If anything I’d say the Guard and Center play the past 6 weeks has been rough. When Geno had time and confidence to step up in the pocket he was on point. Teams have figured out that pushing the pocket into Geno is the way to beat this Hawk team. Please UPGRADE the iOL!
This issue is also on our play calling, really. We keep trying to force our run game in ways that it has not worked all year. Never, at a single point, has just gut punching inside handoffs multiple times early in offensive series worked for us. Not when our run game was on fire and not now.
But now we are obsessed with trying to 'make our run game work' by forcing the run game in this exact manner. Then, when we inevitably end up in third and long, we go 'Ok Geno, can you save us real quick?' But what do defenses do on third and long? They blow offensive lines the f-up, that's what they do, and ours is no exception.
We are a pass first offense, our running game working off a successful pass game, not the other way around. But we are going back to what we did to try and protect Russell Wilson, which is the exact opposite of what Geno needs. Geno isn't the type of QB who's going to get beat by two-high safety looks or quarters coverage. He very happily will take those underneath routes all day long. He doesn't need us to pound the rock over and over to try and bring the defense in in order to drop a moon ball. That's Russ's game, not Geno's.
This, unfortunately, smacks of Pete Carroll panic-interfering in the offensive game plan. We had a few games where we tried to get the 'run game going', it had the results I mentioned above, and then we got more and more locked into trying to make our run game work. I mean, after all, we got so many yards from Penny and Walker earlier on--something must be going wrong!
Yeah, what went wrong is we missed the fact that Penny and Walker's best runs early in the season were playing off defenses that had spread out to stop Geno. Some of our best runs were audibles at the line when Geno simply read that the box was light. We weren't a great running team because we were imposing our will from the offensive line and never were.