The Seahawks may have lost a huge game on Thursday night, but we saw a whole lot to like on the field. The Cowboys are one of the most well-rounded teams in the NFL this season and a serious Super Bowl contender, and Seattle took them all the way down to the wire. Most encouraging was the performance by veteran quarterback Geno Smith, who had the best game of his career despite facing a near-constant onslaught by the Dallas pass rush. Some people believe Smith’s awesome outing secured himself the QB1 job, at least at the outset of next season.
We’re not quite there yet, but what this game does definitively prove is that these Seahawks can hang with the best teams in the league. However, they’re going to need to make some adjustments before they start actually beating opponents on that level. Most of those changes may need to be schematic in nature, because it’s hard to find places on this roster outside of the trenches that truly need to be upgraded. We can’t mock a new front office or coaching staff, so we have to do the best we can projecting how to get the right kind of help in next year’s draft.
Considering that they just dropped 35 points on a top-five defense that had their pass rush firing on all cylinders, we decided that their offensive personnel is perfectly fine where it is. Instead, we focused this mock draft entirely on defense. Here’s how it went down.