The most indispensable Seahawk right now? The safety who’s played Aaron Rodgers the most
Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner get the podium.
Marshawn Lynch pops in front of cameras, says, “Merry New Year” and “I’m glad to be back”—then gets attention on him, too.
But perhaps the most indispensable Seahawk for this particular task Sunday against Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers in their 3:40 p.m. NFC divisional playoff game at Lambeau Field?
He’s sitting alone amid a room full of teammates. On the floor of the Seahawks’ locker room.
If you want to talk to Quandre Diggs, you are going to have to come down to him. To the carpet. To the low-key.
“I’m having a lot of fun,” the fifth-year veteran and former captain of the Detroit Lions said in his cool, understated voice—from the floor.
“Heck, playing playoff football, playing into January, I’d never done it before. So it’s a new challenge for me, and it’s something I’ve always dreamed of as a kid.
“You’ve just got to enjoy these moments. As a young player you think you’re always going to have these moments. But these opportunities are far in between. So you’ve just got to enjoy them as much as you can, and take it take by day.
“I’ve got to tell myself that: Soak in these moments.”
Especially this one.
No Seahawk knows Rodgers better than Diggs.
He’s played the Packers’ NFL and Super Bowl MVP five times, from 2015 through the 2018 season. Diggs has won three of those meetings with Rodgers. He’s 2-1 against him inside historic Lambeau.
Staying in humble character, Diggs shrugs off any advantage facing Rodgers and the Packers.
“I know them,” he said. “But they know how to play me, also.”
He and his now-former Lions have always played Rodgers and the Packers tough. But Rodgers hasn’t exactly struggled in the five games he’s started against Diggs. He’s completed 109 of 178 passes (61.2 percent) for 1,279 yards, 11 touchdowns, one interception and a passer rating of 101.31.
Diggs had his career high of 10 tackles in one of those games. His Lions sacked Rodgers 13 times in those five games.
Diggs knows the key to the Seahawks ending an eight-game losing streak at Green Bay Sunday and advancing to next week’s NFC championship is top sack man Jadeveon Clowney and Seattle’s pass rushers affecting Rodgers. Make Rodgers get the ball out sooner than he wants to. Do not allow him to extend plays, when he make his most dangerous plays and ridiculous throws.
“I would say, just trying to keeping him in the pocket,” Diggs said.
“Keeping him in the pocket is easier said than done. Everybody has been trying to do that, his whole career. ...
“There’s no throw he can’t make. But that’s your best chance of beating him, is to try to keep him in the pocket.
“He’s going to make his plays. We’ve just got to try to regroup after.”
The Seahawks are used to seeing Rodgers, and before that Brett Favre, make plays against them at Lambeau Field on Lombardi Avenue. Seattle has not won there since Nov. 1, 1999. That was coach Mike Holmgren’s return game that season after he left Green Bay following his Super Bowl title with the Packers.
Since then not only have the Seahawks lost every time in Green Bay, the games usually haven’t been close. The average score of those eight meetings has been Packers 33, Seattle 15.
It’s not just the stadium, the college-like venue in the middle of tree-lined streets and single-family homes that offer their front yards for game-day parking (with an extra charge if you want to you the house’s bathroom while you tailgate with your brats and beer). It’s not just the Packers’ championship history. Or the winter Wisconsin weather, such as a the snow and ice storm that rolled through Saturday. Or the rabid, well-primed Packer backers who go shirtless when it’s 10 degrees outside.
Rodgers is 71-18-1 with 195 touchdowns, just 35 interceptions and a passer rating of 107.3 in his career during the regular season inside Lambeau.
He’s 10-7 overall in the playoffs, including a Super Bowl win in February 2011. But, curiously, Rodgers is only 3-2 in the playoffs at home.
Lambeau Field opened in 1957 as City Field, to replace the Packers’ old field at East High School. Bart Starr won the Ice Bowl and multiple NFL titles for Vince Lombardi’s Pack there. Favre became a Hall of Famer there.
“It’s just historic. It’s a historic place. The atmosphere is dope,” Diggs said.
“You just try to enjoy these moments as a player. You don’t really get these moments as a player, to get to be in the second round, play at Lambeau Field, play in 20-degree weather. That’s what you see on TV as a kid. As a kid you see those games on TV and you say, ‘Ah, man, that’d be dope to play in Lambeau in the playoffs.’
“And then when it’s your time to do it you try to enjoy it. You think about those moments as a kid, you just try to relish it. That’s what it’s all about.”
Diggin’ the communication
Diggs has played every position in the secondary in his career. He was a cornerback in college at Texas. So he sees offenses from multiple vantage points.
He is so keenly prepared he diagnoses and calls out opponents’ plays to teammates before the snap. Like a conductor, he arranges his fellow defenders into the right places.
That’s what the Seahawks got back on their defense last weekend when Diggs played in their wild-card playoff win at Philadelphia. That was after he missed 2 1/2 games with a high-ankle sprain last month.
“It was amazing,” All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “It’s a guy that has been around the game for a long time. His communication, his experience, the way that he comes down and makes plays from the secondary position and tackles. The way he is a red-line to red-line (sideline-to-sideline) safety, and his leadership has just been amazing for our team. He has been such a great addition to the team.
“But he still can’t beat me in basketball.”
Diggs beat the Eagles on one of the decisive plays of last weekend’s game.
Philadelphia had a fourth and 5 at the Seahawks 29-yard line with 5 minutes left and the Eagles down 17-9. Linebacker K.J. Wright, the longest-tenured Seahawk in his ninth year with the team, heard Diggs tell Clowney before the snap a swing pass to running back Miles Sanders was coming right at the defensive end. Clowney had been standing up and hesitant about the play, until he heard Diggs tip him off.
Clowney reacted in time to be there when Sanders bobbled then dropped Josh McCown’s pass for a turnover on downs.
And the Seahawks improved its franchise-best road record this season to 8-1.
“It comes from me guarding a lot of running backs when I was with Detroit,” Diggs said. “I kind of did that a lot. I was able to get some tips, kind of see the formation, kind of go from there.
“You guys are of making it more than it really is,” Diggs said, staying characteristically understated. “It really wasn’t that hard a play. ...I just kind of did my job, you know? Nothing special.”
It’s everything special to a Seahawks defense and secondary that are in disarray when he’s not in there.
“He does that a lot,” Wagner said. “Like I said, he’s a really smart safety. He understands concepts really well, and that is something that we noticed when he first got here. He was able to call out certain routes, certain plays in practice, and he has done it and games, as well.
“His intelligence is just off the charts. A great addition to our team for sure.”
A better defense with him
Diggs at free safety allows strong safety Bradley McDougald to play far closer to the line of scrimmage almost like a linebacker against run plays and short, quick passes, like Kam Chancellor used to play the position for Seattle. McDougald had a season-high 11 tackles against the Eagles in Diggs’ return last weekend.
Before Diggs arrived in the trade, and while he was out injured last month, McDougald had to play back 10 or more yards off the line as more of a co-free safety to help struggling Tedric Thompson, then Lano Hill and rookie Marquise Blair. That opened up gaps in the Seahawks’ underneath coverage and run stopping.
“I think the conversations that they have, the work that they do during the week adds to their confidence and their belief of what’s going on and what’s happening,” coach Pete Carroll. “Their communication as they break the huddle, there’s subtle communications. I’ve heard on the practice field, I can hear Quandre calling out routes. He’s telling Bradley what’s coming as it’s happening as Bradley’s seeing it, too.
“It just reaffirms and allows you to play more confidently, more committed. I think that’s an example of how some guys help other guys play better. They help people around them play well.”
Diggs solidifying coverage in Seattle’s secondary makes quarterbacks hold onto the ball longer than they were against the Seahawks before Diggs joined them. Last weekend, the Seahawks sacked Philadelphia’s Carson Wentz and McCown seven times.
“Oh, it was dope sitting back there. Makes me job a lot easier than a lot of guys.” Diggs said of the pass rush. “I just kind of sat back there and let those guys do what they do, and I just tried to clean up whatever has to be cleaned up.”
Before Diggs arrived, there was a lot to clean up.
Thompson was the first replacement for departed All-Pro free safety Earl Thomas this season. It did not go well. Thompson repeatedly misplayed balls in the air and allowed receivers behind him for big plays and touchdowns, beginning with Cincinnati’s John Ross in Seattle’s opening-game escape past the Bengals in early September.
When the Seahawks made the trade with Detroit for Diggs, sending a fifth-round pick to the Lions, Thompson decided that would be a good time to get a bothersome shoulder operated on. He got a frayed labrum fixed and went on injured reserve.
In Diggs’ first game for Seattle after a couple of weeks to heal a hamstring strain he brought from Detroit, Diggs hammered 49ers pass catchers over the middle. He knocked Emmanuel Sanders out of that Nov. 11 game. The coverage instantly improved, the Seahawks’ pass rush benefited from a quarterback holding onto the ball with indecision, for a change. Seattle sacked Jimmy Garoppolo five times and hit him 10 times in an overtime win that catapulted the Seahawks to the top of the NFC West and the conference.
Diggs got three interceptions in his first month with Seattle. That tied his career high for an entire season. He created five turnovers in his first four Seahawks games.
With Diggs, the Seahawks forced eight turnovers in two games, the road wins over San Francisco and Philadelphia, to briefly gain the conference’s top position. He became a Pro Bowl alternate in his short time with his new team.
Diggs then got a high-ankle sprain in the first half of Seattle’s win at Carolina last month. He missed the next two games.
The Seahawks stopped getting turnovers. They stopped pressuring quarterbacks. They lost at home to Arizona and the 49ers. That dropped Seattle from the first seed potentially with a bye and home field throughout the playoffs to the five seed on the road this weekend for the second time across five times zones in seven days.
Ask Diggs if this was the impact he expected or hoped for with his new team, and he goes back into his humble, alone-on-the-floor mode.
“I didn’t know what impact I would have,” he said. “I was just coming into a new situation trying to be the best football player I could be. And just try to be healthy.
“These guys have let me transition smoothly. And I appreciate that.
“I’m not here to brag on myself. I’m just here to win games. That’s what it’s all about with me.
“I’ve never been that type of player,” his voice briefly rising with emotion.
“I just want to go out and make an impact, help my guys win football games.”
Defending Rodgers
The Seahawks are counting on Diggs to beat Rodgers and the Packers.
“He has been out there with this guy a lot. He’s seen the quarterback. He’s seen way more than we have over the years, recently so,” Wagner said.
“It will be valuable. It will be valuable like in the meeting room. He’s talking in there, analyzing. They’re looking at stuff and his experience and all that. I’m sure he’ll have a lot to offer. ...
“I’ll definitely talk to him and figure out what are some of concepts he thinks they are going to still have in their repertoire and how we can get a beat on that.”
The Packers have a new offense with first-time head coach Matt LaFleur this season. Rodgers is taking more snaps directly under center and fewer in shotgun. And now he has a running game, for a change. Aaron Jones was a 1,000-yard rusher for the Packers this season. He’s 16 touchdowns rushing tied for the NFL lead.
“It’s different. They’ve got different elements. They are definitely running the ball more. He doesn’t have to be Superman,” Diggs said of Rodgers. “I think that’s what people are saying, his numbers are down. But he’s still making big plays. It’s just, they’ve got Aaron Jones running the ball. He’s doing tremendous things running the ball.
“Heck, if I was A-Rod I wouldn’t care that my numbers were down. We’re 13-3, so those guys are still pretty explosive.”
“I still see deep shots on the film that I’m watching. ...He does take his deep shots. I’ve just got to be on my Ps and Qs and know that. ...You just can’t afford to give up the big play.
“A lot of that falls on me.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2020 at 10:38 AM.
