Seattle is 3-1 with Jaxon Smith-Njigba at 481 yards and six touchdowns, and our model has the Seahawks at ten wins with San Francisco coming to town
Updated
Seattle beat the Chargers 30-23 at home and sits at 3-1, a game behind San Francisco in the NFC West and a game ahead of the Rams. That is the position our model expected the Seahawks to be in at this point in the season, even if it expected the teams above and below them to be reversed. When we ran the rest of the season Seattle came out at 10-7 with a 58 percent playoff chance, down a touch from 10.3 wins and 70 percent after Week 3. The small slide is about the neighborhood, not the team. The 49ers won again, the Rams won in Philadelphia, and a ten-win Seahawks team now has two division rivals projected ahead of or level with it.
The passing game is the reason to watch and the reason for the hedge. Jaxon Smith-Njigba has 32 catches for 481 yards and six touchdowns through four games and projects for 116 catches, 1,607 yards and twelve scores, which would be a career year on every line. The quarterback room is the hedge. Sam Darnold has started three of the four games and is 45 of 69 for 560 yards, five touchdowns and three interceptions. Drew Lock started the other one and has gone 35 of 48 for 422 yards and four touchdowns without an interception, a 127 rating in relief. Our model projects Darnold for 3,528 yards and 22 touchdowns and Lock for another 541 yards, which is the model telling you it expects more than one start from the backup. Cooper Kupp projects for 57 catches, AJ Barner for 49, and the offense projects for 375 points, 14th in the league.
The running game has found a lead back the summer preview did not have. Emanuel Wilson has 190 yards on 53 carries and his projection has more than doubled in a week, from 356 yards to 794, after Jadarian Price went to injured reserve with a chest injury and Zach Charbonnet remained on the physically unable to perform list. George Holani is the change-of-pace back at 251 projected yards. It is not a ground game that scares anyone. It has been enough to keep the offense balanced, and the Chargers game was the proof.
The defense has been the better half all season, and the numbers say so. Seattle projects to allow 325 points, sixth in the league, and leads the league in projected interceptions at nearly 17. Ty Okada and Julian Love project for four picks each, though Love is out this week with a hamstring injury. Byron Murphy II leads the line at nearly nine projected sacks, Uchenna Nwosu projects for eight and a half, and DeMarcus Lawrence for seven and a half, though Lawrence is out with a quad injury. Ernest Jones projects for 108 tackles. The team projects for nearly 43 sacks. The Washington loss in Week 3, 33 points allowed with the Commanders playing a backup quarterback, is still the game the model has not fully forgiven, and the Chargers scoring 23 did not help.
The division is a three-team race in a way it has not been for years. San Francisco is 4-0 and projects for ten wins. The Rams are 2-2 and project for 13, still the title favorite. Seattle is a game back of the 49ers with the head-to-head at home this Sunday. When we ran the rest of the season Seattle won the NFC West in a minority of simulated years and reached the playoffs as a wild card more often than as the division winner, and the difference between those two outcomes is Sunday. A win puts the Seahawks level with the 49ers at 4-1 with the tiebreaker. A loss leaves them two games back with the Rams closing.
The next month is where the projection is earned. San Francisco at home at 64 percent, a trip to Denver at 60, Kansas City at home at 52, Chicago at home at 50, and Arizona at home at 76. When we ran that stretch Seattle went 3-2 more often than anything else, and the model gives the Seahawks the edge in all five, which is a run it gives to very few teams. A 6-3 record entering November would push the projection toward eleven. The 49ers game is the one that sets the direction.
The player lines in this run are mostly about the quarterback room and the backfield. Darnold's projection dropped from 3,770 yards and a 97 rating to 3,528 and 94.6, which is the model expecting him to miss time or share it, while Lock's line held near 540 yards and a 124 rating in relief. Smith-Njigba's projection slipped from 123 catches to 116 and from 1,709 yards to 1,607, still the highest yardage projection of any receiver outside New Orleans. Kupp dropped from 62 catches to 57. Emanuel Wilson's rushing projection went from 356 yards to 794, the largest single-week jump of any running back in the league, and Holani's climbed from 148 to 251. On defense, Murphy's sack projection rose from 7.8 to 8.8, Nwosu's from 7.2 to 8.5, and Ernest Jones' tackle projection fell from 123 to 108 while his interception line rose from under one to nearly two. The number to watch is the quarterback split. If Darnold starts all 13 remaining games, the ten-win projection is conservative. The model is not assuming that.
The matchup record has been clean. We gave Seattle 66 percent against New England and the Seahawks won, 72 in Arizona and they won by 24, 90 in Washington and they lost by two, 60 against the Chargers and they won by seven. Three wins from about two and nine-tenths expected is right on the projection, and the one miss was the game the model was most sure about. The market opened Seattle at ten and a half wins. We sat a win over it in July, on it after Week 1, and half a win under it now. The gap is the quarterback. If Darnold is the starter for the rest of the year and plays like the version that beat the Chargers, ten wins is a floor. If the room keeps rotating, it is the number.
