It's okay to be excited about the Seahawks

In spite of a soft schedule: Seaside Joe 2034

In his latest press conference, Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald was asked about Zach Charbonnet and his strong finish to Week 3’s win over the Dolphins.

“You don’t judge a run game by the first five runs of the game. Everyone goes back and says “Well, how many yards per carry?” They look at the stats. We’re focused on finishing games and closing them out and Zach does a great job of doing that based off his physicality.”

Though I understand the point of what Macdonald is trying to say and agree with him (my approval is something Macdonald cares deeply about), there are plenty of times when people do judge a running back off of his first five carries. For example, if a running back finishes a game with 120 yards on 20 carries, the reaction is “Wow, 6.0 yards per carry”.

However, what if the back gained 80 yards on his first carry? Then he averaged 80 yards on his first carry and 2.1 yards on his next 19. To Macdonald’s point, the inverse would be just as true, if a back was averaging 2.1 yards on his first 19 carries, then won the game with an 80-yard touchdown in fourth quarter.

Nobody would care what the running back did except for that one carry. Instead of being a one-hit wonder, he’d be a “resilient” back with the “grit and determination” to save his best for last. It’s a great life lesson for all of us: It’s not just your highlights, but the timing of your highlights that matter.

This is how all game long, season long, and career long stats work in all sports. A player could have a terrible game save for one several plays that change the perception of everything if you only saw the box score and not the game. I bring this up because I wrote about the Seahawks dominant defensive stats on Tuesday and also shared the most eye-catching numbers on Twitter:

Seaside Joe subscribers know how skeptical I am of Seattle’s success with Macdonald and won’t be convinced until we see the Seahawks defense against some legitimate and playoff-caliber quarterbacks. (Whether or not Jared Goff is one of those remains to be seen in my opinion, but he’s by far the best quarterback who the Seahawks have seen this season.)

But most of the people on Twitter, they don’t really know what my vibe is and I got some reactions in the manner of, “They haven’t played anyone yet.”

Yeah for sure, that is true. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be excited about the Seahawks 3-0 start or their dominant defensive stats even if you know that Seattle has benefited from an inordinate number of unforced errors by their opponents. Let me say in no uncertain terms: I sure do hope that the Seahawks continue to play bad teams for the next 15 weeks!

Of course, that’s not what is going to happen and yes I do want to see the Seahawks play some good teams this season. The actual point I want to get across is that even if players like Devon Witherspoon and Riq Woolen are juicing their stats against the league’s easiest levels—that’s what everyone does! Maybe just because it’s been a while since Seattle had a good start like this, we’ve forgotten what it’s like to have some of the NFL’s best players.

I’ll give an example.

Sauce Gardner is the cornerback that people often refer to as “the best”, right? He was a first-team All-Pro last season and he allowed a passer rating of 80.3 on 55 targets with one touchdown allowed in 2023. We could also add that Gardner’s best games last year came against the likes of the Patriots, Moons, Falcons, Browns, Raiders, Broncos. His two worst games (statistically) came against the Bills.

Would you have guessed that Gardner’s great season long stats were mostly predicated on beating teams like the ones that Seattle has faced so far? And that even if Gardner is the best cornerback in the NFL (he probably needs to intercept more passes) and even if he’s valuable against Josh Allen, he’s still much worse against Allen than he is against Bailey Zappe.

Well, isn’t the same just as true of Witherspoon and Woolen? The only difference is that they stacked their of their easiest matchups within the first few weeks. At this rate, games like these first three will be the reason why the Seahawks have a top-10 defense this season and several Pro Bowl players...and that’s almost always true of all good teams!

Now, as I’ve been repeating probably since the start of Seaside Joe, the Seahawks need to start beating good teams. That’s no less true today than it was three weeks ago. But being 3-0 and having several of the NFL’s early league leaders are things to be excited about! Nobody should take away the right to celebrate success, as “success” is often only predicated on those moments worth celebrating.

Every week, Seaside Streams highlights the best YouTube videos about the Seattle Seahawks and a 3-0 start means better content, more content, and more attention. I’m beyond excited about the Seahawks being on Monday Night Football in Week 4 and mostly for one reason: We’re probably going to get a Gruden Loves Football episode about the Seahawks.

I’ve never been as fired up about football as I get when watching his show. I even want to start typing like Gruden talks. It FIRES ME UP! So be on the lookout for a Gruden Loves Football about Seahawks-Lions; waiting to find out which Seahawks he thinks is a “Gruden Grinder” is like waiting for the next season of Lost. I even tweeted at Gruden about it and he said he couldn’t wait to look at the Seahawks:

Here are this week’s Seaside Stream highlights. If you want to help support a daily Seahawks newsletter—specifically this one—consider joining the Regular Joes or Super Joes premium tiers.

All-22 on Zach Charbonnet, Woolen, Witherspoon

Years ago, I found this guy on YouTube named Sam Gold who was making great NFL content but there was only one problem: It was all about the Washington Football Team. I asked Sam if he wanted to make Seahawks content for Field Gulls and really ever since then he’s been focused on Seattle despite being a Washington fan.

Well this coach who makes All-22 is an incredible find too and ever since last year he’s been digging into the Seahawks and I know that Seasiders are a big reason why. I keep telling people, “Seahawks fans will show up if you make it” and that’s just as true here. I’m browsing All-22’s latest videos and his biggest hits during this season are about Seahawks: Derick Hall, Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy, JSN, and DK Metcalf.

Please, continue to show up in droves for this channel, juice the stats, because we NEED more videos from All-22 every week. Here’s Zach Charbonnet:

Here’s Hall:

Here’s Witherspoon and Woolen:

By the way, Seaside Joe gets a shoutout in the beginning of the Witherspoon video. To me, this is like getting a shoutout from Jon Gruden or Pete Carroll. All-22 is a big time star in my eyes and the channel will only continue to grow. This and Gruden Loves Football should be unstoppable on YouTube.

Legion of 12s: DK Metcalf

Another new show that I’m addicted to, I think Legion of 12s has really high-level content and this deserves more than 1.1k views:

The O-Line Committee: Seahawks underrated?

If anyone asked me for advice on how to break into NFL content, I’d say to focus on the offensive line. There aren’t enough of those people and it’s the position group that fans know the least about and often care the most about.

The O-Line Committee is the top podcast that I know of that focuses on the offensive line. Sometimes the full length shows aren’t quite unique enough to me to watch, but their Xs and Os breakdowns and “Dumb Football Questions?” segment is great. Here’s a shoutout for Seattle:

Bootleg Football: Seahawks pass rush

“There’s only one pass rush in the league so far that I think is kind of the Steelers rival and that’s the Seahawks, who have had an incredible start to 2024 under Macdonald. Brand new coach, new system. We expecgted they’d be good on defense but to start this hot, this quickly, it’s a testament to how good this staff is. They’re number one in pressures at 77, Titans are number 32 with 27 pressures, so they have 50 more pressures in three games than the Titans. Sixth in pass rush win rate, tied with Steelers in sacks. They’re on the field more, but when they’re on the field that gives them more opportunities to get pressures.”

CBS: Seahawks are underrated

Lions content creator: Lions ‘out for blood’ in revenge game

Some interesting stats about the first two games from the enemy:

Is that Hurley from Lost?

I always tag on one non-related football recommendation. The other day we went to a sketch comedy show and were shocked to see Hurley from Lost make a surprise guest appearance and he was also doing sketch comedy with essentially I guess you might call “fresh faces” in a room of about 100 audience members. It was very jarring, but he got a lot of laughs and apparently backstage he was super nice. One of the actors nervously went up to ask him if he could ask a few questions about Lost and Hurley was very excited to answer anything he wanted to know, so celebrity encounters are not all bad.

I don’t know if Hurley would be preferred to be called Jorge Garcia, but I don’t think he’s reading this.

Between seeing him on stage, then having this video recommended to me by the ever-listening all-knowing eye of YouTube, and now seeing that Lost got mentioned in today’s Seaside Joe, that’s three random things I had nothing to do with leading me back to Hurley:

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