SEATTLE — Through the first four weeks of the 2021 NFL season, the Seattle Seahawks had run just 211 offensive plays, the lowest in the league. But only the Chiefs (6.9) had averaged more yards per play than did the Seahawks. Sounds good, right? Well, not really. The Seahawks also had a third-down conversion rate of 33.3%, tied with the Lions and Jaguars for the fourth-worst conversion rate in the league, ahead of only the Jaguars, Broncos, Washington, and the Bears. And Seattle’s 13 third-down conversions tied them with Chicago and Washington for the lowest in the league.
Somehow, with all that, only five teams — the Chiefs, Cardinals, Cowboys, Bills, and Buccaneers — had scored more touchdowns than Seattle’s 14, tied with the 49ers.
If you’re thinking that this sounds like the NFL’s ultimate feast-or-famine offense this season, you would be right. In boxing parlance, the Seahawks are sluggers. Like George Foreman against Muhammad Ali in the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire, Foreman looked to come out and do what he had always done — make a few devastating punches to his opponent’s head and body, and wait for his opponent to crumble.
Ali, on the other hand, was a boxer. His determinism was to move around the ring to avoid direct contact with Foreman’s formidable strength, and tie Foreman up in the ropes (the famous “Rope-a-Dope”), further deflecting the full impact of Foreman’s power. It worked, as Foreman tired himself out early in the fight, and Ali, as boxers will do, waited for the right moment to attack, knocking Foreman out in the eighth round.
The moral of the story: When sluggers go up against boxers, they generally lose.
Against the Rams in a Thursday night 26-17 loss that took them to 2-3 on the season, the Seahawks stayed mired in the same old paradigm. The team that came into this game dead last in the league in time of possession per drive (2:12) and 10th-best in points per drive (2.31) had the same old combination of explosive plays and a rhythmless offense. They improved a bit on their previous 33.3% third-down conversion rate, kicking it up to 40% with Russell Wilson at quarterback, and Geno Smith replacing Wilson after Wilson suffered a sprained finger.
They had 60 offensive plays to the Rams’ 67, and gained 5.9 yards per play as opposed to the Rams’ 7.1. A lot of that 7.1 was on a 68-yard pass from Matthew Stafford to DeSean Jackson in which at least one Seattle pass defender completely whiffed in coverage. The Seahawks had eight plays of 15 or more yards, and the Rams had the same, but even with Stafford overthrowing multiple targets on deep throws to his left, the Rams just had more offensive rhythm against Seattle’s beleaguered defense.
“We’ve been pretty big-play oriented,” Carroll told me after the game, when I asked about the boom-or-bust nature of Seattle’s offense. “That’s what we always want to be. We always want to be explosive. It didn’t feel like we were unable to protect the ball — we ran the ball some. The game was there for us, until suddenly, it wasn’t. Things changed, and we needed to complement it with our play on defense. And we weren’t able to do that.”
The game was there for the Seahawks, and suddenly, it wasn’t. Sounds a lot like the slugger’s curse, where if the haymakers don’t work, eventually you run out of time, and you run out of gas. And then, you’re primed for the knockout.