The Seattle Seahawks are gearing up for their biggest game of the season against the Los Angeles Rams. In this game, the NFC North and the number one seed in the conference are at stake. After dropping their first game against the Rams 21-19 earlier this season, the Seahawks are looking for redemption.
However, they will need to start faster than they did in their last matchup against the Rams. In that game, the Seahawks didn’t score their first touchdown until just over two minutes were left in the fourth quarter, and quarterback Sam Darnold threw four interceptions.
The slow starts have plagued the Seahawks, especially the last few weeks. Last week, against the Indianapolis Colts, they didn’t score a touchdown the whole game, instead relying on six Jason Myers field goals to win. Against the Atlanta Falcons, the Seahawks only scored six points in the first half before exploding for 31 in the second half. Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald knows the team needs to start faster.
Starting Fast
For the Seahawks to reach the Super Bowl potential this team has, they know they’ll have to put together a complete offensive game.
The team has big-play potential with wide receivers like Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Rashid Shaheed as downfield threats, but they can’t just rely on big plays. Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald wants the team to get off to faster starts.
Macdonald discussed this need for more urgency in the first halves of games in his post-game press conference following the Colts game on Sunday. Seahawks.com provides the transcript of Macdonald discussing the Seahawks starting fast.
“Yeah, we’ve got to improve, be better, start faster. We’ll look at our openers here,” Macdonald said. “Couple games where our openers weren’t hitting as well as we want. We’ll look at it. But we want to start fast. The field position in the first half, we were in tough situations. Like the field was definitely tilted against us. When we’re in those situations we’ve got to get out of those things. And when we did, then we have a big kick return there at some point, and so it flipped again. We’ve got to improve in that area.”
Field position is a significant factor in the Seahawks’ slow starts, but so has been not finishing in the red zone.
Red Zone Efficiency
One of the major issues the Seahawks have been running into recently is settling for field goals. Many promising drives have ended with a whimper instead of a thud.
ESPN’s Brady Henderson wrote about the recent first-half woes of a team that, overall, has been a top-10 offense.
“This marked the fourth time in the past five weeks in which the Seahawks’ offense — which ranks sixth in scoring at 25.9 points per game — failed to score 10 points in the first half. That has been the case in the past three of their four straight wins, which came over the Minnesota Vikings, Atlanta Falcons and Colts — teams quarterbacked by Max Brosmer, Kirk Cousins and the recently unretired Rivers,” Henderson wrote.
Henderson also wrote about how Darnold is taking personal responsibility for the Seahawks not finishing drives.
“We’ve just got to start faster as an offense,” quarterback Sam Darnold said. “We’ve got to finish in the red zone. I feel like it’s becoming a theme now these [past] few weeks and we’ve got to get it figured out. I feel like our defense is playing really, really good football. We’ve got to step it up a little bit as an offense, and that starts with me.”
The Seahawks are one of the most well-rounded teams in the NFL, but if there is one thing that could sink them in the playoffs, it’s their habit of perpetually starting games slowly.
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