocious on Thursday and it has been atrocious all season. The Seahawks have draft capital, cap space, and a reason to be aggressive on the trade market in 2023. The absolute last thing you want to do right now is convince yourselves that the Seahawks “aren’t that bad” because it’s avoiding acceptance that leads to a lack of accountability and then growth and improvement becomes improbable.
Pete Carroll proved that he’s capable of acceptance when he traded Russell Wilson for the best trade package in NFL history.
Be patient. And accept that the team is not a playoff team. We never thought that they were up until the moment that they bunched up all their wins in the first half of the season! Oops!
“The offense was still pretty good—got a touchdown finally!”
The offense was worse than the defense!
It is clear to me that the defense needs six or seven new starters and I expect Seattle to be more aggressive in landing those players next year than new options on offense. I mean, if the Seahawks do re-sign Geno Smith, where would a new starter even fit in?
If Kenneth Walker III, Charles Cross, Abe Lucas, Tyler Lockett, DK Metcalf, and the tight end trio are all locked into their positions, and Seattle decides to bring back Smith and say, Marquise Goodwin, where are the upgrades coming from besides center and guard?
I wish it were this simple, but the Seahawks aren’t going to fix these dreadful offensive issues just because they draft a guard and sign a center.
In their first seven quarters against the 49ers, Seattle’s offense may as well be the worst in the NFL: two field goals in seven quarters. Getting a touchdown drive when the score is 21-6 and the clock is almost out is another way for people to lose sight of what matters more than anything else: ACCEPTANCE!
I’m pretty sure that the 49ers are bringing back most of their defense. And I’m also kind of certain that the Seahawks are bringing back most of their offense. That should scare Seattle fans at least a little bit based on what we’ve seen this year; barring tremendous growth by the young offensive tackles, I don’t understand how Geno Smith is supposed to score 30 points against the 49ers next year without several more upgrades beyond that.
And we don’t even know yet if Shane Waldron is returning. Or if he should.
Last week, the Seahawks scored 17 points at home to the Carolina Panthers until a touchdown with :16 seconds left.
The week before, the Seahawks scored 20 points against the Rams until a touchdown with :36 seconds left. L.A. did not have Aaron Donald and they are one of the worst teams in the NFL.
Seattle could have beaten the Raiders in overtime, but again the offense went completely flat in the second half, punting or fumbling on four of their last five drives, including in overtime.
And 16 points against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Germany.
Over their last five games, the Seahawks have had one of the worst offenses in the NFL. Whether you want to ignore it or believe it, Geno Smith IS struggling of late. And if the defense were not as bad as it is, we would spend a lot more time talking about how concerned we should be about the offense.
The Seattle Seahawks have the best or second-best special teams in the league.
Tight.
They need massive improvements from the other two much more important phases of football.
By the way, if you point to Geno Smith’s “stats” as a reason that the passing offense is doing good, then what do you think of Brock Purdy’s stats? Do you think Purdy is better than Geno? That’s what the stats would have you believe.
If Seattle wants to build around Geno Smith because they think he’s at least as good as Derek Carr or Kirk Cousins, that’s certainly a strategy. But it is imperative that they ACCEPT that Geno is on the level of one of those quarterbacks and not on the level of someone who can do it with less help.
“The Seahawks are 7-7! It’s pretty good and the playoffs are in reach!”
I think plenty of people predicted that the Seahawks could be about 7-10 this season. That is a final record that I think is looking plenty attainable at this point and it would mean that Pete Carroll had lost seven of the last eight games of the season.
The final three games are against the Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets, and Los Angeles Rams.
Losing to the Bucs, Raiders, and Panthers over the last month should give you more than enough reason to think that Seattle could lose the rest of their games. How they can possibly compete with the Chiefs next Saturday is beyond simple matchups and keys to the game. The Jets have put something together that the Seahawks have not done yet: One side of the football (their defense) is exceptional.
Seattle is 0-for-2. But we KNEW THIS going into the season. So I’m not worried about it.
I’m just accepting it.
The Seahawks have had the second-easiest schedule in the NFL by DVOA. They could have managed to inflate their win total and maybe win the NFC West just based on their random luck with the schedule, but instead it seems that Seattle is more likely than not to be sitting this one out.
I’m okay with that too.
Teams should try and win every game, they should hope to win every game, but I don’t see a huge benefit to making the playoffs just to get knocked out after one or two weeks. Are the Raiders, Patriots, or Steelers so much better off just because they got to the postseason and lost in the wild card last year?
You can be frustrated by Thursday night’s game, as I was. I felt helpless even though it is hardly my responsibility to do anything for the Seattle Seahawks. I am merely but another Amazon Prime member. But I feel that way without worrying about whether the Seahawks are letting anyone down.
The Seahawks were 7-10 last season with Russell Wilson at a time when most of us still thought they were good. They were bad.
The Seahawks could be 7-10 or 8-9 or 9-8 this season without Wilson, at a time when most of us thought they were going to be much worse. That sounds pretty good!
Having 2022’s draft class get another year older, a high draft pick and three more picks in the top-50 in 2023, and a clear path towards staying ahead of the Rams and the Cardinals in the division, that gives me reason to believe that the Seahawks are not only just as good today as I thought they were at the beginning of the season… but they’re better today than I thought they would be at the start of the season.
That doesn’t make them better than most teams. And definitely not better than the 49ers.
I accept that.
There's a rumor that Brady will be playing for the Niners next year. Can you imagine the team that we played tonight plus Deebo Samuel and Tom Brady. Whoa. The 49ers will be the NFC Super Bowl representative and will likely play the AFC champ, who we happen to play next week. Oh boy.
Tonight, we put up a better fight than Tampa Bay did last week. McCaffery had 108 yards rushing and only 30 yds receiving; a slow day for McCaffery. The corners held up, Diggs didn't. We play a 3/4 and had no nose tackle for most of the game. Considering the huge difference in talent, I thought the Hawks gave a good effort.
With Jamal Adams on IR, we don't have a defensive player that would start for San Francisco. SF plays a 4/3 because they have Bosa, Ekuban, Armstead, and Kinlaw. We use five players who produce less than they get from four. Their linebacker are fast, aggressive, and cover the middle zone like paint. They have two really good defensive backs. It's the only chink in their armor. San Francisco only needs two good defensive backs because opposing QB have no time to throw and teams can't run against them.
There were times that San Francisco was in the backfield before Geno even got to his pass set. I don't recall Geno ever having time to go through his progression. K9 doesn't look like the hard-nosed, aggressive runner he did a few weeks ago. Both rookies linemen look like they need a Loching break. With the exception of Lockett, none of our wide receivers create separation. Finally, Waldron is not Shanahan and I'll be shocked if he is offered a head coaching gig except maybe in Denver since he was rumored to be hand picked by Wilson as OC.
If you hoped for a victory tonight, good for you. If thought we would win, you might wanna ease up on the Jack Daniels. The 49ers have created this team over a period of eight years starting with Jimmy Ward who blanketed Metcalf all night was drafted in 2014 and Arik Armstead in 2015. BTW, 2014 was a terrible draft for San Fran with Ward and Carlos Hyde the only real hits. The Niners spent several years in obscurity getting very high draft picks. They bought Trent Williams and Christian Macaffery. It's their time and we'll have ours but we need time to build. Accept that.
At the start of the season I said I wanted to see a couple things - a team that plays hard and a team that improves throughout the season. Being a person who thinks stopping the run is mostly a matter of effort and will I have been disappointed by the last 4 games because the Hawks were flat out getting pushed around... in my eyes a matter of will. But tonight was different, granted they busted off that late run to put the game away but for most of the night the run defense was adequate. If they'd played that way for the prior 4 games they'd have won them all. So anyway, I saw improvement tonight and I want to see how things go these last 3 games.
As for the offense I don't think the line is performing well. No run game to speak of for 5 games now and that's disturbing. Geno was under heavy pressure every dropback tonight. Frankly I think the situation with the O-line is worse than the run defense because they had been opening holes earlier in the year and now nothing. Is it scheme? personnel? I don't know. But it's got me pretty worried.