For one of the greatest secondaries of all time, the Seattle Seahawks’ Legion of Boom tends to let opposing passing games prosper in the clutch more often than seems reasonable.
Nick Foles, Aaron Rodgers, Andy Dalton, Cam Newton and now Carson Palmer have all engineered fourth-quarter comebacks en route to victory against the Seahawks this year. Matthew Stafford would have been on that list too if not for a costly Calvin Johnson fumble in the dying seconds of week four.
The Seahawks have led in the fourth quarter of every game they’ve played this season. There are very plausible worlds in which they are 10-0 right now, the lone undefeated team alongside their Super Bowl conqueror. They could also, however, quite easily be 2-7, having squeaked to victories against Detroit and Dallas.
Instead, they find themselves towards the lesser end of the spectrum of those two extremes, sitting at a mediocre 4-5, three games behind the Cardinals in the NFC West, and two games behind the Packers and Falcons for an NFC wild card.
The Seahawks most obvious deficiencies have been on offence. The offensive line has had the structural composition of Swiss cheese and the fortitude of fairy floss, giving up the second most sacks in the league.
Seattle is 21st in the league in third down conversion rate and 26th in passing offence. Jimmy Graham has been a colossal disappointment, and chose a bad time to have the worst game of his career, which is how Pro Football Focus graded his performance against Arizona.
But Seattle’s problem hasn’t been its offence. The rushing attack is still strong, sixth in the league for yards per rush, and they’ve only had 11 turnovers in nine games. The offence entered the week at 15th in offensive DVOA, a middling but respectable mark. The Hawks have an elite special teams too, rating fourth in DVOA.
Seattle has long been defined by its historically excellent defensive unit. Previous incarnations of this defence would have been more than enough to prop up a middle of the road offence and terrific special teams. But the 2015 iteration has been found lacking, often at the most damaging of times.
The Legion of Boom has been blown up in 2015 more times than ever before. After ranking fifth, first and third in passer rating against the past three seasons, the Seahawks have fallen to 13th in that metric this year.
Cary Williams has been a noticeable weak link, picked on by opposition quarterbacks on a weekly basis. The bigger concern is that the stalwart Boom members have lost their aura of invincibility. Richard Sherman is beatable nowadays, with his horrible misread leading to a Michael Floyd touchdown on third and 14 in the second quarter.
It’s been obscured by his brilliant game-saving forced fumble against the Lions, but Kam Chancellor has been rusty since returning, memorably getting torched by the Bengals in week five.
Carson Palmer attempted 18 throws over 10 yards on Sunday night and converted 14 of them. Seattle gave up touchdown passes of 35, 27 and 14 yards. The Cardinals offence turned the ball over three times against the Seahawks and still managed to score 39 points. If the aura of Seattle’s vaunted defence and home-field advantage was already fading, Sunday night was the confirmation of its demise.
The Seahawks’ secondary used to be the single most compelling unit to watch in football. They made chaos and violence synonymous with beauty, playing with a swagger as infectious as it was justified. Through 10 weeks, that swagger is dead.
Extra-terrestrial reads on passes, intimidating physicality and breathtaking athleticism in the secondary have given way to confusion, indecision and miscommunication. Once the team’s ironclad backbone, the secondary has become a mutated form of Eli Manning – still good, and definitely above average, but untrustworthy and prone to misguided bouts of fancy.
All is not lost. If you remove Andre Ellington’s 48-yard run to end the game, the Seahawks held Arizona’s ninth-ranked rushing offence to under 2.5 yards per carry. Stopping the run has been a Seattle strength all season – they rank fifth in the league for fewest rushing yards against per attempt.
The pass rush is still ferocious, with Cliff Avril and Michael Bennett forming one of the most formidable quarterback harassment bureaus in the league. Avril, Bennett, Bobby Wagner and KJ Wright were in Palmer’s face all night Sunday, keeping Seattle in the game with their pressure and ability to force turnovers.
The offence is too talented not to improve. As Marshawn Lynch gets healthier and all-world talent additions Jimmy Graham and Tyler Lockett get more familiar with the offence, the Seahawks should approach being a top 10 offence again, which they’ve been for the past three seasons.
The bad news is that they’ve only got seven weeks left to figure everything out and the division looks like it might be lost.
The good news is that their schedule is favourable. Arizona’s is a nightmare, and the competition for the second NFC wild card – Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, St. Louis and Tampa Bay – is as about as intimidating as Case Keenum and Kirk Cousins.
If they are to turn it around though, it will have to start with the Legion of Boom turning up the volume. Sherman, Chancellor and Earl Thomas are the soul of this team, and they’re the ones who are going to have to make it whole again.
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