Seattle Seahawks: Takeaways vs Minnesota

Chris Phillips   |  

Sep 28, 2021

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That didn’t go as planned. Minnesota shut out the Seattle Seahawks in the second half. It’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg in our takeaways. Let’s rip this band-aid off and dive into the pain.

“Boy. That escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast.” While that quote is from Ron Burgundy in Anchorman, it can easily apply to the Seattle Seahawks game against Minnesota. At halftime, it was only a four-point game, and it ended up as a two-score loss.

Sunday was easily the biggest loss of the year. The most brutal? Well, that’s debatable. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. Other times, they get way worse before getting better. Let’s hope for the former over the latter. Believe it or not, there are some positives to take away from this game. Which means brighter days are ahead.

D.K. Metcalf

Well, look who came back for a big game. The first two weeks saw D.K. Metcalf as less than what he’s capable of being. Turns out, it just took two weeks’ worth of Tyler Lockett roasting teams to forget about Metcalf. He turned nine targets into six catches for 107-yards and one touchdown, or about one-third of Russell Wilson’s passing yards on the day.

The next step is making both Lockett and Metcalf perform at high levels in the same game. Next week in San Francisco would be as good a time as any.

Offensive Line

Before the season, there were plenty of questions about the “improved” offensive line. The biggest being, will it actually be better? On that question, the jury is still out. On Sunday, the offensive line played better, only allowing a pair of sacks.

The O-line cleared the way for Seattle Seahawks running backs to average 5.9-yards per carry. Chris Carson was the top ground-gainer with 80-yards and a touchdown on 12 carries. Subsequently, if the offensive line plays like this again, the Seattle Seahawks offense will be more potent.

Defense

This Seattle Seahawks defense needs to a fix and in a hurry. Unfortunately, GM John Schneider doesn’t have a lot of draft capital to work with. That is, if he doesn’t mortgage more of the future to fix the present. There are just so many areas they need to address. Let’s do a speed round:

• Pass Rush – only generating one sack in a game is terrible. Paging Carlos Dunlap. You’re supposed to be the leader of this group, and it’s not going well.
• Secondary – Jamal Adams, you got your money. Now, validate your contract. Your play needs to be better.
• Speaking of play needing to be better, hello D.J. Reed and Tre Flowers. Time for you to step up.
• Allowing Minnesota to convert nine of 14 third downs is not winning football.

Second Half Offense

Shane Waldron, please report to the principal’s office. The Seattle Seahawks brought you in to smooth out the offense. Against Minnesota, that didn’t happen. Getting shut out by this average Minnesota defense is not acceptable.

They get paid to do their job, but the Vikings’ defense isn’t anywhere close to being like the Los Angeles Rams or Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This team has too much talent to go an entire half without scoring. Hopefully, this was a one-off game.

There are more takeaways from this game we can discuss. Subsequently, now that we’ve talked about some of them, maybe the healing process can begin. For now, it’s onto San Francisco.