Random thoughts on the Denver preseason game

My big takeaway from this game was that, for one game at least, Seattle's backups no longer dominate other team's backups, and the Broncos backups are especially uninspiring so this was a bit of an eye opener. As for the rest I'll just jump into it randomly.

The 33 yard extra points are an eyesore. What a stupid experiment. You know what the NFL didn't need? More games decided by things like extra points and officiating.

Don't care at all about the loss. This game turned on a phantom PI on 1st and 35, Cassius Marsh getting an open shot at Osweiler and letting him run for 18 yards instead of obliterating him, and two brutal game losing drops on the final drive. I thought Denver actually played better anyway, but Seattle hung in there because of a completely ridiculous number of penalties on Denver.

The Good

Paul Richardson could use some work on his run after catch, but otherwise he was very impressive tonight. He separated with ease and looked natural as a receiver. He seemed to only be targeted on short routes for some reason, but he still looked good.

A few drops by camp bodies aside, our pass catchers looked very good in general. Helfet and Lockette had some nice catches over the middle.

Tjack is still pretty good.

Terrell Pryor looked surprisingly good especially in the pocket. He would have guided Seattle to a win if not for some rotten luck in deep in the red zone. His location is slightly off, but his arm and decision making were pretty good, and his accuracy was non-horrible. Love the mobility, that's nothing new.

The starting run defense shut down Hillman as you would expect.

Brock Coyle had a good game. Great instincts, decent hitter. He looked like Lofa-lite.

Hausch money.

The Mariners played a game that actually mattered and won 13-3!

The Bad

The run defense was abysmal in the second half.

The pass rush was abysmal when the "starters" were out, though I don't remember seeing much of Avril/Bennett. Greg Scruggs and Mayowa were non-factors. Schofield got upfield a few times but most mostly a non-factor.

Seattle seemed terrified of defensive backfield penalties and as a result Denver WRs were open by a body length within 3 seconds nearly 100% of the time. Seattle was very hands off in coverage and it had a big impact on their effectiveness vs. a team like Denver. Then again, it's very possible that Seattle did this to rope-a-dope Denver for week 3.

The officiating, even though it mostly benefited Seattle. Too many flags. Borderline unwatchable. Definitely worse than last preseason and that is saying a lot.

Robert Turbin couldn't beat Denver's not so athletic defenders to the edge, and was his usual ineffective self on north/south runs. I laughed when people at training camp compared Turbin to Julius Jones two years ago. Now I'm starting to see their point (assuming you picture JJ with bigger biceps and less balance).

I don't know if Ware added weight to play full back but he's lost a step he couldn't afford to lose. His athleticism was fringe last year but I loved how he made up for it in other areas. But this year he looks like Kendrys Morales running out there. Slooooow. He even appears to have lost quite a bit of his power too.

Disappointing game for Scruggs, Mayowa, and Brooks.

Not sure if good or bad

Christine Michael started well, though he once again showed his tendency to slide or fall down when more yards were there. Even his best run of the night involved him quitting on a TD despite the defender being in terrible position to stop him at the 1 yard line. Lynch just gets in right there 100 times out of 100. Fortunately, Michael would punch it in shortly after with a good short yardage run.

Seattle's best RB on the night was their 4th string guy who is (relatively) undersized and clearly has no shot of making the team as he does not even fit Seattle's profile. Seattle's run blocking was pretty bad in the first half and other than Michael turning poor blocking into 3 yard gains occasionally there wasn't much to be happy about in the run game from Michael/Turbin/Ware.

Marsh looks like a 3-4 OLB to me playing DT. Against decent protection he was a non-factor, but he took advantage of some blown blocks against scrubs to have a productive game. Marsh needs a lot of space to make plays.

Marsh doesn't look like a 265-270 pound player to me. By the eyeball test he looks roughly the same size as Mayowa. His blown sack on Osweiler highlighted Marsh's lack of size and power for his position. But even an undersized LB needs to make that play, much less a DT/DE hybrid. Bobby Wagner demolishes QBs on plays like that and he's been around 235 the last couple seasons.

Bailey is so weird. He has the body of a pure road grader and doesn't have the fastest feet. But he's rock solid in pass pro while being kinda weak in power blocking situations.

Britt had a better game than I thought he would but has the usual anchor issues against the bull rush. His run blocking was disappointing. He was bad overall, but I chalk that up as a minor positive since I expected him to be a disaster against Denver's pass rushers.

Sweezy was the only starter to start and he was pulled quickly. This backup line was actually okay in pass protection to my surprise, but mostly sucked in run blocking until Denver went full camp body in the 2nd half.

Not that I blame him much, but I thought Wilson was our least effective QB tonight because he was paranoid and didn't trust his protection as much as he maybe should have. TJack and Pryor stepped up in the pocket more and were more effective as passers. When our OL is at less than its best I think it hurts Wilson more than his backups because IMO he plays his best when relaxed. It's fun to think about how good Wilson could be this year if our OL improves and in turn Russell trusts them more.

Insightful stuff as always. Thanks.

Not a whole of positives to glean from this game.......hope our guys pull it together next week as tonight felt like it could have been the worst preseason performance since Pete got here.

Blitzer88":9o8krf45 said:

Not a whole of positives to glean from this game.......hope our guys pull it together next week as tonight felt like it could have been the worst preseason performance since Pete got here.

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Felt that way to me too. There seemed to be an absence of attitude as well.

kearly":np8qh2xw said:

Blitzer88":np8qh2xw said:

Not a whole of positives to glean from this game.......hope our guys pull it together next week as tonight felt like it could have been the worst preseason performance since Pete got here.

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Felt that way to me too. There seemed to be an absence of attitude as well.

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Crap..........its never a good sign when someone like you Kearly agrees with me. :180670: :bitenails:

Can't remember his name...I think... Bronson? had a terrible game.

Pryor should've had a GW drive if Bronson hadn't dropped that easy catch in the red zone. If the camp-fodder RB catches it, Seattle wins and maybe Blitzer isn't in meltdown mode right now.

That being said, I thought Pryor's decision to throw that ball on the subsequent play was terrible. Threw it inside to a sea of orange jerseys. Accuracy wasn't too bad on the throw, but you're just asking for trouble by throwing it there in the first place.

All in all, this reminded me of the preseason game against Green Bay last year. Just way too many flags and delays to extrapolate anything too meaningful.

DavidSeven":ozjy6yas said:

That being said, I thought Pryor's decision to throw that ball on the subsequent play was terrible. Threw it inside to a sea of orange jerseys. Accuracy wasn't too bad on the throw, but you're just asking for trouble by throwing it there in the first place.

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On 3rd and goal with the game being on the line I am okay with it, especially since it should have been caught for a TD. Any throw when up against the sideline is going to be a white knuckle throw. I think in that situation with 4th down looming, if you see a chance for a game winner you take it.

I agree, the drop on the previous play was even worse, even if the throw was slightly off. I thought it was a good illustration of nerves and pressure determining clutch play.

Crizilla":28f8p0ed said:

Can't remember his name...I think... Bronson? had a terrible game.

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Bronson dropped an easy TD catch that Pryor threw too high and too far back over his shoulder. He maybe should have caught it anyway, but the throw was bad. Other than that he was ripping off a bunch of 5-yard plays against other camp fodder. He didn't have a terrible game, but he was playing against scrubs.

Watching Pryor in this game felt like watching an alternate universe Seahawks team that drafted Kaepernick in 2011.

kearly":2ywql1cz said:

Watching Pryor in this game felt like watching an alternate universe Seahawks team that drafted Kaepernick in 2011.

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Uh-huh. I remarked several times during the game that he looked like a poor-man's Russell Wilson. He had the patented spin and run move down, but as soon as he did that, he lost all vision down field, pretty much like Kaepernick. I'm glad he got so much playing time, but for now he's third on the depth chart, and quite easily, at least for me.

I guess the difference would be that Kaep has always had really nice accuracy, Pryor is a bit shaky and will probably suffer more drops than most QBs because of poor placement. Another difference would be (as you allude to) that Kaepernick is not a point guard at QB. Pryor is a point guard at QB to an extent especially in our O.

If Pryor had solid accuracy I would like him a lot. When he focuses on keeping mistakes down he can be effective, but sometimes an inaccurate throw can turn a good decision into a mistake.

kearly":312ub7sr said:

I guess the difference would be that Kaep has always had really nice accuracy, Pryor is a bit shaky and will probably suffer more drops than most QBs because of poor placement.

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Maybe so. This game at least, I had more issue with his decision-making than accuracy. He had one inaccurate throw that I can remember--the would-be touchdown that turned into an interception on the very next, forced, bad-decision throw. You may have liked it in that instance, but I didn't. Game-winning touchdown? Could have at least been a game-winning field goal, and instead he forced the throw into three defenders and coughed it up. Other than that he looked decent enough, but no starter material.

Seattle was down by 5 with 1 timeout, less than three minutes to go. Seattle's defense couldn't stop the run. Field goal was not an option.

I remember the throw being a little hot, but on the money and the target was open enough. If he throws that pass to Baldwin/Kearse/Miller etc it's a catch. I should watch the play again but I remember it being center of chest area, it just bounced off the guys hands.

Even with three brutal drops, Pryor still finished with an 8.6 YPA and added some rushing yards too. He has stuff to work on and isn't starter material. But if he gets his ball placement just a little bit better, I would consider him an intriguing QB. Some of the blame for the drops is on his ball placement.

As bad as our defense looked Seattle actually won the yardage and time of possession battle, with Pryor himself accounting for more than half of the entire team's offense in just two quarters of play. He had the offense moving, I thought he helped himself in this game.

My puny 2 cents.
Welker and Thomas were running amok in the first half...Must feel pretty good to play with wild abandon knowing Chancellor wasn't there to rattle their pee bags, and make the hair on the back of their necks stand up.

Hard to really get a full picture of C-Mike in this game, but he isn't going to replace ML, but then again ML isn't going to be replaced by just any run of the mill RB., it's going to take somebody special to do that job, and I don't think there are any players on the market, anywhere.
Honestly, I think that there were just too many key players that weren't in this game for us to get a true picture on a lot of our Rookies that were thrusts into an away game against guys like Peyton Manning, on HIS turf, with his adoring fans.
I doubt like hell that Pete even thought that some of his unproven players were even going to be able to put up a lot of the resistance that they did.
I was pretty disappointed with all the goofy penalties made on both sides of the ball.
Taunting?, Really?, Why?

some good thoughts some not so good. TP INT was a horrible pass behind the Wr, especially given had the thrown it 1 second sooner another Wr was wide open. His pass on the dropped screen pass was not good either, high and behind. To be honest while he connected on a few passes other than 1 most were not great. TJ was better. Disagree about Rw being the least effective given he was playing against Denvers 1s and with our o-line filled with 2 and 3s and Rw was crushed a few times. He led us to our only TD and it should have been a throwing one if not for the Denver guy grabbing Baldwin. I Mean 4-6 is 66% completion not bad at all, TJ was only 5-7 which is 71% but is really just 1 pass and 1 completion more , and Pryor 9/16 which is 56% so TP was not good, and yes he had a drop pass but so did RW and TJ.

kearly":wktm1c40 said:

Seattle was down by 5 with 1 timeout, less than three minutes to go. Their defense couldn't stop the run. Field goal was not an option.

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Yea, you're right. I guess I was thinking of earlier or something when they were down by two. Still, I didn't like the throw, even before he threw it.

But yea, he looked a lot better than I'd feared he would. Not starter material, but not abysmal either.

Seahawk Sailor":2g7zkozj said:

kearly":2g7zkozj said:

Seattle was down by 5 with 1 timeout, less than three minutes to go. Their defense couldn't stop the run. Field goal was not an option.

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Yea, you're right. I guess I was thinking of earlier or something when they were down by two. Still, I didn't like the throw, even before he threw it.

But yea, he looked a lot better than I'd feared he would. Not starter material, but not abysmal either.

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I would hate the throw too if it was on 1st down in the 1st quarter.

But if he throws the ball away it's 4th down and the defense knows it will probably be a pass. Pryor had a guy open just enough. Should have been caught. It is probably a better opportunity than what he would have seen on 4th down in a semi-obvious passing down in the red zone.

I liked the decision when considering the context.

I guess what I find interesting is that Seattle didn't call a north/south run there. Seattle had been running the football pretty well late in the game, and they had basically two cracks at a TD if the first run comes close. But I suspect that they called a pass to see what Pryor could do with a tight throw situation. Wilson is put in these situations all the time and makes white knuckle throws for TDs even when riding the sideline, so it's probably a good skill for our backups to develop.

Yeah, if the receiver pulls in the pass, Pryor is definitely a hero, but I think I'd still prefer them to take one last shot on fourth down. We know RW has been able to convert on those kind of opportunities (to Edwards vs NE and to Kearse vs SF).

Nevertheless, he certainly showed flashes and looked like a better field general than I expected. And decision-making aside, the last throw was pretty decent. I still felt Wilson and T-Jack fared much better (while facing better comp and also playing behind reserve linemen).

Okay I watched it again. I partially retract my statement.

The target was Ricardo Lockette. Who was open enough if Pryor throws him open. Unfortunately, Prior throws a relative touch pass which (appears to) allow #42 of Denver to recover and swat the ball away. So no blame for Lockette. Some credit for #42 for closing and making a clutch play, and some raspberry for Pryor who placed the ball in the center of Lockette's chest instead of a couple feet outside.

I am still okay with the ballsiness aspect of the decision given the low success rate presented in a 4th down red zone scenario, and we've seen numerous occasions when Wilson made similar throws in very tight game situations, mostly with success. When the throw was made, Lockette was reasonably open, but Pryor still should have targeted more cautiously anyway. I am glad that Pryor made this mistake in a preseason game.