Seahawks-Jaguars endgame
What happened in Week 6?
Of all the teams to struggle against in your career, you wouldn’t think Jaguars, but Sam Darnold entered the week with six career interceptions against Jacksonville, the most versus any team that wasn’t in his division. Surprisingly, Darnold has had three-interception games against the Jaguars as both a member of the Jets and the Vikings (his worst regular season outing of 2024), so there was some redeeming to do as a member of the Seahawks.
Consider his deem to be re’d.
Albeit not a perfect outing, Darnold found Jaxon Smith-Njigba eight times for 162 yards and a touchdown, threw a perfect pass to Cooper Kupp for his second score, and clinched the game with a 61-yard play action bomb across his body to A.J. Barner. The Seahawks beat the Jaguars 20-12 and improved to 4-2, escaping another game with shaky coverage by Seattle’s secondary to win Mike Macdonald’s ninth straight road game.
The Seahawks have their third AFC game of the season next week, hosting the Houston Texans on Monday Night Football, prior to a bye that is hopefully the last step towards returning a complete secondary.
Seahawks pass rush
The Seahawks can’t expect one game to define their pass rush and therefore must keep phone lines open for edge help before the trade deadline, but Macdonald had everything clicking against Jacksonville HC/OC Liam Coen and Seattle sacked Trevor Lawrence seven times. DeMarcus Lawrence had 2.5 sacks (on what felt like five 0.5 sacks), Byron Murphy II had two sacks, and then Drake Thomas, Leonard Williams, and Uchenna Nwosu contributed to round out the final number.
Murphy’s 4.5 sacks in six games is a long stretch better than the 0.5 he posted as a rookie. He’ll be in line for all the honors this season if he continues at this pace, further cementing that Seattle’s first round draft picks since Charles Cross in 2022 have all been doubles at worst, home runs at best.
Between Darnold, Kupp, and Lawrence we can pretty much forget everything I wrote about John Schneider’s free agency track record before the season!
Jaxon Smith-Njigba
With 162 more yards, JSN is now at 42 catches for 692 yards and three touchdowns in six games.
As a rookie in 2023, JSN had 63 catches for 628 yards and four touchdowns. We know that players often get off to slow starts so that’s not entirely unusual, but it’s also common for rookie receivers to be among the league’s best. It’s a huge difference to go from 37 yards per game to leading the league at 115 yards per game.
I wrote about JSN last week and his new season-long pace is 1,955 yards! No receiver has ever had 1,900 yards in a season without Matthew Stafford as his quarterback.
NFC West standings
The Rams beat the Ravens without Lamar Jackson and looked very mediocre while doing so. The Cardinals looked better with Jacoby Brissett than they’ve looked with Kyler Murray (who was out this week) but lost to the Colts at the last minute.
The 49ers are playing the Bucs as I write.
49ers, 4-1
Seahawks, 4-2
Rams, 4-2
Cardinals, 2-4
Next week, the Rams play the Jaguars, the Cardinals play the Packers, the 49ers play the Falcons on SNF, and the Seahawks play the Texans on MNF.
What were your thoughts on the game? I’ll be using some of your comments for Monday’s newsletter!
Seaside Joe 2414
The Bengals have made Hendrickson questionable with a back injury. I don’t know if there was a play that showed something happening to him or not. Mid game back injury seems unusual. Interesting to see how this would relate to his status on the block.
"Between Darnold, Kupp, and Lawrence we can pretty much forget everything I wrote about John Schneider’s free agency track record before the season!" Like this for couple of reasons.