But first some quick thoughts on the Giants game.
The great Shane Waldron had another fantastic plan and is a guy I've never wavered on throughout his short tenure here when many others questioned his capability. However, I have some bad news in that he will be getting a lot of HCing offers upcoming, and I don't want to lose him. He is the best offensive coach the Seahawks have had since Mike Holmgren. He added a new wrinkle this week with Homer in the backfield while orbit motioning Dallas.
The Seahawks stayed aggressive throughout on offense, Geno threw it 25 times in the first half in a low scoring first half. This is huge. (Process vs. Results) The Giants were loading up to stop the run, and the Seahawks saw a lot of loaded boxes, but Seattle did the right thing taking what the defense gave them, which in this case called for throwing it more, as the Giants continued to dare them to do so. No reversion to Pete Ball was ever hinted at, and they had every excuse to revert to it given the Giants are a very one dimensional offense that struggled to move the ball throughout the game.
If Geno keeps doing what he's doing he's looking at a substantial payday, and the Seahawks should totally pay it. Having a career bust/backup come out of nowhere to play like a top 5 QB is like winning the lottery. The last guy to do something like this is Rich Gannon, and if you're even more bullish Kurt Warner. This is not normal, so don't go thinking the Seahawks can dump Geno and just find another one, easy-peasy. That is not reality. Geno is what is making this work. If he were playing at average starter level, the Seahawks would have one of the worst records in the NFC.
Re-sign Geno, find a way to keep Waldron by any means necessary, and spend all of those picks making the team stronger in the trenches on both offense and defense. It's another overhyped QB draft class, I haven't done my deep dive on it yet, as I don't really look at college prospects until DEC at the absolute earliest, usually starting in JAN. But from a glance, I'm not impressed with this upcoming QB class at all.
Shifting gears to the defense, they are running the old defense. I saw many times Nwosu at Leo with a 1T, 3T, 5T. Everyone 1-gapping, while sprinkling in some bear fronts at times. On the backend it was softzone Cover 3 and Cover 2. I opined after the ATL game to revert back to the old defense, due to it fitting their personnel better. They finally shifted after being embarrassed by the Saints, and the defense went from #32 in DVOA to #1 in DVOA in the last 3 games.
This is where Pete gets credit. He shelved the Hurtt defense, and went back to what had worked in the past. Didn't expect this much of a boost, but having the #32 defense through 5 games, I couldn't imagine it being worse and is why I was pushing for them to revert back about a month ago. They will run into trouble down the road with this defense due to how it can be exploited underneath, with receiving backs and TEs, but this is a substantial improvement over worst in the league the first 5 games and is sustainable because it fits their personnel much better.
The Giants this year are a classic example of results based vs. process based. They were 6-1 (results), however looking at their PFF and the film they were more like a 2-5 (process) team. Daboll and Wink have done an amazing job coaching up a team that has a lot of holes, and they've had some lucky breaks to boot. Lockett having the worst game of his life is the only reason the game was somewhat close.
A Quality Control Note: They need to ease up on the Ken Walker carries, no need to Rawls or Carson him. Not every back is Lynch and can be a 20-25 carry back week after week. They need to mix in Dallas more especially in short yardage and keep Walker fresh. 18 carries this week, just need to give a few of those to Dallas or Homer, and I think that is the sweet spot for him. 15 carries a game, keep him away from short yardarge, where he tends to dance, lose yards, take big hits, and has surrendered a safety.
So last week I made a thread, you probably saw it, "We Were All Wrong."
And I got major pushback for having a plausible expectation that the Seahawks should be able to make the NFCCG given the landscape of the conference. I see no reason not to stick with that. This is a weird year in the NFC, and the teams that were supposed to be contenders have fallen off a cliff. TB, GB, LAR, AZ, and even SF are not what they should be. If you notice 3 of those teams are in the Seahawks division ripe for the pluckin'. Pete will probably squander it with a bonehead decision or bad gameplan in the playoffs, but the expectation should be making the NFCCG given these unique circumstances.
They clearly have had the best draft class in 10 years via JS. The "young" excuse was always just that, an excuse. The vets on defense were the ones that needed to pick it up, and was the biggest reason why they were losing games earlier in the year, and since they've reverted back to the old defense they have done just that.
So let's try this again, why can't the Seahawks make a playoff run to the NFCCG?
