11-20-23 Bo Crouch ~ Host Football Talk
With another 2nd half letdown the Seahawks drop both games to the Rams this Season in similar fashion. The Rams always play them tough but have given them more problems than expected this season.
In one of the most penalized games all season they combined for 222 yards in accepted penalties. 130 of which belonged to the most penalized team in the league through 11 weeks in the Seahawks. it was also another day in struggles on 3rd down. after going 3 for 3 to start the game they slowed down to a 2 for 12 pace that stiffled drives and had Seattle settling for field goals instead of Touchdowns despite a relitively efficient day from Geno Smith that left the game for a few series with an apperant elbow injury finishing 22 of 34 for 233 yards and a touchdown.
Drew lock comes in late and struggled much to the chagrin of the Geno haters that have been calling for him to get benched for Lock since week one. He goes 2 for 6 for 3 yards and a pick. Now some of these struggles can obviously be attributed to limited first team reps and a lack of feel and chemistry from that limitation. That being said when your number is called you need to maximize your oppotunity which obviously isn't what happened in this scenario.
Geno makes it back into the game for a late drive where he was able to get down the field and set the Hawks up for a game winning field goal. The would've been the third 50 plus yarder of the day for Myers who is having a great season and was the reigning NFC special teams player of the week going 5/5 the week before and was already 3/3 on the day. At 55 yards he was really trying to drive the ball and just pushed it wide right in only his fifth miss of the season on 28 attempts (82.1%)
Although you could blame this loss on a missed kick and although technically accurate there was a lot that went wrong long before they lined up with seven seconds on the clock and there was plenty of blame to go around. We already outlined the shortcomings on offense but the defense had a major impact as well. If you listed to this weeks HawkTalk show I laid out some of the concerns about not being able to stop short in breaking and seam routs and unfortunately Stafford and company had been watching and really targeted inside the numbers and screen types of passes where you can create mismatches in coverage or use the aggressive nature of Seattles corners against them. Even though the D was able to hold Stafford under 200 yards the defensive penalties allowed the Rams to extend drives especially in the 4th quarter leading to their go ahead touchdown that ultimatley became the difference despite the missed 2 point conversion.
As the Hawks look at the 49ers on a short week they have some things they need to improve on rapidly paired with the hope that Geno is good to go on Thanksgiving day
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