Seahawks-Lions: Hot, Medium, Mild performances

A recap of Seahawks-Lions and standout/unfortunate performances within it: Seaside Joe Bonus

I did not start getting excited for the Seahawks’ Monday Night Football game—an event that is about as rare as Christmas Day—until Monday morning. I had successfully moved Seattle’s 3-0 record into a short-term storage rental in the back left secion of my hippocampus so that I wouldn’t get overly excited for their perfect start, but after getting to see half of the other four 3-0 teams lose on Sunday it became impossible to not fantasize of the implications of beating the Lions in Detroit at this very moment.

Even though a loss in Detroit isn’t all that big in the grand scheme of things, the Seahawks being able to say that they were one of three remaining perfect teams would have felt like a throwback to Seattle’s more glorious days.

If you’ve read this far in the article then you know that the Seahawks are not one of those undefeated teams anymore. The Lions beat the Seahawks 42-29 on Monday night and that weird score doesn’t even begin to paint how strange the game itself actually was.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the Seahawks do more in a game that they in actuality never had a good chance of winning. I know what you’re going to say—”But the Seahawks probably would have at least been tied or within a score for most of the game if not for DK Metcalf’s fumble”—and I DO agree with you. Seattle was remarkably never out of it and yes, they gained more yards than Detroit, so in some respects you could say that the Seahawks had a chance of winning on Monday night.

But fumbles…They are a part of the game. They’re just as meaningful in the outcome of a game and how good each player/team was as anything else that happens in a football game, like a touchdown or a yard gained or a yard lost or the many costly penalties on Seattle. So if you turn the ball over and you don’t force any turnovers and you let a quarterback have one of the greatest performances in NFL history, you have to own that just as much as you have to own the other reality which is that was still somehow a one-score game in the fourth quarter.

In my opinion, that’s only because it felt like the Lions were a bully drowning the Seahawks in three inches of water.

There was never a single point in the game when the Seahawks would have been favored to win…

And Detroit’s win probability stayed around 90% or better for basically the entire last 45 minutes of the game. That was cut down to 80% when the Seahawks made it an eight-point game, but even when Seattle forced a rare punt by Detroit and got the ball back with a chance to tie it, that’s when the Lions seemed to perk up and realize they had to start playing defense again.

Tell me in the comments if your experience watching this game was anything like my experience of watching this game:

So the Lions immediately punt (great start), then the Seahawks punt (nothing to be worried about), then the Lions drive 93 yards in 7:21 and never face a third down until third-and-Goal from the 1, then Metcalf fumbled, then I pretty much just started oscillating between thinking of unlikely scenarios that might gift Seattle a lucky win and negotiating my emotions for how to handle this inevitable loss.

Because the Seahawks were actually so bad on run defense on the second drive that I couldn’t think of very many probable (emphasis: probable, not possible) scenarios that would lead to Seattle overcoming a 14-0 deficit in Detroit without five defensive starters+six when Julian Love left with a thigh injury.

But as I say, in spite of all of that the Seahawks were able to keep the game interesting down to the final and 56th throw by Geno Smith pretty much because Seattle has a lot of talented players and minds on offense and the Lions were also very banged up on defense.

I’m probably going to have a slightly different take on how the Seahawks defense played on Monday night than most people, which is that I think given the circumstances they played pretty good and in my opinion this game would not have looked that much different with one or two more healthy players. Based on how Seattle’s defense played in the first three weeks—not how they performed on the stats sheet but how they played, which was they did really good but were not playing against offenses that could punish them for some of their mistakes—I think the Lions were always going to be a massive challenge to the Seahawks defense.

Jared Goff went an NFL record 18-of-18 (the previous-best 100% completion night was 10-of-10) for 292 yards and two touchdowns, which doesn’t include Amon-Ra St. Brown’s touchdown pass to Goff.

Would Goff have gone 18-of-18 if the Seahawks had Uchenna Nwosu and Jerome Baker? I mean, maybe. He might have.

Would the Seahawks have allowed a 70-yard touchdown to Jameson Williams and three rushing touchdowns? Yeah, I would say that one or two additions to the front seven doesn’t really change the equation that much for me, although losing Julian Love mid-game was definitely a significant loss with respect to Williams.

Would the Seahawks still give up 42 points if they had all of their defensive players? Well, let’s all agree that at no point this season will the Seahawks have all of their defensive starters.

Will the Seahawks defense play better next week against the Giants?

Maybe the silver lining to this loss—besides all the attractive distractions like a hook and lateral, a one-handed sack by Derick Hall, and a couple of DK Metcalf’s best career catches—is that there’s no way that Seattle can overlook the Giants on Sunday by thinking about the 49ers next Thursday. Giving up 42 points is going to have Mike Macdonald’s coaching staff and the players very focused and grateful for the opportunity to go back to playing against terrible quarterbacks.

Here are the Hot, Medium, and Mild performances from Week 4.

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Hot

QB Geno Smith

The headline is 395 yards on 56 attempts, but he looked pretty good with his legs tonight also. He did throw that interception on his last play of the game, as well as at least two others that should have been intercepted, but everybody’s chance of an interception will go up when you throw 56 passes. Plus, I’m looking for NO WRATH tonight.

Geno’s 395 yards is actually only the 11th-most in Seahawks history (I thought it would be higher), but the 56 attempts is a franchise record. Matt Hasselbeck went 30-of-55 with 427 yards in a 2002 game against the 49ers, another loss. Geno’s previous Seahawks career-high was 47 attempts and that was the win over Washington last season.

Throwing 56 passes is obviously not how any offense wants to play and wasn’t the intention until the game was 14-0 and I think Ryan Grubb is just very confident in his wide receivers to make plays and for Geno to get them the ball. That’s essentially how the Seahawks approached most of this game and for the most part it worked. It didn’t even really take that much away from Kenneth Walker and I think there’s definitely other scenarios in which Seattle dominates this game with Walker; However, I understand why that scenario didn’t play out on that way after DK’s fumble and the defense’s inability to get a stop. I hold no grubges.

This makes me consider a question I want to ask you:

RB Kenneth Walker

By far my favorite Seahawk of the night. Walker had 12 carries for 80 yards and 36 receiving yards and you felt like he could really get a home run tonight. It almost happened on a 28-yard run, but at least we got this:

S Julian Love

Well, because I guess things just kind of FALL APART when Julian Love leaves the game.

Derick Hall

When I see a guy do something like this, I think to myself “Oh that’s a GREAT player”. Not play, player:

LT Charles Cross

Soon to be the highest-paid player on the Seahawks. Although I will add this graph by Next Gen Stats, which shows Aidan Hutchinson generating an NFL-season best 10 pressures against Seattle and you can see he did quite a bit of his work against the left side:

WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba

He only had 51 yards, but JSN made a lot of critical plays on Monday. He convereted third-and-8, third-and-6, third-and-5, third-and-8, third-and-1, and he did this:

All due respect to Geno Smith and Kenneth Walker, I don’t think the Seahawks could have scord 20 points without JSN on Monday. He was that important and he didn’t just do it all on one or two drives, it was throughout the game.

DT Jarran Reed

He seemed really good on first sight and considering the circumstances he really had to be, but it’s hard to ignore how bad the Seahawks defensive line was getting buried by Detroit’s offensive line in the run game.

WR Jake Bobo

He’s not held to the same standards as a starting receiver would be, so Bobo catching three passes for 30 yards (and key moments) is definitely hot.

Medium

WR DK Metcalf

DK Metcalf embodies what it means to be “Medium” because my intention with this tier is that it’s players who do both good things and bad things. That’s DK Metcalf. He fumbled and he also did this:

And that might not have been his best play of the night. I just can’t help but wonder how a guy who is FAMOUS for flexing his muscles couldn’t be squeezing that ball so tight that it bursts.

LB Tyrel Dodson

I find it hard to believe that anyone in this area of defense (or any) was especially good on Monday night, but at least I remember Dodson making a few key plays and he led Seattle with 10 tackles. How many of those came on completions by Jared Goff? We will find out tomorrow.

EDGE Dre’Mont Jones

I’m in a generous mood with Jones while Seattle’s defensive line is the walking wounded, and he had a sack.

RB Zach Charbonnet

He only had two carries, but he got 15 yards on those and he had five catches for 39 yards. Most of all, I’m happy that the Seahawks have a good running back to spell Walker.

Cold

DC Mike Macdonald

When the team loses players, fans tend to want to look to the coaching staff for answers. Surely Pete Carroll has had defenses with less talent than what the Seahawks had on Monday night and not allowed a QB to go 18-for-18 and almost 120 rushing yards. If I can only give Macdonald ONE “Cold” grade for the entire season, certainly we all agree this is a great candidate for it?

Penalties

Whoever the penalties were on, I don’t remember all of them.

TE Pharaoh Brown

Not to pick on anyone, but he seems a little bit slow and I’m curious if this type of tight end is really the direction the Seahawks are headed in. Conversely, A.J. Barner had two catches for 27 yards and could have been a “hot”.