Bobby Wagner, Jamal Adams, Seahawks defense ‘playing our best ball’ for rematch with Rams
Jamal Adams was barking at Pete Carroll between defensive series.
Bobby Wagner was showing up for postgame Zoom calls scowling. He didn’t say his words. His spat them out like spoiled egg nog.
The Seahawks’ defense was, to put it kindly, a mess.
Statistically, it couldn’t get any worse.
“We just weren’t hitting it right, you know. We weren’t on it,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said this week.
“There just was not enough of the substance that we needed to have everybody connected and communicating really well and confident in what what was going on.”
It was, at the time, this team’s fatal flaw.
Seattle was allowing 30 points a game. Worse, the defense was giving up the most total yards and the most yards passing (362 yards per game) ever in the NFL through eight games.
Josh Allen and the Bills had just bombarded the Seahawks in Buffalo on Nov. 8. During that game Adams got in a heated, um...discussion with Carroll on the sideline while the defense was allowing Buffalo to roll up 415 yards passing and 44 points. After the Seahawks allowed the most points in his 11 seasons as their coach, Carroll brushed off the Adams confrontation as his All-Pro safety’s competitiveness and drive.
A week later, at the new palace called SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, the Seahawks began the game the way the Bills game ended for them. They chased receivers all over the field. They had no reliable pressure on quarterbacks, other than by Adams’ risky blitzes. While Seattle’s Russell Wilson threw an interception in the first half and had a second negated by a penalty on L.A., Jared Goff threw all over the Seahawks. Goff had 221 of the Rams’ 275 yards in the first half. Seattle trailed 17-13.
“At that time, going to the halftime and go into the second half, we had a lot of sudden-change situations,” Seahawks defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. said of turnovers Wilson and the offense were making last month. “It was one of those moments where you’ve got to decide if you’re going to handle the storm, you’re going to handle all the things that are happening. Or are you going to give into it?
“And the guys really came together. That second half...guys really came together and really understood what the what the plan was, really played and communicated together.
“And I think that, from that point on, it’s been pretty solid.”
In that second half last month in Inglewood, L.A. gained just 114 yards. The Rams scored only six points. That was with Adams injuring his shoulder in the first half. He playing strong safety with only one good arm. It was his second game back from more than a month out with a strained groin.
Had Wilson not gotten sacked six times, not committed three turnovers and Seattle had more than rookie DeeJay Dallas and practice-squad player Alex Collins at running back, the Seahawks would have beaten L.A. that day. Instead, they lost 23-17.
Since that second half against the Rams, the Seahawks have allowed then first-place Arizona just 21 points, and Philadelphia and the New York Giants 17 points each. The Jets that just beat the Rams last week in California scored just three points on Seattle. Washington last week had but a field goal through three quarters, and finished with 15 in Seattle’s five-point win.
“Since the turn (to) the second half here, we’ve been a different team on defense and it feels like we’re going in the right direction.,” Carroll said this week.
“So, whatever happened before is long gone for us now.”
It absolutely has to be long gone for Seattle now.
The Rams (9-5) are coming to the Northwest Sunday for a showdown atop the NFC West in the next-to-last game of the regular season. If the Seahawks (10-4) wins this rematch they will win the division. They would begin the playoffs at home for the first time since the 2016 season.
Los Angeles has won five of the last six meetings.
Yet the Seahawks are as self-assured than they’ve been all year.
Especially on that formerly ransacked defense.
“It makes us real confident, because we are coming in playing our best ball,” Wagner said. “I definitely feel like we’re hitting our stride.
“I definitely feel like, you know, we played them last time we were still getting guys back. Guys hadn’t been on the field all together so having everybody out and really just being able to be together and you know, play our best ball right now going into the game is always gonna give you confidence.
What changed?
“We started to get to the quarterback,” Wagner said.
Exactly.
It’s becoming known as The Carlos Dunlap Effect.
In their first seven games without Dunlap, Seattle had 12 sacks. It was where it was in 2019: at the bottom of the NFL in sacks.
In their last seven games, since Dunlap arrived from Cincinnati in a trade from Cincinnati, the Seahawks have 28 sacks. They are now tied with the fourth-most sacks in the league.
Dunlap has 4 1/2 sacks in six games for Seattle. Two of them have been game-savers on the last and next-to-last defensive plays, the win last week at Washington and last month against Arizona.
“This is what I’m here to do,” the two-time Pro Bowl defensive end said, smiling.
Dunlap has made the entire defensive line better. As offenses have had to devote more blockers and planning to him, Jarran Reed, Poona Ford, L.J. Collier and Alton Robinson have flourished.
Last weekend on Washington’s final, futile drive, the rookie Robinson had a strip sack. Collier, the previously unproductive 2019 first-round pick, sacked Dwayne Haskins to create a third and long. Then Dunlap sacked Haskins on the next play. Haskins’ desperate heave on fourth and The Pentagon fell incomplete in the end zone.
Now, Seattle doesn’t have to blitz Adams, Wagner, fellow linebacker K.J. Wright and seemingly every back-line defender back to Kenny Easley to get pressure on quarterbacks. Dunlap revitalizing the front four means the Seahawks have Adams and their linebackers in pass coverage more.
Seven covering four or five; it’s how Carroll wants to play. It’s how the Seahawks made consecutive Super Bowls with the league’s best defense a half-dozen years ago. Seven covering four or five Rams—including Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods, who each have more than 82 catches this season on fast crossing routes—is math much more in Seattle’s favor defensively.
“There’s something about it,” Wagner said. “The quarterbacks know that they’ve got to get the ball out quick. If they don’t get the ball out quick, then those guys are going come in and sack them—especially Carlos.
“It helps us in the back end, because you don’t have to cover that much or cover that long. The quarterbacks know that they have to have that mental clock in their head and they have to get the ball out quick. So it definitely helps us play fast and helps our success as a defense.
“Once we start getting at the quarterback, it makes life, for everybody, a lot better.”
Life is A LOT better for the Seahawks’ defense going into this Rams game. Seattle has clinched its eighth playoff spot in nine years.
Plus this time, Adams can play with both arms.
“It’s pretty cool to clinch it. But we’ve got a big game coming up next week, man,” Adams said.
“I’ll tell you what: looking forward to that, man. That was the game that I got hurt. I’m ready now, man.
“So looking forward to it.”
This story was originally published December 24, 2020 at 8:53 AM.
