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Week 15: Green Bay

Are Hawks among top NFC teams? We’re about to find out

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Mike Macdonald has been saying the Seahawks are in playoff mode since their Week 10 bye. The attitude, embodied by a suddenly dominant defense, has led to four straight wins.

The latest was a big division victory over Arizona that enabled the Hawks to stay in charge of their destiny.

Their next task is to prove they are among the top four teams in the NFC by beating Green Bay in prime time Sunday. The Packers’ only losses are to Detroit (twice), Philadelphia and Minnesota – who are a combined 34-5.

If the Hawks can beat the Pack, next up is Minnesota. If the Hawks can win both of those games, they would all but lock up a playoff spot – with a wild card being viable.

Continue reading Are Hawks among top NFC teams? We’re about to find out →
CHAWK LINES, Week 15: Green Bay

Hawks renew Packers rivalry

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The 49ers were unable to knock off the Rams, who are hot on Seattle’s heels for the division title – which seems destined to come down to their Week 18 game.

The Seahawks (8-5) face the Packers (9-4) in a big Sunday night matchup, the first of two huge games against NFC North playoff teams. Both Green Bay and Minnesota (11-2) have excellent teams (top seven by EPA), and these games will show just how serious of a postseason contender the Seahawks might be.

The Seahawks and Packers have a rivalry that dates back to 1999, when Mike Holmgren was traded from Green Bay to Seattle. But they have not played for three years, so most of the faces in this rivalry are new.

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Coaches, X's & O's

If Grubb can’t turn offense around, will he be one & done?

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When Mike Macdonald hired Ryan Grubb to be his offensive coordinator back in February, we looked back through modern NFL history to find success stories from guys who had made the jump from college coordinator to NFL play caller. There were few to find.

In fact, a notable failure involved another former Husky, Steve Sarkisian, who joined Dan Quinn in Atlanta and promptly took that once vaunted offense backward.

We wrote then:

Grubb’s success or failure will come down to whether he can maximize his players. The biggest challenge for most play callers – certainly for Seattle’s last few – has been adjusting within games to what defenses are stopping. Grubb and company faced an NFL-style defense – one put together by Macdonald, in fact – in the title game against Michigan, and they had major trouble against it. Grubb will need to show he can adjust when his script fails. … It won’t be a shock if Grubb ultimately doesn’t have the answers.”

Well, Grubb has not proven to have the answers in his rookie season. And, if his unit continues to fail, it would not be a surprise if Macdonald followed Pete Carroll’s path and fired his OC after his first year as Seattle’s coach.

Continue reading If Grubb can’t turn offense around, will he be one & done? →
Week 12: Arizona, X's & O's

Defense is now ‘locked in,’ but can Hawks find key to offense, too?

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Mike Macdonald finally has his defense playing the way we all expected. After three pretty dominant weeks against NFC West foes, including a 16-6 clampdown of Arizona in Week 12, that unit looks capable of holding down most offenses the rest of the way and helping the Seahawks make the playoffs.

But the offense is going to have to start doing its part.

Before we get to the offense’s problems, let’s start with the defense’s turnaround, which hopefully has not come too late.

Continue reading Defense is now ‘locked in,’ but can Hawks find key to offense, too? →
Coaches, Week 11: At San Francisco

Win vs. 49ers pauses deserved criticisms — Can Hawks end them for good?

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John Schneider, Mike Macdonald and Geno Smith had been under fire for several weeks – dating back to the bad loss to the Giants that dropped the Seahawks to 3-2.

Since then, they had fallen to 4-5 – with the defense getting gashed game after game and Smith and the offense making tons of self-defeating mistakes.

The reputations of Schneider, Macdonald and Smith were waning along with their season as they prepared to play the 49ers, who had beaten them six straight times (counting playoffs). But Macdonald’s recalibrated defense and Smith’s rediscovered comeback mojo gave the desperate Hawks a much-needed 20-17 upset win, putting the Seahawks back in the NFC West race.

Back at .500 with a streak-busting win, the Hawks now need to take that confidence into a battle for first place against Arizona in Week 12.

The question is whether this big win over the 49ers foretells more big wins to come in a season that still presents a lot of tough challenges – the ninth-toughest remaining slate.

Let’s look at the role of each of the three central figures in how this team sank to 4-5 and then finally beat the 49ers.

Continue reading Win vs. 49ers pauses deserved criticisms — Can Hawks end them for good? →
Week 9: L.A. Rams

All the ways the Hawks turned a blowout win into an overtime loss

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If and when the Seahawks decide to stop beating themselves, they are going to be hard to beat.

The question is whether they will indeed be able to stop giving games away to their opponents.

They should have beaten the Rams about 30-13 on Sunday, but instead they lost in overtime. Some great performances by the defense, Jaxon Njigba-Smith and Cody White went to waste because of the Three Stooges Act by Geno Smith, Connor Williams and Mike Jerrell.

Continue reading All the ways the Hawks turned a blowout win into an overtime loss →
Coaches, X's & O's

Time to stop the ‘independent contracting’ on defense

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Mike Macdonald’s Seahawks are 4-4 largely because the defense has been struggling with the same issues that plagued Pete Carroll’s unit over the past few years: poor tackling and terrible run defense.

It has led to a lot of speculation about why Macdonald has not yet fixed the problems he was expected to resolve by this point in his first season.

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This week, we got some answers and Macdonald explained how he is going to try to finally fix these chronic flaws that have carried over from one coaching program to another. If he does what he says he is going to do, the defenders should be able to play faster and more aggressively, ideally helping them cause havoc and create turnovers.

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State of the team, Week 8: Buffalo, X's & O's

Hawks have given away three games — and that’s on Macdonald & the lines

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In the wake of the most embarrassing Seattle performance since the Seahawks were demolished by Baltimore last season, Brock Huard posited an interesting poll:

Our take: There is a lot of blame to go around.

The Seahawks are weak at the interior line positions on both sides and are getting pushed around by good teams. That’s John Schneider’s fault.

The Hawks have given away three games with poor prep and mental mistakes. That’s Mike Macdonald’s fault.

Continue reading Hawks have given away three games — and that’s on Macdonald & the lines →
State of the team

Defense is nearly whole, but Metcalf is injured, so it’s time to finally unlock JSN

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One of these days, the Seahawks will be whole – or at least we can dream they will be.

For now, we have to be content with the fact that we might finally see the defense as complete as it has been in weeks. It will still be at a disadvantage against the Buffalo Bills this week, because the defense is breaking in a new middle linebacker and the secondary is meshing a new combination yet again.

Meanwhile, the offense is likely to be without DK Metcalf — and that means Ryan Grubb needs to figure out once and for all how to get the most out of Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

Continue reading Defense is nearly whole, but Metcalf is injured, so it’s time to finally unlock JSN →
Week 7: At Atlanta

Have Hawks learned enough about selves to start a new streak?

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Mike Macdonald’s Seahawks finally got themselves a quality win – and they needed it big time.

With a surprising 34-14 blowout of a red-hot Falcons team that had won three straight, the Hawks avoided the dreaded four-game losing skid that might have been the death knell for any playoff hopes (just one team out of 15 in Seattle history had overcome a streak of four or more losses to make the playoffs).

And now the question is whether they can sustain it.

“It was inevitable that (adversity) would happen, so you want to see a rebound,” Julian Love said. “We’re still learning how to win as a team. … We’re still building; we’re still learning who we are as a team.”

Continue reading Have Hawks learned enough about selves to start a new streak? →