Tag Archives: Julian Love

#SEAvsJAX, Injury report

Hawks still at 80%, but Macdonald should have winning plan vs. Jags

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One of these days, the Seahawks might field a full team – and we’ll see just how powerful they really are. For now, like so many teams around the league, they have to be content playing with about 80% of their top players – their battered secondary and pass rush still not full strength.

That was not quite enough against Tampa Bay last Sunday, but trust Mike Macdonald to have learned from that defensive meltdown (370 passing yards, 38 points allowed). Even if the Hawks are again without Devon Witherspoon and Julian Love, Macdonald likely will put his defense in position against Trevor Lawrence and the Jags in Jacksonville.

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Preseason

‘Our style of football’: Can Kubiak’s offense hit the ground running?

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“It was our style of football” – Sam Darnold after a 268-yard rushing game in a 33-16 win over Kansas City

When Klint Kubiak arrived in New Orleans last year, he created a surprising early-season juggernaut that probably would have continued in similar style if the Saints’ top offensive players had not started dropping like flies.

That surely is one of the things that drew Mike Macdonald to Kubiak, who is from one of the NFL’s legacy coaching trees.

The Saints scored 91 points and ran for 370 yards in the first two games of 2024. He now has brought his versatile scheme and run-first philosophy to Macdonald’s Seahawks – and the preseason returns forecast a similar explosion for Seattle out of the gate in three weeks.

Seattle’s 33-16 win over Kansas City on Friday showed the very best of Kubiak’s offense. The Hawks followed up a 170-yard rushing performance against Las Vegas with 268 yards vs. the Chiefs.

As Sam Darnold said after his Seahawks debut, “It was our style of football.”

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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.”

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State of the team, X's & O's

Predictable problems and historic lack of takeaways are hobbling Hawks

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Before the season, we projected the Seahawks would win nine games. It was fewer than many optimistic fans were picking, but we saw a tough schedule and had big questions about the offensive line and run defense.

After a soft 3-0 start, the Hawks have come back to Earth against better teams and sit at 3-3 largely because their offensive line and run defense have failed them.  

They gave away the game against the Giants with mistakes in every phase, and then they followed that up by making a bunch more mistakes against the 49ers in a game they could have won if they had played it more cleanly.

“Right now, we’re just coming up short,” Mike Macdonald said. “We’re just not doing the things that good football teams do to win football games.”

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Coaches, State of the team

Players: Macdonald and ‘right coaches’ bring ‘urgency’

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Amid the hullabaloo by some overly nostalgic fans about Mike Macdonald’s rearranging of the VMAC, his players seem to get it. They know Pete Carroll’s missing hoop and the temporarily blank walls are a metaphor for a clean slate, a new beginning.

They also know the expectations are much higher now and being delivered in a more defined, exacting way than Carroll and his staff were doing over the last few years.

It’s all as it should be, and the smart ones – players and fans – understand that. The players who don’t won’t be around very long. And that’s as it should be, too.

The core leaders of this defense – Leonard Williams, Uchenna Nwosu and Julian Love – sound bought in.

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Schedule

It’s hard for Hawks to find wins, so final three games are no gimmes

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For all of the Seahawks’ flaws, there apparently is only one NFC team they cannot beat – or at least come close to beating.

Pete Carroll surely would like another chance to face the 49ers, but the only way to do it is to make the playoffs, which will require an unlikely four-game winning streak to end the season — or else some help from other teams losing.

Everyone, especially Carroll, was giddy about Seattle’s last-minute win over the Philadelphia Eagles last Monday – a win that not only ended a four-game slide but boosted the Seahawks’ playoff hopes.

The win over an NFC team gave them a little more pull in the tiebreakers, but they still have to win their final three or get some help from teams playing Minnesota, Los Angeles and/or New Orleans.  

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Contracts, Free agency

After Wagner’s return, Hawks ‘pretty tapped out’ but still have work to do

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After the Seahawks cut Al Woods last week, John Schneider told Seattle Sports 710 “… we needed to create some space to try to get something done.”

And then they got that “something done,” bringing back Bobby Wagner on a deal reportedly worth up to $7 million.

It put the cap on perhaps the most aggressive free agency period we have seen by Schneider and Co., who signed six projected starters – five of them on defense – and paid an aggregate annual average of $8.5 million, the most they have ever spent on outside free agents in an offseason. Most of that is thanks to paying $17 million per year to new star defensive lineman Dre Jones, but all except Evan Brown got more than $3.5 million per year.

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