Can Seahawks find YAC this year?

A DK Metcalf bounce back YAC and the addition of Jaxon Smith-Njigba could extend Seattle's scoring: Seaside Joe 1601

When it comes to the Seattle Seahawks offense headed into training camp next week, there are those who see the stars, the high draft picks, the money spent recently, the new additions, the rookies, the Sean McVay coaching tree, the Pro Bowl quarterback, and the fantasy football potential and they think, well this oughta be good! I just wrote that intro and not only do I think “this oughta be good”, I wrote the damn thing.

Seahawks report to training camp in: 5 days!

Seahawks open preseason in: 21 days!

But to play the part of nitpickery, there are those who see the flaws and the shortcomings that could hold back the Seahawks from being as explosive on offense as they should be. Seattle ranked ninth in scoring last season but what happens when you erase their best and worst games?

On the low end, you could scratch off one of their two games against the 49ers and still be left with a few examples of “what NOT to do this year”.

On the high end, taking away the Seahawks dominant offensive performance against the awful Detroit Lions defense means taking a significant hit to the end-of-season numbers: Seattle’s 32.93 Expected Points Added that day was more than twice as good as their second-best game.

Obviously everyone—you, me, Pete Carroll, Geno Smith, Shane Waldron, Blitz, maybe even Jeff Bezos—wants to see the Seahawks be more consistently great as an offense in 2023. But moving from the general to the more specific, the most common complaint I hear about Seattle’s offense is that in spite of a top-five receiver duo, Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf literally leave something to be desired on the field…

Yards.

Yards are something you want on the football field. I’m sure of it.

Pop Quiz Hotshot: PFR’s advanced stats tracking data goes back to 2018 and it was that season that a Seahawks player averaged an Average Depth of Target of 15.9 yards—meaning that on average, this player was almost 16 yards past the line of scrimmage when targeted—the most of any Seahawks player in the last five seasons…Name that player from 2018. Answer posted at the bottom of the article.

When it comes to Yards After Catch, Lockett and Metcalf are about as separated from the NFL’s other top-25 receivers as a single team duo could hope to be. In Lockett’s case, he averaged 3.3 yards after catch per reception in 2022, which ranked 108th among all players who had at least 40 targets last season. But the ranking still doesn’t get much better when you eliminate running backs and tight ends and players with at least 60 targets.

YAC is just one wrinkle to a large tapestry of attributes you want in a wide receiver and we know that Tyler Lockett’s game as a whole amounts to him being great. Don’t take this as a criticism of Lockett, so much as a fact about Lockett: Of all the receivers who gained at least 900 yards in 2022, Lockett’s 3.3 YAC/rec ranked 23rd out of 26.

We know that part of the reason for that is self-preservation and that’s been a common theme in Lockett’s career. We see him take the yards and live for another play and I think most Seahawks fans are happy about that and should be happy about that. Not many 182 lb humans make it to the NFL, let alone survive going into their ninth season with only one major injury and three career games missed.

On the polar opposite end of Lockett’s frame is DK Metcalf at 235 and in spite of that disparity, Metcalf is in theory much faster than Lockett. To have a 235 lb man possessing 4.33 speed and having the ball in his hands, there shouldn’t be much in the NFL that is more intimidating than that.

Lockett ranked 23rd out of 26 with 3.3 YAC/Rec.

Metcalf ranks 26th out of 26 with 2.4 YAC/Rec.

There were only six players in the NFL last season who had at least 40 targets and had a lower YAC/Rec than Metcalf and they were all wide receivers. From worst to sixth-worst: George Pickens (rookie), Marvin Jones (with a new team this year), Allen Robinson (traded), Adam Thielen (released), Isaiah Hodgins (was released during last season), and Courtland Sutton. The players right above Metcalf were DeAndre Hopkins, Michael Gallup, and Diontae Johnson.

There is sort of this “one of these things is not like the other” with Metcalf in this group. We should feel like he can do better than that and we KNOW that he can do better than that.

With Russell Wilson as the quarterback for all but 3 games during his first three seasons, Metcalf averaged 4.7, 4.4, and 4.4 YAC/Rec with the Seahawks. If we give Metcalf that boost of 2 YAC/Rec that he had in the first three seasons and apply it to his 2022 campaign, then suddenly his season goes from:

90 catches, 1,048 yards, 11.6 Yards/Catch

to:

90 catches, 1,228 yards, 13.6 Yards/Catch

That’s a big difference!

I’m not saying that the chance in YAC is related to Geno Smith, I’m only pointing out that of all the differences between a consistent YAC in 2019-2021 and a career-low YAC (by a lot) in 2022, the most notable change is the one made at quarterback. We saw Geno working out with DK this week based on Geno’s tweets (alongside free agent Tavon Austin), so maybe the additional year of building chemistry and the desire to not have a YAC season like that again will motivate DK Metcalf…to not have a YAC season like that again.

Breaking tackles is “cool” and all — DK Metcalf had eight broken tackles in 2020, eight broken tackles in 2021, and one broken tackle in 2022 — but elusiveness and making more out of less is one of the ways that Seattle’s supporting cast can make Geno Smith look even better this and potentially reach that comparison I made to Matt Ryan earlier this offseason.

Going back to that phenomenal intro paragraph I wrote, let’s get slightly more specific with some of those reasons I listed:

• The Seahawks drafted Charles Cross ninth overall in 2022 and Jaxon Smith-Njigba 20th overall (first WR taken) in 2023

• The Seahawks drafted Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet (premier pass-catching back) in back-to-back second rounds

• The Seahawks gave DK Metcalf a contract extension (reminder to the new subscribers that we called it out to the dollar amount here at Seaside Joe) and stayed financially committed to Lockett by restructuring him this year

• The Seahawks traded for Noah Fant and also drafted Abe Lucas in 2022, then signed Evan Brown, retained Phil Haynes, and drafted two more interior offensive linemen in 2023

• The Seahawks re-signed Geno Smith

Staying in theme with YAC, I want to go back to that decision to draft Jaxon Smith-Njigba as a replacement and potential upgrade not only to the players that Seattle had in 2022 (Marquise Goodwin, Dee Eskridge, Cade Johnson) but also to basically any WR3 that the Seahawks ever had when Wilson was the quarterback. JSN could not only be a good player for a number of reasons in 2023, he could also be Seattle’s best YAC threat as soon as Week 1.

A scouting report from April by Doug Orth of FFToday gave JSN a 9/10 grade for Run After Catch. Smith-Njigba also got at least 9/10 on Ball Tracking, Hands, Release, and Route-Running, with a 8/10 for Contested Catches and Body Control. And those were the only grades that had a 10-point scale, so Smith-Njigba was basically as close to a 90-100% grade as you can get.

Along with his ability to sell his route through body language, it makes it very easy for him to create separation consistently. Unsurprisingly, the former five-star recruit seems to have a natural feel for finding open space against zone coverage and draws rave reviews for his competitive nature, which really shines through with how often he works back to his quarterback when the latter is in trouble. The Big Ten's single-season record-holder in receiving yards may do his best work with the ball in his hands. Per Pro Football Focus, Smith-Njigba churned out 790 yards after the catch in 2021, including 100-plus in three of his last five games and 180 in the Buckeyes' epic Rose Bowl victory over Utah (part of his Rose Bowl-record 347 yards receiving).

Think of being that good at so many attributes of receiving and your best attribute is described as what you do AFTER the catch. That’s almost the opposite of what the Seahawks were working with at receiver in 2022.

As subscribers know by now—and should definitely know by NOW—I’m high as possible on Jaxon Smith-Njigba and think he could be Seattle’s best weapon in short order. Even if he were a slot receiver for his entire career, he could be the NFL’s best slot receiver and that’s plenty valuable too. He’ll definitely be a slot receiver in 2023. That added YAC, plus the addition of Charbonnet, and another year to smooth out the offense with Waldron+Geno+Supporting Cast, could dramatically improve the Seahawks 30th-ranked YAC/Completion from 2022.

Seattle ranked 4.5 YAC/Completion in 2022, which is 2.2 YAC/completion behind the first-ranked Panthers and 2.1 YAC/completion behind the Chiefs and 49ers. The Seahawks seem to have the components for an explosive offense…now they need a light.

Answer: David Moore, 15.9 ADOT, followed by Tyler Lockett’s 2021 season at 14.6 ADOT

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