Seahawks NFL Pro stats through 3 weeks

Hiddent stats show Geno Smith, Zach Charbonnet, DK Metcalf, Tyrel Dodson having a greater impact: Seaside Joe 2033

Whatever I receive from Seaside Joe subscribers, I try to put it back into the newsletter so that you can get the best Seahawks-related content possible on a daily basis. That’s why it was a no-brainer to dip into the Regular Joes and Super Joes support fund by paying for a subscription to NFL+ because if we know anything about the sport of football it’s that if you only have CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN, ABC, NFL Network, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Peacock, NFL Sunday Ticket, RedZone, YouTube Premium, and season tickets, you’re essentially not getting the full NFL experience.

You might as well just go watch ducks on a pond, you cheapskate.

The main reason that I got NFL+ this year when I had sworn it off after last year is that now they’ve added NFL Pro, which gives access to more stats and All-22 cutups and it’s just greedy for me to take paid subscriptions from Seahawks fans without using it to give you better information on the Seahawks.

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Passing

QB Geno Smith: 77/103, 75%, 787 yards, 3 TD, 3 INT, +3.6% CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expectation), +0.01 EPA/dropback, 35.4% pressure rate, time to throw: 2.66 seconds, 6.8% deep ball rate, 11.5% play action rate

So what does it all mean, right?

The outlier here is the play action rate, as the Seahawks have called play action at the lowest rate in the league under Ryan Grubb. Play action has been called “the best play in football”, so why do this?

While I haven’t seen any concrete explanations direct from the team, the most obvious answer is that Seattle likes Geno Smith to be in shotgun: 94 pass attempts out of shotgun (75% completions, 8 Y/A) vs. 9 pass attempts from under center plays (66%, 3.8 Y/A).

The other is that with the Seahawks biggest weakness being concentrated at guard pass protection, perhaps the team doesn’t want Geno Smith turning his back to the defense. Ever.

And it really doesn’t matter as much as it sounds like it matters. Smith has attempted 10 play action passes, Jayden Daniels has attempted 11, Brock Purdy has attempted 11, Aaron Rodgers, Kirk Cousins, and Kyler Murray have attempted 13. The difference looks big on paper, it’s not big in real life to most teams. The Lions run the most play action, the Seahawks run the least play action, and Seattle’s averaging almost 4 more points per game than Detroit so far.

Geno’s CPOE mark is tied with Josh Allen for the 11th-highest in the league. It just means that according to analytics, Geno has essentially completed 3 or 4 more passes than expected, or one per game. (The lowest mark in the league belongs to Anthony Richardson, who is completing an astounding 11.3% fewer of his attempts than a replacement level QB throwing the same passes should complete.)

Geno is 13th in EPA per dropback and everyone in the NFL trails Josh Allen (+0.59 EPA/dropback) by a mile. Jayden Daniels is second at 0.34, Derek Carr is third at 0.27, and Purdy is fourth at 0.17. For a QB averaging one touchdown and one interception per game, no matter who is to blame, any positive EPA is a plus.

The least value QB in the league is no surprise: There’s a big gap between Bryce Young in last and Will Levis, then another gap between Levis and Caleb Williams.

Rushing

RB Zach Charbonnet: -11.2 EPA is 45th among qualified players, but he’s better than you think

It is unfortunate that I have to report that Charbonnet has a worse EPA than Rachaad White, but at least he can say he’s doing better than D’Andre Swift and Josh Jacobs.

There are 44 qualified players with a higher EPA on the ground than Charbonnet and 39 of them are running backs. Kenneth Walker doesn’t have enough carries to qualify so that’s why we’re talking about Charbonnet, but Walker had a +1.8 EPA in Week 1. (Geno’s +4.4 rushing EPA ranks first on the team.)

I’m happy to be a voice of reason here because Charbonnet didn’t necessarily walk into a situation designed to give him the greatest chance of success, yet by the second half of Week 3’s win over the Dolphins he seemed to be starting to get it. He’s also probably not as slow as I worry that he is: NFL Pro tracks that Charbonnet has had 5 runs where he’s hit 15+ MPH, which is the same number as James Cook, Brian Robinson, and Bucky Irving, and more than Najee Harris, Javonte Williams, and David Montgomery.

Isiah Pacheco has almost the same number of carries as Charbonnet and he only had one 15 MPH+ run prior to his injury. Charbonnet has the same rate of 15 MPH+ runs per carry as Saquon Barkley does.

He may not be as fast, he may not have the same burst as Walker, but he gets talked about as if Ron Dayne ate Jerome Bettis and played for the Seahawks. And I’m as responsible for spreading that narrative as anyone else.

Charbonnet has 5 runs of 10+ yards, which is more than Montgomery, Breece Hall, James Cook, Kyren Williams, Pacheco, Gus Edwards, and so on.

Receiving

WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba: 17-of-21, 175 yards, 0 TD, CROE +11.1%, EPA +11.5 (13th), average separation 3.1 yards (tied 90th)

Contrary to what you might have expected, JSN has the highest EPA among Seahawks receivers and the 13th-best in the NFL. And six of the players ranked ahead of him have fewer targets than he does, which is why Khalil Shakir ranks first and Allen Lazard is 11th. His EPA/target ranks 28th. For JSN to be 13th without a touchdown speaks to the importance of what he’s done on his 21 opportunities.

His catch rate over expectation ranks 36th in the league and as I could write over and over again, it’s too early in the season to make much out of these numbers; JSN has had 21 targets, which could end up being less than one-sixth of the total number of targets he will have all season. So is this 20 target chunk better, worse, or the average of JSN’s “usual” 20-target chunks?

We have to see the other five chunks to find out the answer to that. Either way, the “qualified” rate is set so low (Noah Brown leads the league in CROE on six targets) that JSN might be 36th now but could be 10th when all is said and done and more players ahead of him fall off the charts.

For JSN, they key I see here is availability and availability. If he stays healthy, JSN will be at least second on the team in targets and most likely finish with over 1,000 yards because he proved in Week 2 that he’s too good to ignore.

WR DK Metcalf: 17-of-24, 262 yards, 2 TD, CROE +5.5%, EPA +9.9 (21st), average separation 3.1 yards (tied 90th)

2 very different kinds of receivers in the same offense with very similar results. Metcalf’s stats are getting fat off of eating both lunch and dinner just from his two long touchdown passes alone. It’s half of his yards, essentially. But that is how almost all players have always done it: We remember their totals, we don’t keep track of how they got to those totals.

Metcalf is averaging a team-high 12.5 air yards per target, tied with Amari Cooper for 19th-highest mark in the league, and 21% of his targets have been of the deep shot variety. By comparison, JSN has a deep shot rate of 9.5% and Lockett hasn’t seen one yet this season.

WR Tyler Lockett: 13-of-17, 138 yards, 0 TD, CROE +8%, EPA -1.1 (104th), average separation 3.4 yards (tied 70th)

Lockett’s average separation is tied with Noah Fant for the highest mark on the team. His CROE ranks 47th in the NFL, probably aided immensely from his game-sealing catch against the Broncos in Week 1.

Defense

Team: -0.28 EPA (2nd in the NFL), passing YPG 132.3 (1st), EPA/pass -0.45 (1st), EPA/run -0.05 (tied 13th), QB pressure rate 38.3% (9th), sack rate 9.2% (8th), yards before contact per rush 1.00 (10th)

The Seahawks have a top-5 defense, the question everyone’s asking is whether or not they’ll have a top-5 defense when they face teams like the Lions this coming Monay night. Seattle’s been the most dominant pass defense in the NFL, but they haven’t faced an intimidating passer yet—or even a true starter. Will that change next week? Only Goff will tell.

Tyrel Dodson: 16 stops

Dodson has been credited with 16 stops, tied with Bobby Wagner and Blake Cashman for the 12th-most in the NFL. What is a stop:

“Stops are tackles made by a defender that result in a positive play for the defense, measured by a negative change in expected points (EPA)”

Dodson actually has more stops this season than Roquan Smith, Macdonald’s All-Pro linebacker with the Ravens, but to be fair Dodson has played almost 20 more run defense snaps than Smith. But he’s still played about the same number as Wagner.

Boye Mafe, Julian Love: 4 hustle stops

A hustle stop is defined as “a stop where the player covers 20+ yards of in-play distance from snap to tackle”. Mafe and Love’s four hustle stops each leads the team and is tied for the 10th-most in the league with Quandre Diggs, among a few other players.

Boye Mafe: 16 QB pressures

If you ever decide to get into sportswriting, I hope that by the time you do that they’ve all agreed what a ‘pressure’ is. Nobody seems to know! According to the NFL though, Mafe has 16 pressures and that ranks in a tie with Myles Garrett and Micah Parsons for sixth in the league. No matter who is keeping count, it’s always good to be tied with Garrett and Parsons.

Tyrice Knight: Coverage EPA is +2.8

We’ll file this under “Importance: TBD”, but no Seahawks player ranks in the NFL’s top-80 for defensive coverage EPA. Knight is in the lead at +2.8, which ranks 84th, having allowed 5 catches on 7 targets for 53 yards and no touchdowns. The next Seahawks player after him is Jerome Baker at +1.1, which is tied for 127th.

A reasonable follow-up question is “Well, what does an elite LB look like in that area?” and I guess the answer right now is someone like Roquan Smith, who is at +8.8, third-best among linebackers. Leader Nick Bolton is at +9.2.

Jarran Reed: 77 pass rush snaps, 3.8% pressures

It can’t be understated how much the team is relying on Reed for a pass rusher presence but unfortunately the results aren’t there. The only Seahawks player with more pass rush snaps is Mafe (who has 79) and Reed has played significantly more in those situations than Byron Murphy and Leonard Williams, both of whom were injured in Week 3. Dre’Mont Jones is next with 69 pass rush snaps, followed by Derick Hall at 66.

Well, Mafe is generating a pressure 16.7% of the time, Hall 14% of the time, Jones 8% of the time, and then Reed is under 4%.

I know that Reed is an interior presence, not expected to get as many sacks and pressures as Seattle’s edge rushers, but is he intimidating? Is he having an impact? Is he drawing double teams to open up Mafe and Hall? Or is he simply Macdonald’s only healthy defensive tackle with experience as a pass rusher?

If you compare that to Zach Allen, a defensive end who the Seahawks reportedly tried to sign in 2023 with or instead of Dre’Mont Jones, he has a pressure rate of 19% this season. Rams rookie second round pick Braden Fiske is at 17%. I know that these are different players, different situations, I just want to highlight for you that 3.8% isn’t like the going rate for a defensive tackle/defensive end type. It can be higher!

When I go to NFL Pro stats and then sort by pressure rate, first I have to set the parameters to “70 players per page” and then I have to click over twice (then click back once because I went too far) to get to Jarran Reed. He’s generating a pressure 3.8% of the time, ranked 135th in the NFL. Poona Ford is 130th. Reed has generated 3 pressures. Devon Witherspoon has generated three pressures.

For me, I think I’m okay with opening a discussion on Jarran Reed and whether he’s underrated because the stats don’t paint a clear picture of his presence or overrated because they do.

CB Devon Witherspoon: 7 catches on 15 targets, 40 yards, 0 TD

CB Riq Woolen: 4 catches on 11 targets, 31 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT

Best cornerback duo in the NFL.

CB Mike Jackson: 18 receptions allowed

A little bonus one here to let you know that (with no disrespect intended) Mike Jackson is tied for the most catches allowed and most times targeted (28) this season. He did have an interception on Sunday and that’s great because I’m rooting for the Panthers to do well, but I would encourage to not overthink the Mike Jackson trade. He’s a starting NFL corner but only in the sense that someone has to fill those jobs and he’s right on the cusp of being good enough to have it.

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