I didn't get to see it all but Sam looks like he's trying to spread the ball around instead of just looking for the open man maybe. It seems like when we have a good clean disciplined play we have a good success rate. If we could just get back to playing our brand of football, we're gonna be just fine. The offense looks good, defense looks good. There's room to keep improving and we will. Let's just play games with great focus. Hope big cat is OK, maybe we should have tried harder to keep Walker, but we'll never know what else was going on and why things unfolded like they did.
Switching back and forth between watching this game and SF vs. DEN is what has me concerned. This whole series SSJ is running on our stats expectations is moot IMHO. I don’t care about stats. I care about analyzing what’s wrong with this team and there are many things wrong:
Terribly slow starts on offense are about to bury them. Sure SF vs. DEN was even more anemic, but that team (SF, I mean) has a superstar RB and if you focus on him Purdy looks better than he ever has at attacking down field, rolling out of the pocket, and being poised under pressure. Sam looked lost at times in this game. The fine balance is that you have to be able to hit an open man in a tight window. Look at Stafford today; he almost lost the game for the Rams but he didn’t quit throwing the ball. Sam at times looks like he doesn’t trust his own eyes and I know why. He doesn’t want to throw a crucial pick. Maybe when Seattle is down by two scores this coming game *(very likely) that all changes. But it’s not good.
Defense allowed a not very good backfield to burn them repeatedly. And that’s the second week in a row where an offense swapped to runs on passing downs and gashed Seattle. The lack of discipline that led to penalties is of a piece with this. Discipline is discipline. Some of these calls were garbage. I get it. But Spoon trucking someone out of bounds is not. Win, get off the field, give the ball to your offense.
Coverage on specials keeps being a weakness. They improved somewhat but this remains a work in progress.
I don’t know whether Arroyo even deserves a roster spot let alone a role. Maybe this is on Sam, not Arroyo, but you can’t have one of your TEs be a non-entity and he’s not in there to block.
Overall, this isn’t a SB team, let alone a playoff team. Given the schedule, and the teams on it, and how even the teams that “feel” mediocre would give this version of Seattle fits, I don’t know how you watch this game and think Seattle manages a .500 result. If you scanned over at K.C. you saw a team that’s also flawed, with a leaky defense, but that’s so talented on offense they’re going to come in and put 45 points on Seattle; Ken Walker’s going to burn the over-aggressive pursuit problem that lesser backs have exploited. If he’s not stuffed by the front he’s proving to be impossible to tackle.
That’s how scary this present Seattle team looks. Because you’re not closing teams out when you have the chance, your defense has way too much time on the field, and in turn, that lets even crappy teams hang around. What happens when you play SF, Denver, and KC all in a row?
So I DO NOT CARE ABOUT STATS! That’s for people who care about fantasy football and probably don’t care about any team in particular. Good on ya. But I’m not at SSJ for fantasy tips.
Sure. And given the world’s problems, I’ll say Seattle’s success this past season when few “experts” chose them to even make the playoffs was a gift. However, I have zero expectation that predicting what amounts to prop bets has anything to do with your team knowledge or mine. If you picked Wilson to score a TD on a run from outside of the 20, do you feel like you “know” the team better? Anymore than picking the right numbers in lotto, I don’t see that as knowledge. I see it as dumb luck. I don’t see how any of this matters or relates. Fleury wouldn’t even know if that play was going to go for a score!
My point is really that I’m here for insight. Same as my reading other posts on the Hawks. I love the community, and the sense that we’re all rooting for this team, but I want to learn more about football and this team’s approach in particular, and the idea that who scores or picks up 40 yards with 9 yards of YAC…. What’s that for? What do we LEARN from that?
Whereas there’s a lot to learn about Fleury’s schemes from this game. For instance, Sheed out of the backfield was clever and necessary. Horton finally getting some love was necessary. Spreading the ball beyond JSN is CRITICAL. And a lot of this is gravy in a game where, until the very end, it seemed obvious Seattle would win. BUT: Like I posted a bit ago, the only stat that actually matters is the final score. And if any stat line from today truly matters beyond that, it’s Sam’s, and it was fairly pitiful. Luckily, no picks after the first one, and with that cushion, that was good enough. But that stat line, those misses and that confusion is going to get exploited by the next three teams he’s facing and beyond.
I am using that as a gauge for success and expectation, not fantasy. Does it matter? No. But it makes it fun to see how close you can get based on your knowledge of the team.
D gave up way too many yards and points! Need to find a wide scheme RB. ASAP.. Letting Walker go to keep Shaheed was a big mistake! 49ers next week will show us how close we are to returning to the SB!
Nick had 2 really dumb personal fouls, but perhaps the stupidest one was on Spoon, supposedly a vet by now.
Just headshakingly-stupid defensive football all rhe way through.
Run D has been showing later-game weakness on outside runs and even short passes to the outside. Not sure who was supposed to have contan on those today, but he/they were MIA.
Sam was mostly meh, with some bad and good thrown in. Not a confident, in control vibe at all.
I felt half the calls this game were ticky-tacky. First half against the hawks, and the second half I was surprised to see LAC surpassed us 15/140 to 14/120 at some point on a wide-angle shot of the stadium that showed a screen. Felt like a “letter of the law” game, to quip an announcer after one of the yellow birds. Either way, for a team that has had to clean up penalties the first two weeks, it felt regressive and frustrating to see, even if we had less in the end. At one point, LAC had more yardage off our penalties than their offense generated; a damning stat if they came back and won.
Special teams played better, I think that’s worth a note. Also good to see some run game improvement. Odd drop by JSN even if it was a rush throw from Sam. Yeah, just a mixed game emotionally where I thought it would go even longer with a tie. Glad we won to keep ahead of the LAR.
I can’t remember if it was Keneth or Mookie or someone else here/FieldGulls, but there was once a lot of talk about how difficult it is to switch OC’s and how drop-off should occur. I’m not sure if that’s what is happening with Darnold. But one thing that’s in the back of my mind. Win ugly at the beginning of the season for it to be less ugly by end of season.
This is Darnolds second full start with Fleury, so think/hope they’re getting to simpatico. Outside of Darnolds performance, I liked most of the offensive play calling, but felt we should have been more aggressive on the third and second last possessions; still run the clock down, but get a score and don’t be so conservative.
I didn't get to see it all but Sam looks like he's trying to spread the ball around instead of just looking for the open man maybe. It seems like when we have a good clean disciplined play we have a good success rate. If we could just get back to playing our brand of football, we're gonna be just fine. The offense looks good, defense looks good. There's room to keep improving and we will. Let's just play games with great focus. Hope big cat is OK, maybe we should have tried harder to keep Walker, but we'll never know what else was going on and why things unfolded like they did.
Something is wrong with this team. Maybe Super Bowl victory hangover, who knows. I no longer expect much from this season.
Our best RB was a WR and our best WR was a RB.
I know its not totally true but seeing as Shaheed had a rushing TD and Wilson had a passing TD its like cats and dogs living together out there.
There was a late push penalized that was a nothing burger, and some unfortunate, momentum hits, but dang that was sloppy. Let’s not do that again.
Switching back and forth between watching this game and SF vs. DEN is what has me concerned. This whole series SSJ is running on our stats expectations is moot IMHO. I don’t care about stats. I care about analyzing what’s wrong with this team and there are many things wrong:
Terribly slow starts on offense are about to bury them. Sure SF vs. DEN was even more anemic, but that team (SF, I mean) has a superstar RB and if you focus on him Purdy looks better than he ever has at attacking down field, rolling out of the pocket, and being poised under pressure. Sam looked lost at times in this game. The fine balance is that you have to be able to hit an open man in a tight window. Look at Stafford today; he almost lost the game for the Rams but he didn’t quit throwing the ball. Sam at times looks like he doesn’t trust his own eyes and I know why. He doesn’t want to throw a crucial pick. Maybe when Seattle is down by two scores this coming game *(very likely) that all changes. But it’s not good.
Defense allowed a not very good backfield to burn them repeatedly. And that’s the second week in a row where an offense swapped to runs on passing downs and gashed Seattle. The lack of discipline that led to penalties is of a piece with this. Discipline is discipline. Some of these calls were garbage. I get it. But Spoon trucking someone out of bounds is not. Win, get off the field, give the ball to your offense.
Coverage on specials keeps being a weakness. They improved somewhat but this remains a work in progress.
I don’t know whether Arroyo even deserves a roster spot let alone a role. Maybe this is on Sam, not Arroyo, but you can’t have one of your TEs be a non-entity and he’s not in there to block.
Overall, this isn’t a SB team, let alone a playoff team. Given the schedule, and the teams on it, and how even the teams that “feel” mediocre would give this version of Seattle fits, I don’t know how you watch this game and think Seattle manages a .500 result. If you scanned over at K.C. you saw a team that’s also flawed, with a leaky defense, but that’s so talented on offense they’re going to come in and put 45 points on Seattle; Ken Walker’s going to burn the over-aggressive pursuit problem that lesser backs have exploited. If he’s not stuffed by the front he’s proving to be impossible to tackle.
That’s how scary this present Seattle team looks. Because you’re not closing teams out when you have the chance, your defense has way too much time on the field, and in turn, that lets even crappy teams hang around. What happens when you play SF, Denver, and KC all in a row?
So I DO NOT CARE ABOUT STATS! That’s for people who care about fantasy football and probably don’t care about any team in particular. Good on ya. But I’m not at SSJ for fantasy tips.
Sure. And given the world’s problems, I’ll say Seattle’s success this past season when few “experts” chose them to even make the playoffs was a gift. However, I have zero expectation that predicting what amounts to prop bets has anything to do with your team knowledge or mine. If you picked Wilson to score a TD on a run from outside of the 20, do you feel like you “know” the team better? Anymore than picking the right numbers in lotto, I don’t see that as knowledge. I see it as dumb luck. I don’t see how any of this matters or relates. Fleury wouldn’t even know if that play was going to go for a score!
My point is really that I’m here for insight. Same as my reading other posts on the Hawks. I love the community, and the sense that we’re all rooting for this team, but I want to learn more about football and this team’s approach in particular, and the idea that who scores or picks up 40 yards with 9 yards of YAC…. What’s that for? What do we LEARN from that?
Whereas there’s a lot to learn about Fleury’s schemes from this game. For instance, Sheed out of the backfield was clever and necessary. Horton finally getting some love was necessary. Spreading the ball beyond JSN is CRITICAL. And a lot of this is gravy in a game where, until the very end, it seemed obvious Seattle would win. BUT: Like I posted a bit ago, the only stat that actually matters is the final score. And if any stat line from today truly matters beyond that, it’s Sam’s, and it was fairly pitiful. Luckily, no picks after the first one, and with that cushion, that was good enough. But that stat line, those misses and that confusion is going to get exploited by the next three teams he’s facing and beyond.
I am using that as a gauge for success and expectation, not fantasy. Does it matter? No. But it makes it fun to see how close you can get based on your knowledge of the team.
D gave up way too many yards and points! Need to find a wide scheme RB. ASAP.. Letting Walker go to keep Shaheed was a big mistake! 49ers next week will show us how close we are to returning to the SB!
Nick had 2 really dumb personal fouls, but perhaps the stupidest one was on Spoon, supposedly a vet by now.
Just headshakingly-stupid defensive football all rhe way through.
Run D has been showing later-game weakness on outside runs and even short passes to the outside. Not sure who was supposed to have contan on those today, but he/they were MIA.
Sam was mostly meh, with some bad and good thrown in. Not a confident, in control vibe at all.
My takes…
1. Wilson is not suited to the wide zone. He doesn’t have a burst. But you can count on him to get 3 to 4 yards between the tackles like clockwork.
2. George Holani doesn’t belong on the field. Why in the world would you run him on 4th and 2 when you have Wilson???
3. Sam has become afraid to pull the trigger. Not good.
4. Shaheed should be used more in the running game, especially in the wide zone, because he DOES have burst.
5. NFL officiating is HORRIBLE. And not just calls against the Seahawks.
6. I’m really worried about the discipline of this team. I hope Mike is up to the task of whipping them into line.
7. Letting Ken Walker go is one of the biggest mistakes Schneider has ever made.
Of the rest of the teams on our schedule, only one is below .500, the Cardinals.
I said this in the chat. I think the starters should have played a little in the pre-season. It seems like they are still rusty.
I think having the Commanders and Chargers is pre-season.
I felt half the calls this game were ticky-tacky. First half against the hawks, and the second half I was surprised to see LAC surpassed us 15/140 to 14/120 at some point on a wide-angle shot of the stadium that showed a screen. Felt like a “letter of the law” game, to quip an announcer after one of the yellow birds. Either way, for a team that has had to clean up penalties the first two weeks, it felt regressive and frustrating to see, even if we had less in the end. At one point, LAC had more yardage off our penalties than their offense generated; a damning stat if they came back and won.
Special teams played better, I think that’s worth a note. Also good to see some run game improvement. Odd drop by JSN even if it was a rush throw from Sam. Yeah, just a mixed game emotionally where I thought it would go even longer with a tie. Glad we won to keep ahead of the LAR.
I can’t remember if it was Keneth or Mookie or someone else here/FieldGulls, but there was once a lot of talk about how difficult it is to switch OC’s and how drop-off should occur. I’m not sure if that’s what is happening with Darnold. But one thing that’s in the back of my mind. Win ugly at the beginning of the season for it to be less ugly by end of season.
Our schedule can’t get an easier - we’ve faced 4 opponents who brought *1* win into our matchups!
(Three were 0-? but AZ had 1 win)
Focus - biz time v those F9ers!
This is Darnolds second full start with Fleury, so think/hope they’re getting to simpatico. Outside of Darnolds performance, I liked most of the offensive play calling, but felt we should have been more aggressive on the third and second last possessions; still run the clock down, but get a score and don’t be so conservative.
I’m very concerned for next week. Especially if we play like that again.