Seahawks defenders blame themselves, with good reason, after malfunctioning in 27-23 loss
Amid the silence of the locker room, their words were clear. They were the opposite of their play.
Direct. Impassioned. Effective.
“I just know that we are at a crossroads right now. We need to get it together,” veteran defensive lineman Quinton Jefferson said.
“We get paid to play defense. So we need to do that.”
“They came in there, and it felt like they just did whatever they wanted to do, which is unacceptable,” linebacker Uchenna Nwosu said. “They were throwing the ball, whatever. They were running the ball, whatever.”
Pro Bowl safety Quandre Diggs said his new Seahawks defense that has changed from a 4-3 to a 3-4 has to be tougher, more physical. He got a roughing-the-passer penalty against Atlanta’s Marcus Mariota Sunday.
There were more pointed comments than plays made by Seattle’s defense Sunday. It malfunctioned again in the team’s second loss in seven days, 27-23 to the previously winless Falcons.
“It was the lack of communication and focusing on our own job,” rookie cornerback Coby Bryant said.
“We can’t do other people’s jobs. We have to do our one percent and do our jobs.”
The defense wasted the most completions (32) and passing attempts of Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith’s 10-year career. It wasted 420 yards by a Seattle offense that entered Sunday having not scored in six quarters. It had 10 by the first quarter Sunday. It had 17 by halftime, 23 before the end of the third quarter.
And it wasn’t enough.
“We beat ourselves today, honestly,” Nwosu said.
Mariota and the Falcons passed for 183 yards on their first eight completions of the game. They targeted starting cornerback Michael Jackson with tight end Kyle Pitts repeatedly. Pitts finished with five catches for 87 yards.
Atlanta also sent converted wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson at Seattle’s 25th-ranked run defense for most of the second half. He romped for a career-high 141 yards on 17 carries. He had 107 yards on 10 carries after halftime.
Patterson’s runs of 40 and 18 yards after the Seahawks had taken a 23-20 lead late in the third quarter led to what became Atlanta’s winning points.
“We’ve got to get a stop,” said Jefferson, who started at right defensive end for Shelby Harris (away for a family matter) and had two tackles, a sack, a tackle for loss and a quarterback hit. “There were those two plays...you can’t give up explosives. Explosives kill you.
“We had them on their side of the field, so we have to keep them down there and give our offense the ball back. We have to get off of the field, find a way.”
Nwosu has been the best player on a bad defense so far this season for the Seahawks (1-2). Yet he took responsibility for giving away Seattle’s last lead Sunday.
One play after the Seahawks took that 23-20 lead late in third quarter — after confusion among players and coach Pete Carroll changing his mind on going for it on fourth and 2 — Patterson showed why that decision was dubious. The former wide receiver took a hand-off off left tackle and smashed through Seattle’s defense for 40 yards.
Nwosu said he was guessing and playing a Mariota bootleg play outside there, and that he blew the run fit and responsibility.
“They ran like a Y stretch and they cut it back. Me, I was playing the boot thing and they were trying something, and they gashed the ball for I think it was like 45 or 50 yards,” Nwosu said.
“It’s little things like that that we have to clean up. I take full responsibility for that because if that doesn’t happen then they have to drive the length of the field and it’s tougher to score, and I just made it easier. That is a play on me that I just have to take one and go in there and correct.
“And it can’t happen again.”
Yet it keeps happening.
“Do your job longer,” Jefferson said. “That’s what it was.
“They were like, ‘We are going to run this stretch because we know that at some point somebody is going to make a mistake.’ And it happened.
“We have to be disciplined.”
Seahawks’ run fits still an issue
Run fits — that is, each defender being in his assigned place against running plays — again was the main problem. Guys are freelancing, chasing plays, rather than playing their own responsibility.
Darrell Taylor, the outside linebacker opposite Nwosu, whom Seattle’s new defense is supposed to benefit most, remains almost invisible for most of games. Two, three steps after snaps he’s out of plays, either blocked or out of position. Taylor did have a sack Sunday, when Atlanta let him come in wide and free unblocked off the left edge until former University of Washington center Kaleb McGary peeled back late to try to keep Taylor from Mariota.
That came deep into the third quarter. It was Taylor’s first tackle or statistic of the game.
Safety Josh Jones, in his second start at strong safety since Jamal Adams had what is likely season-ending surgery to repair a torn quadriceps, missed multiple tackles, on runs and after Falcons receptions.
The Seahawks are allowing an average of 397 yards per game, 157 of that on the ground.
Asked how he feels about how the defense through three games, Jones said: “How do you think?
“We have to do better. That’s what it is. Extremely disappointing. It’s not how we wanted to start the season off.”
Pete Carroll’s new defensive scheme
This offseason, Coach Pete Carroll changed from the defense he’s been running since the 1970s, a 4-3 with cover-three zone in the back, to a more varied 3-4, featuring speed, blitzes and multiple coverages and looks that are supposed to confuse quarterbacks.
Instead, it’s the Seahawks who look confused.
“It’s newness,” Carroll said. “We have to clean things up and progress faster. There’s no time. We have to get better now.
“We just have to just make sure that we’re more accurate and more precise about the fits and the running game and then continue to work into the pressure situations. ...
“We just need to get better. We can see it. We know the answers. We can give them answers to the test, but we have to execute better.”
Carroll then realized that sounded like a coach casting blame on his players.
He interrupted the next question and said: “I’m not just putting that on the players. The coaches, we all have to do it. Me, too.
“We all have to do a better job and contribute to clean this thing up.”
This story was originally published September 25, 2022 at 7:28 PM with the headline "Seahawks defenders blame themselves, with good reason, after malfunctioning in 27-23 loss."
