Seahawks’ defense whole for Detroit as K.J. Wright returns --and gets out of answering his wife
Bobby Wagner has a weekend wish for Golden Tate.
Because the All-Pro linebacker and his Seahawks are playing against their former teammate in Detroit on Sunday, Wagner’s is not a particularly warm wish.
“When I see the Lions come on, I root for Golden and stuff like that,” Wagner said. “But when he plays us, I hope he gets no catches, no yards and he gets hit a bunch of times. I could care less what he does. ...
“It’s a game. It’s a competition. It’s a kind of like going up against your brother. Whether it’s a little brother, big brother, you aren’t going to let him win. That’s kind of how I look at it: ‘You’re not going to win the game. I’m not going to give you that satisfaction.’”
Thing is, more than satisfaction is at stake for the Seahawks and the Lions Sunday.
Much more than a reunion with Tate and fellow former Seahawks Luke Willson and DeShawn Shead, who are also Lions now.
Let’s stay with Wagner’s theme of cold pragmatics.
Both the Seahawks (3-3) and Lions (3-3) have won three of their last four games after beginning the season 0-2. Both are log-jammed with eight other teams in the NFC that have three wins and are not leading a division. Only two of those eight non-division leaders will make the playoffs in January as the conference’s wild-card entries.
And Seattle is likely to remain a non-division leader. The Los Angeles Rams are 7-0. They are essentially five games ahead of the Seahawks atop the NFC West, because the Rams won in Seattle this month.
So let’s forget the division championship as Seattle’s realistic way back to the postseason for the sixth time in seven years.
The Seahawks are essentially playing their final 10 regular-season games for a wild-card playoff berth. In most seasons, 10 wins is enough to get one. Seattle needs to win seven of its remaining games to get to 10 victories. Six of the Seahawks’ 10 remaining games will be at home. Even if they win all those—and that’s a mammoth “if” because two of those home games against potent Kansas City (6-1) and Minnesota (4-2-1)—the Seahawks would still need one more victory to get to 10. Of course, if they lose to the Chiefs and/or Vikings, Seattle would need two or three more wins.
Furthermore, the first tie-breaker to determine wild cards for the postseason is a head-to-head result. The surging Lions are potentially one of the foes over which the Seahawks may need a tie-breaker advantage by late December to get to where they want to be.
“We’re up against a team that really, has done a lot of really similar things that we’ve done,” coach Pete Carroll said. “They’ve started kind of funky and lost a couple and then they’ve just played some great football. Shoot, they beat New England. They beat the Packers. They beat Miami last week.”
That was while rushing for 248 yards against the Dolphins, Detroit’s most since Hall of Famer Barry Sanders was romping for them in 1997.
“They’re looking really good,” Carroll said. “So it’s going to be a terrific matchup, I hope.”
Kerryon Johnson has been the reason quarterback Matthew Stafford finally has help in the Lions’ offense. Johnson’s 148 yards rushing last week in Miami included a 71-yard sprint, and his day was the biggest by a Detroit running back in seven years.
In three previous meetings against Stafford, the Seahawks only had to focus on pressuring the quarterback. The Lions didn’t have a running game worth considering. Seattle won two of those previous games.
Johnson, a candidate to become the league’s rookie of the year, and veteran plow back LeGarrette Blount give the Seahawks much more to defend Sunday.
“I mean, Stafford doesn’t do it by himself,” Seahawks defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. said. “He has to use his weapons around him. He’s got some pretty good receivers. He’s got some pretty good runners.
“We have to take away the running game, put him in obvious situations. And then we have to cover their receivers, who are really good.”
Seattle, which will be wearing jerseys patches to honor late owner Paul Allen on Sunday, will be more equipped on defense in Detroit than its been all season.
Pro Bowl veteran K.J. Wright will make his season debut at weakside linebacker. He missed the first six games after athroscopic knee surgery in late August.
He missed only five games in his first seven seasons in the NFL with the Seahawks.
What were the two most difficult aspects of sitting out for two months?
“Just to watch it and not to be able to travel. I couldn’t travel to London (for the win over Oakland two weeks ago). I couldn’t go to Arizona, Chicago. I just had to stay back and watch it,” Wright said.
“Just the daily grind. It’s more of a mental and physical grind when you do get hurt because, especially somebody in my position, you’re not used to missing games and we’ve just got to rehab all day, all night. And you’ve got to watch (the games). That’s tough.
“It’s over now. Let’s hope I stay healthy and be good to go the rest of the year.”
The other tough part of being hurt? Who he was watching the games with on television.
“First two games, I went to Cliff (Avril’s) house,” Wright said of the recently retired Seahawks’ defensive end. “And the last two games I was at home and my wife.”
How’d that go?
“She’s sitting there and we’re watching the game together,” Wright said. “She asked some questions. And I was like, ‘babe, I really don’t feel like telling you what happened on that play. Yes, Bobby did mess up. But I don’t feel like going to in’s and out’s about it.’
“But it was good though.”
Wright makes the Seahawks whole on defense for the first time this season. Just in time for the Seahawks to play Stafford and the Lions, then Philip Rivers and the Chargers (5-2) next weekend at home. That’s followed by this daunting task: Jared Goff and the soaring Rams in Los Angeles, Aaron Rodgers and the Packers (3-2-1) in Seattle and Cam Newton in Carolina (4-2) over the next month.
“We’re looking for consistent right now,” Norton said.
“We’re (at) 3-3, it’s the time right now that we have to set ourselves apart and see exactly who we are on the stretch of games coming up.”
This story was originally published October 27, 2018 at 2:39 PM.