Seahawks Stock Report, Week 4: Michael Dickson's bad start is no reason to panic

There's no reason to Panic about Michael Dickson, but we should acknowledge the danger lurking downstairs: Seaside Joe 2035

What’s a movie that you’ve seen a dozen times but if someone asked you to name your favorite movies, you probably wouldn’t name that one right away or at all? It’s one of those conundrums in which I sometimes find myself at odds with my own track record: Logically, I don’t “think” of David Fincher’s 2002 film Panic Room as one of my favorite movies, yet “the unthinking” side of my brain has compelled me to watch it over and over again.

If that was unclear or confusing, I’ll put it this way: If someone asked me to name Fincher’s best movie, I would probably say Se7en or Fight Club, while also having to acknowledge that Benjamin Button and The Social Network are his two most critically-acclaimed films. Many other Fincher fans would argue for Zodiac, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, Mank, and The Game.

I’ve got a lot of good things to say about a lot of those movies, but for some reason Panic Room has always been like a “comfort watch” to me—perhaps a surprising description for a movie about thieves terrorizing a mother and her daughter in their new home—and I would never choose to watch movies like Benjamin Button or Zodiac over Panic Room, regardless of how much better those films are supposed to be.

I have also watched Panic Room more times than Fight Club and will continue to do so, not because I would necessarily rank it higher on a list of important films, but just due to the experience I have watching either of those movies. Panic Room doesn’t ask much of its audience, there’s not a lot of thinking involved, and I don’t know “Hollywood terms” but the visuals and atmosphere and cinematography (I’m guessing) are far more appealing to me than a lot of other movies that are supposed to be “better”.

What would be that movie for you and your thoughts on the Fincher filmography?

I write all of that to get us kicked off the right way into the weekend, but also to say that sometimes I feel like Jodie Foster’s character in Panic Room when I have to share irrefutible information or opinions about the Seattle Seahawks that is not always good or positive.

It’s as if I’m a mother in a huge, brand new house, empty save for me and my kin (the greater Seahawks community), the one thing in this world that matters to me, and then just as we turn out the lights thinking we’re safe for the night because the doors are locked and the Seahawks are undefeated, here comes Michael Dickson with a crowbar and a three-game sample size that I don’t even think Michael Dickson would defend as acceptable for a punter of his immense stature.

I use Dickson as an example because of Thursday’s newsletter when I gave an honest answer to a question about early season surprises, but this could be applicable to any player on the Seahawks (who isn’t an offensive lineman) who has a bad game or a bad month:

Do I ignore the bad and just hope—without knowing—that the bad will break-in through the kitchen, take the jewelry, and leave without hurting any of us?

Do I acknowledge the bad, then grab my daughter and flee to the panic room to avoid having to face the bad?

Or…

Do I do what any protagonist or heroine would have to do if they were living in a movie? Leave the Panic Room and fight the bad guys.

^^Jared Leto as “Michael Dickson’s punting EPA this season”^^

The story of Panic Room was never going to be that the mother and daughter stayed in the panic room all night, the robbers left after they got what they wanted, and nobody got hurt. The moral of the story in these cases has always been to face your fears in order to grow and develop your character, not to pretend that bad things don’t exist or that everything will work itself out if you just stay in the panic room for as long as it takes.

I’m not saying that I’m the mother hen around here or that any of you need me to tell you what to think or to shield your eyes from negativity. The vibe from Seaside Joe’s community of Seahawks fans has always been rational, reasonable, and measured reactions to all things pertaining to the team. Plus, I know I need to ask YOU for answers and insights and help with understanding certain things pertaining to football much more so than the other way around.

As I always say, the collective knowledge of the community here is far greater than what I could ever learn in my entire lifetime: Some of you know more than me about all things, all of you know more than me about something.

What I am saying is that it can be challenging to share honest opinions or findings about the Seahawks if we’re running to the panic room any time someone besides a guard has a bad game. Even someone like Dickson, a consistently good player who has often been a last ditch effort for fans looking to find salvation and hope in these last six years with only one Seahawks playoff win.

Even players as likeable and deserving of our adoration and loyalty as Michael Dickson are subject to—not just “my criticism”, because this has nothing to do with “my criticism”—having their actual stats shared with readers at Seaside Joe.

Not to be rude, not because I have a personal agenda to make sure that fans start to turn on certain players by twisting the facts, but only because someone asked me my opinion of early season surprises and instead of locking myself in a panic room overnight with Kristen Stewart, I decided to share one “underwhelming” three-game sample size from one player who I think we can all agree 100% that we all like. Is that a crime?

On Michael Dickson

A couple of years ago, my cousin Stoops asked for my thoughts on which Seahawks jersey to buy and I told him to get a Dickson. At the time (I think it was in between the Russell Wilson trade and Geno Smith’s first start that year) there were not a lot of good players on the team that we knew of and in my opinion Dickson had the greatest odds of anyone to still be on the Seahawks—and still doing good—five seasons down the line.

Seattle has added so many good young talents since then that it’s easy to forget how high Michael Dickson was on the totem pole in 2022.

So it’s very far off from reality to think that I would have any sort of agenda with regards to Dickson other than one to hype him up or overrate him, not the opposite: Who has more at stake in Dickson’s success than a man with the burden of recommending his jersey to his cousin? My whole freakin’ reputation is on the line, man!!!!

Now I will also say that some of you asked for a follow-up on Michael Dickson’s season because I didn’t really get into the nitty gritty details and that’s totally fair for you to want. I had assumed that it wasn’t as necessary because there have been so many comments here and in the Seaside Joe live game chats that I felt like it was more of a given that Dickson hasn’t been good this year…

And I want to emphasize “this year” for a reason: I’m not sharing “my agenda” or talking about Dickson’s entire career, I’m literally just talking about the on-field performances in Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3. In the same way that we can talk about a player being really good for three games, like Charles Cross, we can also acknowledge a player who ranks near the bottom of the NFL for his position group through three weeks.

These numbers don’t mean or even imply that Michael Dickson will be bad for the entire season. If anything, regression to a mean implies that Dickson only gets better from here.

However, this IS the reality of Dickson’s first three games:

Dickson has punted the ball 14 times, tied for the 8th-most.

Dickson has placed the punt inside the 20 once, making him one of six punters with zero or one such punt.

With one inside-20 on 14 punts, Dickson’s average rate of 7.1% is 31st in the NFL. The only punter with a lower mark is Atlanta’s Bradley Pinion, a punter with no “inside the 20” jobs on nine punts for the Falcons.

By comparison, Indy’s Rigoberto Sanchez has punted 11 times and placed 10 of those punts inside the 20. Washington’s Tress Way has only had to punt three times this season and he has as many inside-20 punts as Dickson does on 14 punts.

Last season, Dickson placed 38% of his punts inside the 20, which ranked 15th in the NFL. In 2022, he put 33.3% of his punts inside the 20, which ranked 23rd.

However, in 2022, Dickson only had three touchbacks on 66 punts and his 4.5% average was tied for the eighth-best in the NFL.

In 2024, Dickson already has two touchbacks on only 14 punts. His touchback rate is the eighth-worst in the NFL this season and his 2023 average of 12.1% was the second-worst in the league. And if you want me to ignore the bad stats and say “Those are just because of field position and situation”, then I also have to ignore the good stats. We can’t pick and choose based on convenience.

Dickson was still third in net yards per punt last season (44.1), which should confirm to all of us that Michael Dickson is one of the guys that’s going to be in the NFL for a long time to come. The NFL’s oldest punters right now are 6-8 years older than Dickson, it’s hard to imagine he won’t still be in the league in 2030.

But this has never been a conversation about whether Dickson is employable or even whether or not he’s good. Michael Dickson is a good punter! That’s something I wrote myself yesterday—“Dickson has been a good punter for a long time”—when I also had to acknowledge out of fairness that he has indeed been a bad punter for the last few games.

“Well, I still prefer analytics. Basic, raw punting stats don’t tell a full picture of how Dickson is doing.”

I agree and I also prefer the analytics side for punters because you’re right: Situation and field position matter a lot. I was mostly basing my opinion on what I have SEEN from Dickson in the first three games, then the raw stats confirmed what I saw more than they did make me re-think that first-hand evaluation. Do we have EPA for punters? We do.

Michael Dickson’s punter EPA and yards above expected: 28th out of 32.

“So what, he had a few bad games, he’s still a good punter.”

I agree. I was asked to give surprises based on the first three games, so that’s what surprised me: A good punter having a bad three games. I never said that my opinion of Dickson would be forever changed into “He’s a bad punter now”.

“The stats still don’t matter, he’s better than this and he’s been better than the numbers imply.”

That’s cool too. But if Michael Dickson is first in every punting category at the end of the year, which he’s totally capable of doing, should I acknowledge stats then because they’re favorable or do we say right now to completely forget punter stats forever, even if Seattle’s punter dominates them? It’s like a defendent taking the witness stand: You can defend yourself to this one accusation, but you’re also opening up the floor to your entire life. We have to take the bad with the good.

And for Dickson, these evaluations that the front office will need to do before the next two offseasons are more important than they would be for an average punter or a rookie punter because he’s also the highest-paid punter in the NFL.

Dickson’s four-year, $14.7 million contract with $7.5 million guaranteed is still the benchmark for great punters. Furthermore, his $3.85 million cap hit in 2024 and $4.25 million in 2025, these are numbers that could slightly alter the roster on offense and/or defense: A rookie punter could save the team $4 million in 2026 and for context that’s more cap space than Seattle is using on Connor Williams, George Fant, Pharaoh Brown, Johnathan Hankins, K’Von Wallace, or Laviska Shenault.

John Schneider, Mike Macdonald, and Jay Harbaugh will all have to come to a consensus agreement that Michael Dickson is “X” better than a rookie punter and that the “X” value is greater than the “Y” value of being able to sign a veteran guard (for example) who is an upgrade to the current guard.

At the end of the day, if a team has a punter who is consistently putting the ball between the 5 and the 10, that’s 10-15 yards of field position that he’s worth on those punts. That’s freakin’ HUGE. It’s why the Dickson of the past became the highest-paid punter in NFL history. But if your punter does not end up producing at an above-average clip, that’s essentially $3 million you’re spending on a name because he’s a fan favorite and you want him to spend his entire career in Seattle…which probably is how a lot of punters end up being with the same team for over a decade.

One punter who didn’t do that is Johnny Hekker, a punter who tortured the Seahawks as a member of the Rams for 10 years. Between 2012 and 2021, Hekker was a first-team All-Pro four times, a second-team All-Pro twice, and before he turned 30 he had one of the cleanest resumes in history for a punter with intentions of making the Hall of Fame. As good as Dickson’s been, there’s no question that Hekker’s was a lot better over his first six seasons.

Well, the Rams still cut Hekker in 2022 and as you can see he ranks at the bottom of the league in EPA through three weeks. I don’t know to what degree the Panthers are at fault for that, but the Rams cut him for cap purposes (the previous highest-paid punter in the NFL) because he had not been playing up to his reputation as the best in the league anymore. Once a punting legend, Hekker seemed to fall of a cliff around age 30.

Will that happen to Dickson? There’s no reason to speculate that it will. Dickson’s best years could still be in his future.

But when you sign the number one ranked contract at your position, you open yourself up to the scrutiny that comes with such a title. If Dickson was so good once that he got paid that much money, surely fans can express some surprise when he doesn’t have—not just a “good start”—but not a great start to the season, and in many respects, it has been a bad start.

Will that continue? I don’t think so and I hope not. But if it’s what I see, it’s what I report and I really don’t think there’s any reason to panic.

That’s the bulk of this week’s Seahawks Stock Report, but here are a few other ups and downs from Week 3’s win over the Dolphins and going into Week 4’s MNF showdown with the Lions:

UP

RB Zach Charbonnet

In his fourth career start, Charbonnet showed fans that he can be the running back on a functional offense, even if the offense didn’t function that well for the middle half of the game. Charbonnet doubled his career rushing touchdowns and for the first time he averaged over 4 YPC (5.06 YPC to be exact) in a game in which he had at least 10 carries.

RT Stone Forsythe

The Seahawks would probably be better off with Forsythe having a breakout season than George Fant, but since he is a 2025 free agent it will be interesting to see how Seattle responds next year IF Forsythe continues to play right tackle at a good enough level. Assuming that the Seahawks will want functional insurance next to Abe Lucas, Forsythe could be playing his way into a second contract right now.

TE Noah Fant

Playing fewer snaps is good for Noah Fant. He had by far his best game as a receiver this season despite playing fewer snaps than Pharaoh Brown.

OLB Derick Hall

Hall graded out with a 2.9/5 score going into the season because he hasn’t played a lot and he didn’t have any sacks as a rookie. Now he’s trending towards a 4+ player score with three sacks and 7 QB hits this season. Any type of way you feel about Christian Haynes, look to Hall as a player it would have been easy to panic about after his rookie season.

NT Johnathan Hankins

His presence to the defensive line has never been this important and Hankins showed up big against the Dolphins.

DOWN

RB Kenneth Walker, DT Byron Murphy II

If you’re not playing, I can’t help you. My stock report takes injuries into account because of the importance of availability and how teams value players based largely on how worried they are about that player’s ability to stay healthy, but your stock report can have totally different criteria! That’s fine, they’re just different ways to grade players and you’re more than welcome to have an opposing viewpoint on whatever criteria you choose.

I don’t have a single negative word to say about Walker or Murphy (please, trust me! this is not a negative critique of these very popular seahawks players!) but one of them has missed two games (again) and the other is going to miss at least a couple of games, it seems. I want Walker and Murphy to be healthy so that they can do all the things that will raise their scores in the future, it’s just out of my hands when they aren’t.