Jim Moore: Gloomy about the Seahawks loss? Don’t worry, it’s still a good year to be so-so
At the beginning of the season, Seahawks’ fans would have been thrilled if you told them their favorite team would be 6-5 after 11 games. But expectations rose after a 6-3 start.
Sunday’s 40-34 overtime loss to the Raiders doused optimism and made the Seahawks look like an ordinary team, maybe even worse than that. Good luck trying to figure anything out in the NFL.
Early on the Seahawks had a historically bad run defense. Then they shored that up for a month or so only to appear awful again in the last two weeks, allowing 444 rushing yards, including a record-setting 239 to the Raiders’ Josh Jacobs, capped by his 86-yard game-winning jolt in OT.
The vociferous 12’s have received a lot of credit over the years for helping the Seahawks by making it hard for opponents to operate their offense, but Sunday one of them has to take some of the blame for the loss. In Peter King’s “Football Morning in America” column at NBCSports.com, Jacobs said a sign brought to Lumen Field by a 12 motivated him to do considerable damage.
“3-7, not bad for a team with no talent”
Jacobs saw the sign and thanked the fan after the game.
In reality, the Raiders are talented and have simply underachieved this year after making the playoffs last year. I’m guessing their fans in Las Vegas are trying to figure out who the heck they are, just as everyone is in Seattle now that the Seahawks have dropped two in a row.
Should we maintain hope that the Seahawks can still make the playoffs and continue their storybook run? Or should we dial it down and view them as a pretty darn good team for what they are in a retooling season?
What the heck, I think I’ll hang in there for several reasons, well, a couple anyway. They play four of their next six games at home and should be favored in four of the last six. A 10-7 record is still a fair projection for this team while 9-8 appears to be the worst-case scenario, for glass-half-empties anyway, and 11-6 for glass half-fullers.
If they can get to 10 wins, they’ll be a wild-card team. And there’s still an outside chance at winning the division, though it’s becoming more apparent by the week that the 49ers have the best team in the division. Keep in mind, however, that the 49ers are 7-4 and just one game ahead of the Seahawks, and I know that they haven’t allowed a point in the second half in their last five games, but they might lose this week to Miami.
Meanwhile the Seahawks go to L.A. to face the Rams, which is usually a difficult challenge, but they may face a team without Matthew Stafford and certainly without Cooper Kupp. Then they return home to play the 4-7 Panthers, setting up the possibility that they could be 8-5 when they host the 49ers in a Thursday night game on Dec. 15th.
Here’s the other thing - it’s not as if the Seahawks are trying to track down juggernauts in the playoff race. Yes, they’re on the outside looking in right now, but just ahead of them are the 7-4 Giants, a team they’ve already beaten, and the 7-5 Commanders. And the Seahawks are pretty much in a class of their own as playoff pursuers - the Falcons at 5-7 are the closest team record-wise.
Do the Seahawks need to find out what’s going on with their defense, not only against the run but with their pass rush? Of course. Then again, don’t you think Giants and Commanders fans are talking about their teams’ shortcomings too? We’re talking about middling contenders in a conference that features Philadelphia, Minnesota, Dallas and San Francisco at the top. In the NFC, it’s a great year to be so-so because so-so keeps you in the playoff hunt.
If the Seahawks lose to the Rams this week, maybe at that point we can start talking about long-term stuff and hoping they lose out for a better first-round draft pick since they’re not going to make the playoffs anyway. But they’re favored by five points over the Rams and will no doubt be favored by a similar number against Carolina next week.
So for as bad as a loss to the Raiders was, it’s not time to give up on the Seahawks just yet.
Jim Moore has covered Washington’s sports scene from every angle for multiple news outlets. You can find him on Twitter @cougsgo, and on KJR-FM 93.3, where he co-hosts a sports talk show from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays.
