Turns out, Seahawks’ ‘weird,’ earliest bye since 2016 comes at an ideal time - to heal
The look on Jordyn Brooks’ face, the sigh out of his mouth, those said what his body felt.
“Yeah, it’s a weird time for a bye. For me, personally? I don’t mind it,” the Seahawks’ linebacker said Monday night amid music blaring inside the visiting locker room after the team’s win at the New York Giants.
“I get one week off this (surgically reconstructed) knee. Get some rest and rehabbing,” Brooks said.
“Hey, we’ll take the bye — then we’ve got to go down the stretch.”
That stretch is a long one.
The pluses of the earliest bye the NFL offered this season (the Browns, Chargers and Buccaneers are also off this week) — and Seattle’s earliest bye since 2016:
- The Seahawks (3-1) are going into it with a three-game winning streak
- The players get the entire week off. Coach Pete Carroll set them free Tuesday upon their return from New Jersey. They will next practice on Monday
- Fourteen starters were injured entering then during the win over the Giants. They can now rest
The minuses of the sub-optimal bye timing (the previous two seasons and three of the last four years were in November):
- It pauses if not stops the momentum of the team’s three-game winning streak
- The Seahawks will play the final 13 games of the regular season without a break
They will worry about that later. This week, they are smiling — and literally limping — into their time off.
“Yeah, this is a really good time for us,” coach Pete Carroll said.
The veteran coach is renewing his guidance of the more than 40% of Seattle’s roster that are first- and second-year players.
“It’s a good time for us to come back with new perspective for the young guys, where we can kind of go back to talking about what they’ve accomplished and how far they’ve come along,” Carroll said. “Really, to me, there’s so much focus on those guys and their ability to contribute as we move forward. I think this is a really good stopping point for us in that regard.
“It’s so important for us to get those guys where they’re part of it. And it’ll be such a factor to us once we get to the midpoint of the season, hitting the second half.”
Many Seahawks are healing
Seattle’s entire offensive line needs this break.
Left tackle Charles Cross. Right tackle Abe Lucas. Left guard Damien Lewis. Right guard Phil Haynes. Center Evan Brown. All starters. All injured. Only Brown played against the Giants Monday. And he had to move from center to left guard when Lewis injured his ankle early in the game.
Wide receiver DK Metcalf. Key nose tackle Jarran Reed. Edge rusher Uchenna Nwosu. Defensive end Dre’mont Jones. Safeties Jamal Adams, Quandre Diggs and Julian Love. Cornerback Tre Brown. Tight ends Will Dissly and Noah Fant. More starters. More pains that will get better during this bye week.
All that doesn’t include Brooks. He has 41 tackles in four games playing next to Bobby Wagner. Coaches planned to have Brooks on something of a pitch count coming back a remarkable eight months after he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee. So much for that; Brooks has played 76% of Seattle’s defensive snaps in his return.
He recovered a fumble to set up Seattle’s first touchdown against the Giants.
Brooks and Wagner joined Nwosu and rookie cornerback Devon Witherspoon having two sacks each of New York quarterback Daniel Jones. The Seahawks tied a team record with 11 sacks. It was almost out of nowhere. Seattle had five sacks in three games until New York’s sieve offensive line let the Seahawks often run free at Jones Monday night.
The Seahawks went from third-to-last in the NFL in sacks before they played the Giants to tied with the Bills and Chargers for first in the league with 16.
The pass rush led directly to better defensive performance on third downs. After allowing Carolina to convert more than 52% of its third downs in a 37-27 win, Seattle held the Giants to 6 for 16 (37.5%) Monday night.
Defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt had a game plan in the New Jersey Meadowlands to overwhelm the Giants’ weak offensive line with blitzes from everywhere except the nearby Lincoln Tunnel. It worked. New York didn’t have the receivers to make Seattle pay for leaving its secondary exposed from all the blitzing.
Whether Monday’s blitzkrieg proves to be a one-off or something the Seahawks will try when they play again on Oct. 15 at Cincinnati (1-3) is something Hurtt and Carroll are mulling during this bye. The Bengals have a better offensive line and game-breaking receivers to burn blitzes that don’t get to quarterback Joe Burrow.
“This was a great night for Clint and the guys on defense,” Carroll said after the Giants game Monday. “The mixes and the change-ups, the variety of ways that we came after them, we used everybody on the field just about, hitting the calls at the right time so the guys could create some explosive plays out of it.
“You’ve got to give Clint a ton of credit. Pass rush isn’t just the guys up front. Everybody contributes to it. Coverage, and that’s where the backers play a role as well, and it was a great illustration of that tonight.
One bad half
Carroll and his players recited the same theme as they head off across the country (or world) to vacation this week: We’ve played one bad half in four games.
That horrid second half in the opener they gained just 12 yards, got out-scored 23-0 by the Los Angeles Rams after halftime and got booed off the field by their home fans Sept. 10. It is why the Seahawks aren’t equal to the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles at 4-0 atop the NFC as the league’s only unbeaten teams.
“Yes, sir. We played one bad half of football in the first game,” Metcalf said. “And we picked it back up the second week, and we are trying to use that to improve on itself.
“We are going into the bye week. I know that we are dinged up right now. It will be a good time to take a break, recup(erate) and get everyone back healthy.”
Wagner pulled the team around him before the first practice following that loss to the Rams. He was fiery and pointed, challenging his teammates. They are 3-0 since.
Carroll is still kicking himself for what he believes was his failure to properly adjust to the Rams and motivate his Seahawks after they had a 13-7 lead at halftime of what became a 30-13 loss.
“Yeah, we screwed up the freaking second half of the first game. And I haven’t forgiven myself for that,” Carroll said. “The Rams (2-2) have done a nice job since then; they’ve played good football. But we just didn’t play the second half like all the rest of these halves.”
Since then, Seattle has outscored foes 65-31 in the second half over three games, all wins. It was 10-0 over the Giants after halftime Monday, thanks to NFC defensive player of the week Devon Witherspoon’s 97-yard interception return for a game-sealing touchdown.
“This is the way we are supposed to finish, and we just didn’t do it (Sept. 10),” Carroll said. “So I am going to be kicking myself for that one.
“But there is a couple teams that are 4-0. And it’s really close.”
