Anyone who follows this blog knows that I had been suggesting, for a good while now, that perhaps the Seattle Seahawks would target one of two receivers who played for offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak last year in New Orleans. Chris Olave or Rashid Shaheed made too much sense for a 6-2 Seahawk team to not explore acquiring, and it makes sense for the dismal 1-8 Saints team to acquire as many draft picks as possible to finally do a proper rebuild of their roster that they have been putting off for a while now.

Seattle surrendering their 4th round and 5th round picks for Shaheed was fair compensation for a young number two receiver who is an electric deep threat, a run after catch artist, and a lethal returner on special teams. Think of all the value he adds to this offense and special teams, and consider what you will likely get in the back half of rounds four and five next April.

It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that he is on the last year of his contract, and will be set to hit free agency this March. He has nine games to make his mark in Seattle on a team that now leads the league in total DVOA as they push towards the playoffs. If he proves productive, if he fits in well with the coaches, and culture, John Schneider will likely work in the offseason to retain him, and Seattle will be set up to have one of the most dynamic receiving rooms in the league once again. They will have the cap space to pay him, JSN, Charles Cross, and Devon Witherspoon all within the next couple years.

What Shaheed brings to Seattle now is an explosive deep threat that they don’t presently have on offense, and he carries with him a familiarity of Kubiak’s offense. It might take him a few games to get the full playbook fully back in his body, and build chemistry with Darnold, but I think once we get into the later stages of November, we should see a connection forming.

The importance of his deep threat ability added to this offense is two fold. It will certainly help make a league leading explosive passing attack all the more lethal downfield, but it will also likely help the run game. Allow me to explain.

Seattle plays mostly out of heavy looks that either have two tight ends on the field, or a tight end and a fullback. Accompanied with them is two receivers. Through eight games, defensive coordinators have chosen to load the boxes against these looks, bringing safeties down to take away the run. They have been choosing to run the risk of getting beaten over the top by JSN and Cooper Kupp in order to snuff out the run, creating second and long scenarios that will hopefully lead to third and longs. Sometimes, they have paid for it, but other times, their loaded boxes have worked stalling out Seattle’s run game through stretches in games, and we have all felt these moments.

If Klint Kubiak decides to trot out Rashid Shaheed in these heavier personnel sets instead of a slower Cooper Kupp, theoretically, that could put a defensive play caller in a greater bind. Do you drop a safety down to stop Ken Walker, and risk a play action pass where a red hot Sam Darnold now has a quality target who can jet past corners and safeties downfield along with the deep route running prowess of JSN? Or do you lighten your box against this heavier look, and risk one of the most explosive running backs in the league gashing past slower second level defenders who are getting blocked up by tight ends or a fullback?

If you load the box with Shaheed on the field with JSN, you risk Darnold putting up even more absurd Madden numbers against your secondary, but if you play you safeties two deep, you run the risk of your defense getting gashed on the ground. Personally, I suspect Mike Macdonald would love nothing more than to see defenses shift to two deep looks against his offense’s heavier packages. While I am sure he loves what Darnold and JSN have been cooking together, seeing he run game further opening up to better compliment his defense would certainly be his chef’s kiss through the second half of the season.

Therefore, I believe this addition of Shaheed was made to put a further bind on defensive play callers, and it comes at the right time of the year when Seattle will continue to face some pretty formidable defenses. They will face one this weekend when Arizona comes to town, and they will face another one when they travel South to face the Rams in a week and a half.

This addition of Shaheed also provides an insurance should JSN get dinged up at any point in the remainder of the year. Some Seattle fans were probably more than a bit nervous to see Cooper Kupp show up on the injury report heading into the SNF matchup against a desperate Washington team playing for their season, and they were probably equally more than relieved to see rookie Tory Horton step up, and show out.

With Horton, Seattle Seahawk fans should feel hope for now and the future. Now, if something were to happen to JSN, and Seattle had to operate for a little while with Horton, Shaheed, and Cooper Kupp, with the way Sam Darnold is spinning it, I think a lot of fans would feel okay about it, and Kubiak would feel like he could stay within his full playbook. This matters, if you want to see this team in a deep playoff run this year.

This is why I wanted this trade to happen, and I’m not even spending much time discussing what Shaheed’s value will bring as a returner on special teams. We know Seattle is trending to be having one of the top defenses in the league, and we know their offense has been surprisingly explosive. Now they have a returner who can make their return game lethal each and every Sunday that they play.

If you enjoyed the way Seattle took care of business against the Commanders, and the way they made the game against the Saints over before halftime in back in September, you should be pumped that they added Shaheed to their offense and special teams. There are games on their schedule where we could easily now see similar outcomes in favor of Seattle where by the fourth quarter, we are watching Drew Lock throwing to Jake Bobo in garbage time minutes, and handing the ball off to George Holani to kill clock.

Yeah, for all these reasons, I love this trade.

I know most wanted to see Seattle trade for a right guard, but no team was going to trade away a player at the position who is better than Anthony Bradford. Good interior offensive linemen do not get traded mid season. It just doesn’t happen. The Browns, and Titans are miserable teams going nowhere this year with good veteran guards, and they held onto them.

I also allowed myself to have some pretty highly unrealistic hopes that Seattle would try to make a play for Maxx Crosby in Vegas, or Myles Garrett in Cleveland like some podcasters were suggesting that perhaps they would make a run at. Who knows if they tried, but I think the reality is that even though guys are getting a bit older on bad clubs, and perhaps cashing in on a major draft haul for them would be right for those organizations to do, it would be a brutally awful pill for any GM to force upon their tortured fanbase, and ask them to swallow it for the hope of a brighter future down the road.

Crosby and Garrett are generational talents, and they are superb leaders, and if you trade them away for capital that you hope will provide you your next franchise quarterback, and that player never materializes, you will become a league wide laughing stock for years. That is the risk.

If there was one position that I would have liked to have seen Seattle make a play for in a trade, it would have been linebacker, given the knee situation with Ernest Jones. The fact that this type of trade wasn’t made does give me hope that his injury suffered against the Commanders isn’t a bad one, and that Macdonald feels good about the depth behind him with Drake Thomas, and Tyrice Knight, and he also likes what he is seeing from his practice squad guys. It is very possible that Macdonald feels better about that position group than casual fans do, and I think we have to trust him on that given that linebacker coaching is his forte.

I will end this piece with a final thought about the trade deadline for the Seattle Seahawks. I am glad that they didn’t trade away Riq Woolen. I know he has been a subject of frustration for fans the last few years, and I, myself, have speculated on this blog whether he is a fit for Macdonald. I also know that there is a real chance that the team chooses to let him walk in free agency this Spring, but given the injury to Julian Love at safety, and the concussion to Josh Jobe last Sunday, I didn’t want to see Seattle thin out a deep cornerback room.

Woolen has played pretty well the past couple games. He still possesses a physical talent level profile that is incredibly rare in this league, and I get the sense that he is a good locker room fella. I think he has taken this trade speculation noise around him over the past couple months in good stride, and that says something about his character.

He now has an opportunity to really show his net worth in these final nine games. If he continues playing well, if that contributes to Seattle going on a deep playoff run, he will set himself up for a massive payday either here, or somewhere else next Spring. I like those intangibles being a factor for this defense moving forward this year. In fact, I like that a lot.

I like how Woolen is trending lately. I want him to be a part of this thing this year, and maybe even beyond. Through these last two games, I have come more around on Woolen from where I was with him over a month ago. I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do during this second half of the season push.

But I really do love this trade for Rashid Shaheed. This was the right thing for this team to do at the trade deadline. He is a luxury addition to this team that was worth making, and I think Seahawk fans are going to have a lot of fun watching him on Sundays. I am excited about that.

Go Hawks!

As we approached this NFC West battle in Desert on Thursday Night Football, I had a sinking feeling that we would be in for a fiercely fought defensive battle between two divisional rivals with strong defenses in desperate need of getting a win to keep up within a very tough division. The Arizona Cardinals lost a tough fought game against the 49ers, and I felt they’d be very determined to defend their home turf against a Seahawks team coming off of a huge blowout win against the Saints. Additionally. from their perspective, I felt it was likely that they would carry extra motivation in getting the monkey off their back with all the games in a row they’ve lost to Seattle in recent years. When a divisional rival has your number, you mark that home game against them on your calendar with the intention of taking it to them with extra pepper in your hot sauce.

So, I really didn’t feel that, in anyway, this game on TNF would be a gimme for Seattle even though they seem to have the Cardinals number. In fact, heading into the match, I felt that if Seattle was going to pull off their third win in a row, it would probably come with perhaps a 17-13 type of result.

Thursday Night games are typically very weird. Often times, they are very sloppy with slop coming from both teams. If the game is fairly evenly matched, the team that usually win these short week games is the one who commits the lesser about of mistakes, and gets the better play out of their quarterback.

We can lament the INT return fumble that Coby Bryant coughed up and gave the ball back to Kyler Murray and the Cardinals in good field position. We can also pull our hair out of the illegal blocking penalty called on Jaxon Smith Ngijba that took away a late TD from Zach Charbonnet that would have collectively put the game out of reach for the Cardinals, and forced us to settle for a field goal. I think both of these mishaps kept this game more within reach than I would have liked to have seen on the road against a decent Arizona club.

It also chopped my hide quite a bit seeing Ken Walker get drawn into a stupid taunting penalty by a defender that cost us points. It was also infuriating, as the game progressed, seeing him run backwards circles behind the line of scrimmage into tackle for losses. Just bang the bloody thing up towards the line of scrimmage as best as you can, for goodness sake. Not every run will be a success, just don’t turn the flipping thing into a worse play by trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

And perhaps even more infuriating than K9’s needless collection of pirouettes into lost yardage was seeing Riq Woolen continue to draw penalties in coverage and give up explosive passes. After watching Seattle’s defense pretty much handle Murray for three quarters, seeing the plunky little passer purposefully target Woolen when the Cardinal offense went into desperation mode in the fourth and finding plenty of success gave me a full dosage of PTSD from opening weekend.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a piece pondering whether the Seattle Seahawks had a K9 and Riq Woolen problem, and a lot of my concerns went away after a quality win on the road against the Pittsburgh Steelers when K9, in particular, had a great game. After watching this game against the Cardinals, however, my concerns about both players have returned. I think K9 is one of the most schizophrenic runners I have ever watched, fully capable of exciting runs that get you pumped up, and then within the same game, he’ll do things that make you want to see him pulled. With Woolen, I just find his lack of consistency too souring for my taste, especially when Seattle appears to have strong depth behind him.

Okay, these are all the negatives in this game that I have gotten off my chest. I could include a couple offensive play calls from Klint Kubiak that I didn’t love, and a missed field goal from the otherwise sensational night of Jason Meyers, but that really would be nitpicking.

The Seattle Seahawks won this game because they made less mistakes than the Arizona Cardinals did, and they won this game because Sam Darnold was a better QB than Kyler Murray was on Thursday Night. It is that simple.

I thought both teams fought very hard on defense, and both offenses showed out in their moments, but Seattle did what they needed to do better than what Arizona needed to get done. While the game should have been won more handsomely by Seattle in many respects, they did just enough, and they fucked up less. I will take it.

Winning in the NFL is always a good thing, and losing always sucks. Now we get a breather of ten days before Seattle faces yet another tough opponent at home against Tampa Bay.

Here’s some of my more positive takeaways for Seattle heading out of this desert battle. As much as it sucked watching their quality lead evaporate late in the game, there are also some quality silver linings coming out of this one.

Sam Darnold Continues To Shine

I really dig how Darnold has played these first four games of the year for Seattle’s offense. I think he’s shown a lot of command and poise, and I love his timely playmaking abilities when he extends out of the pocket making throws downfield, and out of pressure, at critical junctures. This is how you want to see your QB1 play.

He was also the best player on offense on Thursday night, between both clubs, and I don’t think it was close between him and Murray in terms of QB play. Darnold showed better accuracy, poise under pressure, and he put up better production on significantly less passing attempts than Murray did, and it did this against an equally tough defense.

Make no mistake, Arizona has a very good defense with a much improved defensive line, and their linebackers and safeties are all very good football players. Generally, I thought Darnold boxed very smart against a defensive scheme that can be tricky to pass on. He largely took whatever was there, but he was also savvy enough to recognize when there were opportunities further downfield. His pass to JSN down the sideline with less than thirty seconds to go for a chance to kick a game winner was a big time money throw from any NFL quarterback, and he delivered it on the dot.

The more I watch Sam Darnold play in this offense, the more I feel like he’s a quarterback that Seattle will want to hang onto for the longer haul, and build around. He’s only 28, and there is a reason why he was taken third overall in the NFL draft in 2018. He just feels like an NFL prototypical franchise quarterback, and I genuinely look forward to watching him play.

Elijah Arroyo And AJ Barner Flashed Big Play Potential

On the night, I thought both of Seattle’s tight ends played really good games. AJ Barner had three nice grabs and a beautiful touchdown, and rookie Elijah Arroyo had two impressive grabs for 44 yards.

I know that Barner is a pretty good tight end, but Arroyo is a big target at TE with insanely gifted abilities to get downfield on vertical throws, and explosive catch and run opportunities. When Seattle drafted Arroyo, I got excited because I knew these sort of downfield plays would be coming from him, eventually.

Last night, against a tough Cardinal defense with great safeties, he really flashed, and this was, in my opinion, one of the hidden little gems of the game. As we get further into games this year, I think we are bound to see more high level playmaking from this youngster, and get ready for that fun to take place.

Let us remember that he is still a rookie, and tight end is a position in this a scheme that has a lot on its plate. Once the lights come on for this guy, and he has the pass and run plays in his bones, he has the physical talent to be a superstar tight end in this league right up there with the guy who plays in Arizona and the fella who plays in the Bay Area.

I look forward to seeing Arroyo and Barner continue factoring in as pass catchers in this offense. This was a good sign.

The Seahawks Sacked The Shit Out Of Kyler Murray And Intercepted Him Twice

First off, Chenna Nwosu posted a terrific game against the Cardinals both in terms of a pass rusher and run stopper. That was very timely, too, as Seattle lost their regular base defense speed rusher DeMarcus Lawrence early in the match with a hamstring injury. Chenna’s play spoke a lot for him, but also for the quality depth, in general, that Seattle currently has on their defensive line.

Seattle’s defense dropped Kyler Murray six times in this match, and they picked him off twice. Despite giving up 20 points in the end, I think these stats alone proved how really dominant Seattle’s defense largely was for the night.

If it weren’t for some offensive mishaps late in the fourth quarter that took points off the board and gave Arizona new life, and Murray a chance to make plays with his legs and arm, I think Seattle’s defensive effort would have felt greater. In the end, they did enough against a dangerous quarterback.

I say this also acknowledging that I personally don’t have that much belief in Murray as a quarterback, and have been out on him for a few years now. The main reason why is because, while I see him as a rare bonafide playmaker, I think his tendencies are to play big games early in the season, and then go cold later on after wear and tear takes hold. He’s like a little Bruce Lee video game character through the first eight games of the year, but by midseason, after being hit numerous times by defensive tackles and edge rushers who run like BMWs, he becomes a different player.

But early in the year, Kyler Murray can be a scary ass little fucker to play against, and he is still one of the very best athletes in the league who can threaten to take over games if you allow him to do so. In this game, Seattle did a lot to harass him and keep him largely ineffective until the fourth quarter. This should be celebrated despite the late game collapse in coverage by Woolen and company.

The next time these two teams face each other will be mid November, when Kyler starts to typically turn into his annual second half of the season pumpkin. Really glad that we have Sam Darnold, though.

For the night, Murray had to pass 41 times to collect 200 yards through the air with 2 late scoring TDS and 2 INTs. You tell me if that was a great night for him early in the season when he is known to play his better ball.

By Winning, Seattle Is Awarded A Valuable Mini Bye Week

After dropping a disappointing home opener against the hated San Francisco 49ers, Seattle’s schedule was to play three games in eleven days with two of those games in the road against quality opponents. The Seahawks have now won all three of those games. This is quite a contrast to last year when Seattle dropped three games in a row in the span of ten games.

Scheduling matters in the NFL. It matters especially to the human bodies that play this violent sport. Seattle has sustained itself very well in this stretch, and will have ten days to properly prepare to host a tough Tampa Bay team.

This is going to benefit Seattle. It is going to allow coaches to self scout the team more and make corrections. It will allow these players a chance to rest and heal. It will allow the players and coaches to study the Buccaneers a bit deeper.

This mini bye could allow the John Schneider and the front office an opportunity to bring in other players from outside via trades, or free agency. It feels to me that the New Orleans Saints could be on the verge of selling if they lose in Buffalo this Sunday, and we are probably all expecting that they will. It is worth keeping in mind that Klint Kubiak was their OC last year, and knows their offensive players very well.

Could the long time Seahawk terrorizer Alvin Kamara be had for a mid round pick? Could Chris Olave also be made available?

As I continue to find myself flummoxed about K9’s play, part of me wonders if an older back quality like Kamara would help settle him down. As for Olave, I know that his concussions concern, but the thought of what Sam Darnold could do in a passing attack with JSN, Cooper Kupp, Tory Horton, and Olave entered into the mix entices quite a bit. Could both players be had?

It’s an interesting thought as we approach a point in the season were really bad clubs start eying their rebuilds. For now, however, I suggest that you enjoy this win against the Cardinals, if you are a diehard Seattle Seahawk fan.

And if you are not a diehard Twelve, why on Earth are you even reading this stuff? Seriously.

Go Hawks.