Seahawks, Cowboys have changed since September game. Who negates those changes will win playoff
Yes, the Seahawks and Cowboys are different teams than the ones that played each other in September.
If they weren’t it’d be, well... September.
You can bet your 10-gallon hat they wouldn’t be playing in the NFC wild-card playoffs Saturday night in Arlington, Texas, if they both hadn’t improved.
Drastically.
“Really, we both started slowly, and then somewhere in there we kind of found our stride,” said Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, who is 9-5 in the playoffs with Seattle including a Super Bowl win and Super Bowl loss. “These guys (the Cowboys) put together seven (wins) out of eight to finish off the season.
“We had a nice little run ourselves. So they’re not that much different, we’re not that much different. But really, the way we have formatted our team play, I think both teams have done well to this point.”
The Seahawks (10-6) were basically a mess on offense entering their week-three game against Dallas at CenturyLink Field. They were throwing 73 percent of the time and 0-2 entering that Sept. 23 home opener. Carroll admitted later he overestimated how improved his line got in pass protection during the offseason. Russell Wilson had been sacked 12 times, the most in the NFL at that point. Carroll had not yet acted on his promise to run, through his offseason overhaul of the coaching staff and offensive line to do it.
“We’ve grown,” Wilson said this week, “a lot.”
Grown into the league’s number-one rushing offense with one of its most efficient passing games, in fact.
Chris Carson’s first of six 100-yard rushing games came against the Cowboys, in Seattle’s 24-13 win. Carson romped on past week three for 1,134 yards this season. The Seahawks won 10 of their final 14 games starting with the victory over Dallas. behind a line led by plowing right guard D.J. Fluker, rugged left guard J.R. Sweezy, experienced center Justin Britt, veteran stalwart left tackle Duane Brown and improved right tackle Germain Ifedi. That run game improved Wilson’s pass protection. Defenses beginning with the Cowboys 3 1/2 months ago have had to play Seattle more honestly, for the run first then to pass rush. Wilson has used the added time to throw a Seattle-record 35 touchdown passes, third-most in the NFL, against just seven interceptions. That’s despite throwing it fewer times than any other full-time starter.
“Our offensive line has been really, really good,” Wilson said.
The Cowboys (10-6) were even more malfunctioning than Seattle on offense in late September, on their way to a 3-5 start to this season.
Ezekiel Elliott ran for 127 yards at Seattle, part of his NFL-leading 1,434 yards rushing this season. But quarterback Dak Prescott continued his mediocre career play against the Seahawks in week three. He completed 19 of 34 throws for 168 yards and two interceptions, to Earl Thomas. Prescott again looked skittish and wild on throws, as has been his usual against Seattle.
He’s completed 58.8 percent of his passes with a touchdown and four interceptions in two career games against the Seahawks. Both have been losses in which the Cowboys have scored 13 and 13 points. Seattle has sacked him nine times in those two games. His passer rating of 52.9 against the Seahawks is his lowest against any opponent.
What’s been the Seahawks’ key to derailing Dak?
“I think just getting after him,” said middle linebacker Bobby Wagner, named All-Pro on Friday for the third consecutive season. “I don’t remember how many sacks we had, but we had a lot of QB hits. We were in his face a lot. I think with any quarterback, if you get in his face a lot and kind of disrupt him (like) we did (you’ll succeed).”
But the Seahawks are defending a different Prescott Saturday, and a much more dynamic offense with a new, deep, home-run receiving threat. Seattle can’t just stack eight and nine defenders including safety Bradley McDougald near the line of scrimmage to slow down the rugged Elliott, as has been its and every other NFL team’s plan the previous couple years against Dallas.
Do that, and Amari Cooper will burn you.
Knowing their offense and thus their season was going nowhere without a big-play receiving threat, the Cowboys traded a first-round pick to Oakland for Cooper, the Raiders’ fourth-overall choice from 2015, That deal went down a month after Dallas’ loss at Seattle.
Cooper has six of his seven touchdown catches this season since his late-October trade. It came days after McDougald knocked Cooper out of Seattle’s game with Oakland in London Oct. 14 with a helmet-to-helmet hit over the middle.
McDougald this week said he has not talked to Cooper since that hit for which he got fined $27,000 three months ago. His appeal cut $7,000 reduced from that fine.
“I posted a post (on Instagram, regretting Cooper got a concussion) kind of more to clear the air,” McDougald said this week. “I don’t know him personally. I wished him well. That was about it. I just kind of left it at that.
“I’ve never been in a situation like that before. That was my first time being in that situation. I just kind of left it as a big hit. It’s not about, you know, it’s not about that. I don’t have anything personal toward him. It’s not a vendetta towards this man.
“I’m going to attack it like any other game. I don’t talk to my opponents. I don’t plan to talk to him. I plan to go to work.”
Cooper has remade Prescott.
The 25-year-old quarterback had eight touchdowns, four interceptions and no games completing 70 percent of his passes before Cooper joined the team for Dallas’ eighth game, a loss against Tennessee that dropped the Cowboys to 3-5.
With Cooper, Prescott has 14 touchdown passes, four interceptions and five games completing more than 70 percent of his throws. He has two games above 80 percent
“He’s made a big impact on our team,” Dallas coach Jason Garrett said. “Obviously, we think he’s one of the better receivers in the league. We thought that when he was coming out of Alabama in the draft and had a lot of success out there in Oakland for a couple of seasons, and we were really excited to bring him to our team. ...He’s certainly impacted us.”
Garrett, who has won just one playoff game in his eight seasons as Cowboys head coach, said Cooper has proven to be versatile. He plays all over Dallas’ offense: outside, from the slot, on crossing routes short, on vertical patterns long.
McDougald and Seattle’s recently banged-up secondary with cornerback Shaquill Griffin (twisted ankle last weekend) and free safety Tedric Thompson (two games missed with chest and ankle injuries) returning have a new, unique challenge in Cooper.
“The thing that is most impressive for us is you pick him up in the middle of the season and he’s just able to do really anything you ask him to do at a moment’s notice,” Garrett said. “He lines up all different spots in our formations, inside, outside, runs a variety of routes and typically when you go to him, good things happen. He’s made a lot of little plays for us. It’s been a lot of big plays for us and he’s certainly had a positive impact on everybody because he gets attention from the opposing defense. I think that gives some of the other guys an opportunity.”
So the Cowboys are much more difficult to defend this time than the last three times the Seahawks have played them, when Seattle won and Dallas scored 12, 13 and 13 points.
And the Seahawks’ defenders have also changed since the last meeting.
Thomas is gone. He never did get traded as he wanted to Dallas, nor did he get the rich contract extension he wanted before his current deal expired at the end of this season. He broke his leg for the second time in three seasons in a game at Arizona in October. His last act with the team was flipping off Seattle’s sideline while on the back of a cart getting driven out of the stadium in Glendale, Ariz., and onto injured reserve.
Essentially retired safety Kam Chancellor is, like Thomas, technically still on the roster. He is on the Seahawks’ sideline at games. Thomas has not been with the team since his injury. His been more in his native Texas.
But the Seahawks are gaining K.J. Wright from the last meeting with Dallas. The 2017 Pro Bowl linebacker missed 11 of 16 games in the regular season, including the Cowboys game, following knee surgery. He’s back at the fullest health he’s been all season, and said he’s ready to play every down at Dallas.
Wright on the weakside next to Bobby Wagner, named All-Pro on Friday for the third consecutive season, in the middle are Seattle’s two weapons to neutralize Elliott from averaging 8 yards per carry against the Seahawks this time, and from damaging them by adding to his Cowboys-leading 77 receptions outside in the flat and on screen passes.
“We need to do a better job on Zeke,” Wagner said of Seattle’s job one on defense Saturday.
“But it’s going to be fun.”
It’s that time of year again for the Seahawks. For the sixth time in seven seasons.
Wilson, 30, has a decided edge over Prescott in playoff experience and accomplishments. The winningest QB in NFL history over the first seven seasons of a career is 8-4 with two Super Bowl starts and a ring in the playoffs. Prescott has never won in the postseason. He has just one playoff start, two years ago in a three-TD, one-interception loss at Green Bay.
If—when—Saturday’s game is close and tense late, the Seahawks feel they have a huge advantage at the sport’s most important position to get to the second round of the NFC’s playoffs.
“The great thing about this team is the fact that everybody was telling us we couldn’t,” Wilson said. “I think that it shows the will of this team. It shows the heart of this team and it shows the mindset of this team, to be able to think the way that you want to think and the places that you want to go. To think big, to believe big, to have that belief. ...
“We’ll do whatever it takes. We’ll do whatever it takes. I know for me, I love nothing more than winning.”
This story was originally published January 4, 2019 at 6:01 PM.
