The Seahawks lost to the Steelers because they couldn’t tackle – especially on the back end of their defense. While Devon Witherspoon made one impressive TFL in the third quarter, otherwise he was completely hapless trying to bring down any ball-carriers for Pittsburgh. The same case was true for practically everybody else on Seattle’s secondary. Pro Football Focus agrees, giving them all gruesome grades as tacklers this week.
On the other side of the ball, the biggest issue was bad pass protection. While Geno Smith was able to mitigate the worst of it with a great game, all that pressure kept a low lid on what the offense was able to do. As is appropriate, PFF gave exceptionally poor pass blocking grades to the Seahawks offensive line, especially their offensive tackles.
Here are the top and bottom five performers on both sides of the ball this week, according to PFF’s grades.