Uchenna Nwosu to IR?

Debunking Rumors on the Seahawks, including "Are they ready?": Seaside Joe 2045

We thought these statements about the Seahawks and Giants going into Week 5 might be true. Were they? Let’s ask the Debunk Police.

“Uchenna Nwosu is back”

Rumor: Debunked

Mike Macdonald told reporters on Monday that Nwosu’s thigh injury “might be longer than we wanted”, so a stint on injured reserve may happen after all…with a different injury than the one that caused him to miss the first four games.

On Boye Mafe (knee), Derick Hall (foot), Leonard Williams (ribs), and Riq Woolen (ankle), Macdonald had nothing to say. I would assume that nothing to say is worse than something to say, because if the player is doing fine then why not say he’s doing fine? Now is not the time to “fool the 49ers”, because Seahawks fans could use some good news right about now.

“Getting back Jerome Baker will make the linebackers good”

Rumor: DEBUNKED

Hard to believe you could start the game with two awesome plays at your own one-yard line and end it with the head coach calling you out for poor run fits, angles, and tackling.

Macdonald didn’t say “Jerome Baker and Tyrel Dodson really ate a pickled shit sandwich out there” and call them out specifically, but he did say, “We’re not leveraging the ball well on the second level…the second level run fits right now are falling short” and mentioned that the defensive line and the edges are doing good enough. That only leaves the linebackers and safeties who step into the box like Rayshawn Jenkins.

Let’s keep in mind that while Jenkins is a respected safety and a starter-quality safety, he’s also been available for a reason and missed tackles/over-pursuit/bad angles is something that we’ve heard about him at both of his previous franchise stops.

Similar story with Dodson and Baker, with Baker saying after the game that the Giants “played together better than us”. Baker said that returning from missing the last two games was hard and that he didn’t get his wind back until the second half, potentially another factor in his underwhelming performance.

“The Giants suck”

Rumor: DEBUNKED!

We knew that Seattle couldn’t and shouldn’t overlook the Giants and in the NFL I think it’s rare for teams to have no respect for their opponents. But did the Seahawks respect New York’s offense and defense enough?

The Giants are allowed 5.1 yards per carry, 30th in the NFL. Why did Kenneth Walker only get five rushing attempts? Why did Zach Charbonnet only get two? On Monday, Macdonald called those numbers unacceptable.

Two weeks ago, Seattle was sitting just about at the top of the league in scoring defense. Today, they are 17th. The Giants are 11th. By points per defensive drive, the Seahawks are still ahead of the Giants (9th vs. 12th) but make no mistake that the Giants employ guys like Dexter Lawrence and Brian Burns, and former first round corner Deonte Banks seemed to shutdown DK Metcalf in coverage, so New York is talented. This is not fluky.

Most people would probably separate the two teams based on the Giants having Daniel Jones at quarterback, but they were able to manage Jones into having his best game within the last year by going 9-of-12 for 101 yards and both touchdowns off of play action, aided by unknown running back Tyrone Tracy having an elite game against Seattle’s defense. What if Tracy turns out to be a steal like Isaih Pacheco or Chris Carson?

As you can see in his passing chart, Jones only attempted four passes longer than 10 air yards, only completed two, and only one of those was longer than 15 yards. However, he’s now 14th in EPA per dropback, which is higher than Dak Prescott, Sam Darnold, Jalen Hurts, Geno Smith, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence, Matthew Stafford, Jordan Love, and Aaron Rodgers.

Overall, the Seahawks have to be supremely disappointed with how they performed on Sunday regardless of whether the opponent was the Giants or the Chiefs, because Seattle played like the away team at Lumen.

I don’t expect Jones to be New York’s quarterback for a long time, I don’t know if they’ll be good enough to make the playoffs, but the Giants have won their last two on the road and they don’t really have a bad loss all season. They’re a few points from being 3-2 or 4-1 and their only blowout loss was to the 5-0 Vikings.

“The Seahawks are READY!”

Rumor: Debunked?

Starting the season 3-0 may have muddled our memories going into the season that the Seahawks are in a revamping or a revitalizing year.

We know from our pre-season Seahawks fan surveys that 31% of Seaside Joe readers expected the team to win at least 11 games, 7% expected the team to go 7-10 or worse, and the majority saw Seattle as a team between 8-10 wins. I am just going to guess without a new survey that most people still fall into the 8-10 win camp. It’s a really safe place to hang out and not be noticed because the Seahawks have gone 9-8 in each of the last two years. “About .500” is how a lot of teams will finish this season.

However, the 3-0 start probably pushed more people into the 11-6 camp and definitely erased most residents of the 7-10 or worse camp, but losing at home to the Giants erases one of the most expected “wins” of the season for people projecting wins and losses.

Perhaps the focus instead isn’t on win-loss record, but on performance, especially regarding the defense? We know that 62% of surveyed fans expected the Seahawks to be a top-10 defense and 10% expected a top-5 defense. The first three games were a top-5 defense. The last two games have felt like a bottom-5 defense.

In addition to being 9th in points per drive allowed, Seattle is 9th in third down defense and 10th in touchdowns allowed-per-red zone trip for the defense. So by some marks, the Seahawks have stayed as a “top-10” defense through five weeks, while other clues such as these last two games—with or without all their starters (which is never going to happen)—Seattle’s finding out that Seattle’s not in their final form yet.

As long as the Seahawks finish the season feeling awesome about 10 or 12 players that they’ve added since 2022, I still think that is a winning season.

“You could never replace your franchise quarterback”

Rumor: Ask ‘C’-side Joe

Joe Flacco is third in the NFL in EPA per dropback, behind only Jayden Daniels and Josh Allen. He’s been one of the more dominant players since last season despite not being an actual starter for any team since 2019.

Of the top quarterbacks in the NFL so far this season, how many required a team to get an early draft pick to acquire him? Not Flacco, who said the Colts were the only team to even give him a contract offer as a backup. Not Derek Carr, who is fifth in EPA. Not Baker Mayfield, who is ninth. Not Jared Goff, Brock Purdy, Kirk Cousins, Dak Prescott, Sam Darnold, Jalen Hurts, Andy Dalton, and not Geno, who is 19th* right now…

*I mention this because people want to know, not because I’m making subtle commentary about Geno’s quality of play—it’s just one stat and certainly not the best stat

Teams are changing quarterbacks faster than they’re changing the channel or streaming service you need to watch their games. And that’s fast.

Now that doesn’t mean you can disrespect the good quarterbacks who were top-10 picks by their current franchise, including Allen, Daniels, Joe Burrow, C.J. Stroud, Kyler Murray, and so on.

I would not have said this a year ago, but now it might be the best idea to keep an open mind about available quarterbacks and for the Seahawks to carefully examine how they allocate their salary cap space moving forward. They didn’t want to pay Russell Wilson a market-level contract in 2022, which turned out to be the best trade move in the history of the franchise and having Geno on a mid-level contract has been a huge advantage for Seattle. This is also a franchise that if you ranked all 32 teams by how much they’ve valued QBs in their history, the Seahawks might be 32nd.

How the Seahawks choose to address that situation after the season will be the biggest question Seattle’s had to answer since 2022.

There’s a lot more to get to this week and only three days to get it in, so share your day-after thoughts in the comments as far as what happened on Sunday against the Giants and what you want to see change in Week 6 against the 49ers.