Challenge on top of challenge for reeling Seahawks: 1st-ever back-to-back Thursday games
Bobby Wagner had it right.
At least, he thinks he did.
“(It’s) um...Sunday. It is, technically, Sunday,” he said, “but it is our Wednesday.”
The Seahawks just did something they’ve never done before. They practiced on a Sunday. That’s because they are in the midst of doing something they’ve not done in the 48 seasons the franchise has been in the NFL: play back-to-back Thursday games.
“What day is it?” coach Pete Carroll said before his first Sunday Seahawks practice.
The league and NBC scheduled Seattle hosting division-rival San Francisco as its Thanksgiving-night showcase. The NFL and Amazon then had the Seahawks play at Dallas this Thursday, as part of its weekly stand-alone game.
This game at the Cowboys is the 17th Thursday game in Seattle’s history. It’s the Seahawks’ first Thursday game against a team outside the NFC West since they hosted Green Bay on Sept. 4, 2014, in the annual NFL season-kickoff game at home for the Super Bowl winner from the previous season.
The Seahawks are 9-7 on Thursdays. That’s after playing on just three day’s rest following a Sunday game, or off a bye.
But they are 0-0 on Thursdays after playing on Thursday.
“It’s a very unusual situation where we are right now,” Carroll said at 12:30 p.m. Sunday. “The league is playing and we’re not, and we’re sitting here trying to picture that this is a Wednesday preparation.
“And it’s the middle of the weekend here.”
Normally in the NFL teams that play Thursday night games get what players and coaches call the “mini-bye” after it: the 10 days from that Thursday game, through a full weekend off immediately after it, to the following game on a Sunday
On a normal Wednesday, the first full practice day during the seven days between games, sports talk, The Price is Right, Judge Judy or whatever late-morning-to-afternoon fare is on television while the Seahawks do their work.
On this Sunday which was really a Wednesday, between their late-morning walk-through practice they normally have on Wednesday and the full practice that began mid-afternoon, players were seeing games on their phones and around the team facility NFL games playing Sunday.
“It’s weird just watching the games on right now and we’re about to go to practice,” wide receiver DK Metcalf said just after noon. “It just feels weird practicing a Wednesday on a Sunday.
“But I’m ready to get back to work.”
The positive of the Seahawks Thursday-to-Thursday here is they get a normal seven days to rebound from their sobering, 31-13 home loss to the 49ers on Thanksgiving. It was their third defeat in four games. That has them two games plus a tie-breaker behind San Francisco for the NFC West lead with six games remaining.
Geno Smith needed a break
Having three more days between this week will give quarterback Geno Smith a better chance of being healthier to start Thursday at Dallas than he was playing the 49ers four days after the Rams’ Aaron Donald crunched him and bruised Smith’s throwing arm.
Smith also turned his ankle getting sacked in that 49ers game and limped off.
“First off, let’s get him well. Let’s get him really healthy, a whole week of practice. That’ll be good,” Carroll said. “It was only a couple of weeks ago he had one of the better games he’s ever had.”
That was his career high 369 yards passing in Seattle’s 29-26 win over Washington two weeks ago.
“There are always things he can do better. It’s just reading more quickly and get the ball out more readily so we can avoid the rush,” Carroll said, after the 49ers sacked Smith six times last week. “Of all of the things in particular like this week, we need to get the ball out. The ball has got to get out of his hands so that we don’t give the rusher a chance. If there’s anything in particular, that’s what I’m hoping Geno can find his keys, his reads, and get the ball out ahead of the rush.
“That’s easier said than done.”
Especially against All-Pro, roving pass rusher Micah Parsons (11 1/2 sacks in 11 games) and Dallas’ pass rush Thursday night.
Cowboys riding high
That’s part of the negative of this first time with Thursday-to-Thursday games: The Cowboys are rollin’.
They are 8-3. They’ve won five of their last six games; their only loss was close at 10-1 Philadelphia 28-23. The Cowboys just thrashed 45-10 the same Washington team the Seahawks needed a last-play field goal to beat Nov. 12. Dallas with quarterback Dak Prescott and a new running game with Tony Pollard (not Ezekiel Elliott) as the featured back is averaging 39 points per game in their last five games.
Another negative, or at least disruption, to this for the Seahawks: Pro athletes by nature and thrive after perfecting their between-games routines. They do their yoga and cold tubs and swimming and massages and physical therapy and film study on the same days at the same times with the same appointments.
The Seahawks have had that routine upended two weeks in a row now. For the first time in their football lives.
Seattle center Evan Brown played two seasons and a part of a third year with Detroit. His Lions play on Thanksgiving, Thursday afternoon every year.
Yet this is the first time in the 27-year-old veteran’s football life he’s playing Thursday-Thursday games back to back.
“I’ve never done it,” Brown said Sunday, looking around the Seahawks’ locker room before practice. “Nobody I know in here has done it.”
The Cowboys have done this before. This is the seventh time in 10 seasons Dallas had its annual home game on Thanksgiving and then will play on the following Thursday. The Cowboys also did it in 2021, ‘19, ‘18, 17, ‘16 and ‘14. Prescott is 4-1 in the second game of back-to-back Thursdays.
It’s a seeming intangible, but it’s quite tangible right now for Wagner. The 33-1/2-year-old, six-time All-Pro linebacker is meticulous in how he maintains, recovers and prepares his body between games.
“It’s been weird,” Wagner said, “because like last week, trying to fit what you typically do in a full week into some days is tough. You have this week where you have a holiday, you’re working on the weekend, some places are closed if you want to use them. People’s schedules are different on the weekends.
“I think it’s just part of being a professional and figuring out how to maximize your time. It’s our job to make sure we’re ready, whenever we play.”
That’s the message Wagner imparted to his teammates Sunday.
Which was a Wednesday.
This story was originally published November 26, 2023 at 7:11 PM.
