Seattle Seahawks: 3 Big takeaways from win vs. Cardinals in Week 4
By Samuel Teets
The Seattle Seahawks defeated the Arizona Cardinals thanks to a game winning field goal, but the game shouldn’t have been that close.
The Seattle Seahawks were celebrating after Sebastian Janikowski‘s game winning field goal on Sunday, but they should recognize just how fortunate they were. They almost lost to the winless Arizona Cardinals, pulling out a 20-17 victory by the skin of their teeth. If Seattle had lost, the defeat would’ve been so disheartening and telling that I doubt they would have been able to recover and have any chance of making the playoffs.
But and win is a win, and after staring 0-2 the Seahawks have won their last two games to even up their record. The playoffs aren’t out of reach, but the team needs to play a lot better if they hope to do anything with the rest of their season.
With that in mind, let’s look at the big takeaways from Seattle’s win in Week 4.
The passing attack hasn’t settled down yet
The Cardinals defense was ranked 19th in the NFL going into the game on Sunday and had been allowing 261 passing yards per game. Russell Wilson only threw for 172 yards with an average of 6.6 yards per completion. To be fair, he only threw the ball 26 times and completed 19 of those attempts. That’s a completion percentage of just over 73 percent, which is really good.
What’s not good is that Wilson, one of the best quarterbacks in the league, had fewer pass attempts than Josh Rosen. Rosen was making his first NFL start and had 27 passing attempts. Wilson, who I’ve said has been taken with doing way to much at times for his team, now needs to have the opportunity to do more. Especially against a defense that has struggled like Arizona’s, Wilson should be allowed to toss the ball around more.
Wilson also threw for fewer than 200 yards last week and Seattle won then as well. If the key to winning is to rely a lot less on Wilson and a lot more on the running game, then that’s what Seattle should do. It just seems like the team will need to find a better balance between between the running and passing attacks. If they can only barely beat the winless Cardinals with a last second field goal, maybe the offense needs to be adjusted.