The hope for the Seahawks is that safety Quandre Diggs will be back from his high ankle sprain for the wild-card game against Philly’s depleted receiver corps. If that’s not the case, safety play rockets to the top of Seattle’s list of potentially fatal flaws. If Diggs is in, we must turn our attention to an offensive line that has been a serious issue, especially since left tackle Duane Brown suffered a meniscus (knee) injury in Week 16.
Brown won’t play against the Eagles’ dangerous defensive front in the wild-card round, which leaves George Fant to deal with that. Fant has allowed two sacks and 20 total pressures in just 221 pass-blocking snaps this season, as opposed to Brown, who has allowed one sack and 17 total pressures in 451 pass-blocking snaps. Seattle’s leader among its tackles in pass-blocking snaps is right tackle Germain Ifedi, which presents its own set of problems. The 2016 first-round pick has never lived up to his draft capital, and he hasn’t done so in 2019, either — instead, he’s allowed six sacks, 50 pressures, and has racked up 13 total penalties on 660 pass-blocking snaps this season.
Teams don’t even have to blitz the Seahawks for things to fall apart pretty much everywhere. Even the look of a blitz can send that line into unfortunate errors.
Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson are used to dealing with weak offensive lines — they’ve done so through most of Carroll’s tenure in Seattle and pretty much all of Wilson’s time in the Emerald City. But it has taken its toll. Since losing Super Bowl XLIX to the Patriots at the end of the 2014 season, the Seahawks have just two postseason wins.
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