Can we just acknowledge this?
A week earlier, the Cardinals played a supposed “Harbaugh” defense and scored on four of their first five drives; the only non-scoring drive was a missed field goal.
Their only scoring drive against Seattle necessitated:
A 2-yard TD pass on fourth down
A DPI against Rodney Thomas on third-and-5
A drive that started on their own 39
The Cardinals didn’t have a single play on the drive that went for double-digit yardage.
Arizona only had one three-and-out against the Chargers (and at fourth-and-1, they could have gone for it) but against Seattle they had FIVE, none of which were longer than eight yards. Another drive had six plays but only went for eight yards.
The Cardinals aren’t injured. They are actually supposed to be an offensive team with all the moves they’ve made, including hiring Mike LaFleur off of the Sean McVay tree. But all those weapons for Jacoby Brissett and the team finished with 81 net passing yards.
Drew Lock’s touchdown to Jaxon Smith-Njigba was 82 yards.
It’s only been eight quarters, but now it’s impossible for Seahawks fans to avoid the question: Are the Seahawks even better than they were by the end of last season?
And speaking of questions: Here’s Week 3 of the Super Joes Q&A. If you want to be included on next week’s Q&A, upgrade to Super Joes as a “founding” member.
Dewhub: Will we eclipse the Moons or are they going to change the tide?
Every time the Seahawks play the Moons, I should inform the understandably-confused new subscribers why I’m doing that and the answer is even simpler than you probably imagine:
I think the name Commanders is stupid. I think the name Moons would be awesome. I’m DEFINITELY not calling a pro sports team “the Commanders” when I have home court advantage here at Seaside Joe. I have standards.
But as for your question, yeah I do think the matchup heavily favors the Seahawks and the line only being Seattle +6.5 feels like overcompensating for the fact that Drew Lock is starting. Drew “first in the NFL in passer rating” Lock.
Assuming Lock even starts. Sam Darnold hasn’t been ruled out and Mike Macdonald is eyeing a Wednesday return to practice.
The Moons have allowed the most passing touchdowns (7 TD/0 INT) this season, the highest passer rating (137.1), and they have the fourth-worst third down defense. It’s only two games, but it wasn’t like anyone was expecting Washington’s defense to be good.
By comparison, the Seahawks have allowed a passer rating of 59.0, best in the league so far.
Fans of good teams always do this dance before a game against a bad team in which they entertain the notion that there’s going to be a huge upset — and surely upsets are common — but they are still rare. The Seahawks haven’t lost to a bad team since they lost to the Giants on October 6, 2024. And that Seattle team wasn’t nearly as good as this Seattle team.
This could be an upset. The chances of that happening are still about as low as the odds are that they’ll take my advice and change their team name to Moons. (The Moon is even Washington, D.C. adjacent!)
Jake: I was in DC for the demolition last season and now in an odd twist we have back to back in DC games. I know Commanders fans aren't looking forward to seeing us again with Daniels out. If he clears and plays I'm looking forward to seeing Price get his breakout game. He's currently on pace for 1000 total yards. I'll be honest. I would be pretty happy with that alone but it looks like he is gonna be used a lot more on screens and outside zone that will really boost those #s. Curious how happy Fans would be with the current 1000 scrimmage yards pace out of the rookie.
You are right, at his current rate Jadarian Price would finish with 1,003 total yards in 17 games.
Any healthy outcome is a good outcome. I think the Seahawks are aiming for a situation in which Price, Zach Charbonnet, and Emanuel Wilson are all healthy and fresh for the playoffs. No disrespect to George Holani, who should at least have a role on special teams.
Samuel Garfield: How'd Haynes look in game 2? I forgot to pay attention (though the fact that I didn't think about him at all probably says a lot in and of itself).
I don’t know what else we should expect him to say, but Mike Macdonald was pleased with how both guards played:
"I think there's some flexibility in terms of how we want to approach the rotation," Macdonald said. "We're pretty happy with the way it came out. Sometimes it's hard to control because, until a guy has a series or whatever, you don't know how long it's going to go. But I thought, I thought there was some really good stuff for both guys. Different things on, respectively on what we want them to work on, which is great. But to get an opportunity to go in and play really good football, when AB (Anthony Bradford) wasn't able to go, I think, was great for our team depth, their offensive line depth. It was great for Beau being a rookie and getting experience, but, we'll kind of monitor the situation with AB moving forward and kind of take it from there."
Christian Haynes wasn’t blamed for any sacks or pressures, so his pass protection may have been alright though I think that’s still a crummy way to evaluate offensive linemen. At least, if you’re not coaching them. I think the coaches have a better of sense “allowed a pressure” than stats because the people tallying the stats aren’t super qualified to assess those things.
I would think that Anthony Bradford is in no danger of losing his job when he’s healthy and it’s a good opportunity for the Seahawks to evaluate which guard to slot in as the starter going into next offseason when he leaves.
Scott M: Who did better at RG filling in for Bradford?
Jake: Stephens snaps all came in the first half on the 3rd and 4th drives. He wasn't apart of the 2nd half beat down. That was all Haynes just so you know. But they were valuable reps for him i'm sure.
It’d be a bad idea for me to assume I know who did better, but context clues tell us that the Seahawks still trust Christian Haynes more than Beau Stephens (61% snaps to 39%) and they played Haynes for the entire second half when the offense had four scoring drives on four opportunities, including three touchdowns.
However, they didn’t trust Haynes enough to just give him 100% of the snaps. No matter how intrigued a team is by a rookie guard, it seems strange to just give him two drives when Haynes himself has barely played any NFL ball. I suspect the team wanted to find out if Stephens was dramatically better and the answer they got was “no”, but that could change in the near future.
As fans, we should be stoked that the right guard position wasn’t noticeable on Sunday. At worst, they avoided the obviously negative plays.
Samuel Garfield: Unless my eyes deceived me the Seahawks didn't run with particularly heavy personnel--maybe even fewer snaps than game 1. Has your assessment of their effectiveness in heavier personnel groupings changed after game 2?
The Seahawks lead the league in 12 personnel, which is also considered “heavy”, and it’s not even close:
Seahawks 50.4% 12 personnel
2nd place 37.8% 12 personnel
Is it working? They rank first in EPA and EPA per pass out of 12 personnel.
The Seahawks rank eighth in 13 personnel (they ran it twice in Week 1, then 14 times in Week 2) and second in EPA out of 13 personnel.
So has what I wrote last week “changed”? I guess it has only been affirmed. I said they should run more sets with multiple tight ends, or at least I expected them to, and they did.
Grant: What can I do, as a concerned 12, to get AJ Barner more than 1 target per game?
I consistently put A.J. Barner front and center for “breakout” talk this offseason — and I still believe he has the talent to be among the NFL’s tight end receiving leaders — but something I failed to properly acknowledge was the waning number of targets he got at the end of the season:
Week 17: 3 targets
Week 18: 3 targets
Division: 0 targets
NFC CG: 3 targets
Super Bowl: 4 targets
Week 1: 2 targets
Week 2: 1 target
So in his last seven games, Barner has been targeted 16 times. That’s a full season pace of 39 targets, which is barely any. Tight ends like Elijah Higgins and Tommy Tremble basically had that many targets last season. Which isn’t to say the lack of opportunity is something Barner deserves, but it’s certainly what he’s been getting.
However, Barner is such a good blocker that he rarely comes off the field. That is sure to lead to more targets for him in the future, but not necessarily the 6-8 targets that many of us wish he would get consistently. The Seahawks are barely even using Rashid Shaheed, Cooper Kupp, Tory Horton, and Elijah Arroyo as is, and nobody is begging Seattle to use JSN less often either.
My suspicion is that there will be only one consistent receiving threat every week and the rest of them will be rotated as “WR2” depending on the game situation and matchups.
Chip Mac: I know Nick Emmanwori got some snaps last week, but he wasn’t a factor in the game. How different are the Seahawks when Emmanwori is at full strength? I expect a big change with number 3 in the lineup playing the Commanders.
We had a similar situation last year when Emmanwori returned from a month long absence by playing 64% of the snaps against the Bucs, then basically a full-time role for the rest of the season. As you and others noted, he didn’t play much against the Cardinals, only nine snaps (18%). ‘
The difference in playing time compared to his return in 2025 is likely due to the fact that he was able to participate in training camp last year. It’s a substantial setback to miss all of training camp, but not something I would worry about moving forward as he gets back into the practice rhythm. Macdonald indicated a bigger role for Emmanwori in Week 3:
“It was great for him to get the confidence back, get him moving. He got a couple of rushes in, which was cool. We should be really accelerating it into next week.”
Another wrinkle this season is Nehemiah Pritchett. Emmanwori is primarily a slot nickel and nobody has benefited more from his absence than Pritchett, but not directly because of the slot. Instead, Devon Witherspoon is spending most of his time in the slot and Pritchett is matching up with receivers outside and he has become a surprisingly valuable cornerback.
It is a good problem to have:
Macdonald has to calculate how to reduce snaps for some players in order to increase snaps for Emmanwori, and right now he has no bad players.
That being said, Emmanwori is such a versatile player that Seaside Joe could be overlooking a role that wouldn’t eat that much into Pritchett’s playing time. For example, in Week 2 Emmanwori played 3 snaps in the slot, 2 snaps at linebacker, 2 snaps at edge, and 2 snaps at corner.
With that kind of versatility, opposing offensive coordinators can’t make a plan for how to neutralize Emmanwori. That’s always going to make the defense better.
More Super Joes questions and answers to come this week. This was only part I. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss anything—and upgrade to Super Joes and YOU can help write next week’s newsletters with your queries.
An unexpected aspect of the Cards game was that the Seahawks ran a variety of schemes, outside zone, inside zone, power, duo, toss, and with a variety of lead blocking attacks from the fullback - even with a backup/rookie RG. Why? AZ’s strength is its DTs, and Fleury didn’t want them to get comfortable.
This could also explain why we saw so much of Emmanuel Wilson. He’s got more experience with a wider variety of run schemes. Heck, Price doesn’t even have much college experience!
This can really pay dividends. Benton got tape of his guys doing a little bit of everything. He’s probably got a laundry list of drills for fixing things that need improvement.
It would be interesting to see if Price ate from a smaller menu than Wilson. You’ve got to bet that the Moons know that answer already.
The Seahawks have a great problem. Injuries have tested the depth of the team early this season and the results are exceptional! As we get more people back, the “problem” is how do you get snaps for everyone who has “earned” them. I don’t have the answer, but I have no doubt this proven depth is gonna come in handy later in the season.