2. Can Seattle’s offense clean up its two reoccurring issues?
There’s so much to like about what the Seahawks have done on offense this season, from the fact that they’ve scored the second most points in the league this season, a franchise-record total of 470, to the Pro-Bowl play of Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the league’s leading receiver, and quarterback Sam Darnold, to the recent success of the run game, which has produced 334 yards over the last two games.
But for all the Seahawks have done well on offense, there are two things they’d like to clean up heading into the playoffs—their propensity to turn the ball over too frequently, and their recent issues with slow starts. Neither has frequently cost the Seahawks, as is evident in their 13-3 record and league-best plus-181 point differential, but against the quality of opponents the Seahawks will be facing, starting with Saturday’s game, the know they need to be better.
Even if the Seahawks are usually winning in spite of their turnovers, they are not happy with their total of 28 this season, which is the second highest in the NFL.
“It’s not a number that we’re proud of at all, something that we’re always preaching, things that we’ve got to improve on,” said offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak. “Obviously, we want to maximize our possessions and we’re giving away points when we give the ball away. So, whether it’s decision making, throwing the ball, holding onto it, then protecting our quarterback so that we’re not getting sack fumbles. There’s a lot of things that go on there, but something’s got to get better if we want to be a championship team.”
As the person handling the ball every play and making the most significant decisions, Darnold has been involved in most of Seattle’s turnovers this year—that’s just the nature of the position—and while plenty of those were the result of things partially or entirely out of his control on a play, he knows that as the team’s quarterback, ball security has to start with him.
“Turnovers, they’re unacceptable,” Darnold said. “No matter how they come. Obviously tipped balls, some things like that, you would like to say, ‘Oh man, that’s out of my control,’ but did I need to be in that position for that guy to tip that ball? So, I think that all turnovers are all plays where we can look at ourselves and be like, ‘Oh, man, I could have done better on that play.’ Which is almost every play if you think about it, you can always be a little bit better every single play. This team can continue to get better, and I look at that as me personally. That’s the best part about this team is we’ve got a ton of guys that look in the mirror first and foremost, like, ‘How can I be better for the team?’ And if we all have that mindset, which we do have, we’re just going to continue to get better and stack good days and stack wins.”
As for the slow starts, that hasn’t been a season-long problem but one that has come up in recent games, including last week’s win in which the Seahawks were held to a single field goal in the first half. The good news is that, with the exception of a close, low-scoring win over the Colts, the Seahawks have broken out with big second halves, but like the turnovers, the Seahawks know the need to be better early in games against top opponents.
“We can come out faster,” Darnold said. “At the end of the day, we have a plan of how we want to come out and attack a team and attack the game, and I think we’ve just got to do a better job of executing, and that’s really it… There’s always stuff that we can improve on. We’re always focusing on getting in and out of the huddle, every practice, every game. I’m making sure the guys are in there, we’re getting out, we’re getting the personnels in and out. So, yeah, just having a smooth operation, it can always be better even if we’re snapping the ball at 20 seconds on the play clock, we can always be have a better operation.”