Seattle lost its quarterback on the opening drive and still beat New England, and our model keeps the Seahawks in the playoff field
Updated
Sam Darnold was sacked on Seattle's first drive of the season, limped off with a hip injury, and did not come back. Drew Lock played the rest of the night, went 16 of 22 for 187 yards and a touchdown, and the Seahawks beat New England 13-10 on the strength of a defense that gave up ten points, intercepted Drake Maye three times and did not let the game get away. When we re-ran the season with that result in the books the Seahawks came out right where they were in July, at 11-6 with an 88 percent playoff chance. The number did not move. What it rests on shifted, and the quarterback situation is the reason to walk through it.
In the summer our model liked Seattle as a balanced roster with an offense and a defense that both graded in the top six. After Week 1 the defense carries a bit more of the weight. Our projection has the Seahawks allowing 313 points, eighth in the league, and leading the entire NFL with more than 16 interceptions. That last number is the story of the New England game. Sam Darnold's offense did not produce much, and it did not need to, because the back end kept giving it the ball. Nehemiah Pritchett, Josh Jobe and Julian Love each picked off Maye on Thursday night, Ty Okada projects for five interceptions on the season, the front gets home with DeMarcus Lawrence, Uchenna Nwosu and Byron Murphy II all projecting for ten sacks or more, and a defense that turns opponents over at that rate wins ugly games by design.
The offense is the reason the ceiling is not higher, and Darnold's hip is the reason to watch it. The team ruled out a fracture and the early word is that he misses some time rather than a lot of it, and our model still projects him as the starter for the bulk of the season at 3,911 yards and 25 touchdowns behind a passer rating near 100, efficient and unspectacular. The unit as a whole now projects for 374 points, 14th in the league, down from a summer figure that had Seattle among the top scoring teams. Lock is a capable fill-in for a few weeks. He is not the reason this team is a contender. Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who caught eight for 122 and a score against the Patriots with a backup throwing to him, climbs to 91 catches for 1,245 yards and seven touchdowns, a genuine number one having a genuine number one season. Cooper Kupp settles at 75 catches and 946 yards, a step down from the 89 and 1,053 we had for him in July. AJ Barner remains a red zone weapon at six touchdowns. The pieces are good. The ground game is the soft spot, with Jadarian Price projecting for 761 yards on 234 carries, which is a lot of work for not a lot of yardage.
That is the honest tension on this roster. A defense that leads the league in takeaways will keep Seattle in every game. An offense that grades middle of the pack will not put many of those games away early, and when we ran the rest of the season the Seahawks won a lot of one-score games, which is a fine way to reach eleven wins and a nervous way to live. Thirteen to ten against the Patriots was the template. It will not be the last one.
The division changed shape in Week 1 and not in Seattle's favor. The Rams are still the best team in football by our numbers even after losing at home, but they now have a loss, and the team that handed it to them, San Francisco, has climbed from seven wins to nine in our projection. The NFC West that looked like the Rams and then everyone else now looks like the Rams, then Seattle and San Francisco fighting for the same wild card real estate. When we ran the season the Seahawks finished ahead of the 49ers more often than not, but the gap is narrower than it was, and the two head-to-head games will decide it.
The market opened Seattle at ten and a half wins, and our model sat just above it in July. It still does. Eleven wins is a fraction over the line, well within the range where the model and the market are looking at the same team, and it rests on a defense that just proved it can win a game by itself. There is no flag here and no bold disagreement. Seattle is a very good team that the market correctly priced as a very good team.
The path to more is the offense finding a second gear. If Darnold plays to his best form rather than merely managing games, and Kupp gives Smith-Njigba the running mate we thought he would be in the summer, the offense climbs back toward the top ten and Seattle is a twelve-win team pushing the Rams for the division. The path to less is Darnold missing more time than the early reports suggest, or the turnover luck normalizing. A defense that intercepts 16 passes is partly good and partly fortunate, and if the picks dry up while Lock is under center the one-score games start going the other way.
So the read on Seattle after one week is a contender that won its opener the hardest way possible and did not lose any ground doing it. Our model sees the same 11-6 team it saw in July, built now a little more on the defense and a little less on the offense, still the second-best team in its division and still a near-lock for the playoffs. The Rams games define the ceiling. The takeaways define the floor. Both look solid.
