Field Gulls
The Seattle Seahawks have now gone consecutive games without allowing a touchdown – a rare feat in the NFL. They’ve beaten their last two opponents by a combined score of 63 to 9, emerging as the biggest bullies of the second half.
And it’s not going to slow down just yet, either.
With Daniel Jones going down for the season in Week 14, the Indianapolis Colts are in serious danger of missing the playoffs after starting 7-1.
It also puts Seattle in position to do something that has happened just six times in the last 25 years.
It’s been seven years since an NFL team went over two games without allowing a touchdown. That was the 2018 New England Patriots. The Seahawks have never done three. That’s up for grabs on Sunday, with a defense that will be playing its second ever full game with all of its starters, and a Colts team that will certainly struggle to move the ball.
Riley Leonard will likely be the quarterback for Indianapolis as they come to Lumen Field. He was drafted in the 6th round this year out of Notre Dame, but I actually liked him more than a couple of the other prospects, especially Dillon Gabriel, who went ahead of him.
In his first action, Leonard went 18/29 with one INT for 145 yards. It’s a fairly common rookie/emergency stat line in that he had a better rating than his predecessor but a much worse average per attempt.
That’s a bad recipe against Seattle. Primarily because it won’t work to keep everything short and safe to protect the quarterback AND get any efficiency out of their runaway best feature in RB Jonathan Taylor. The Seahawks are already elite against running backs – they just held the Atlanta Falcons to their lowest rushing total in five games.
In three and a half quarters with Leonard at the helm, the Colts scored one touchdown in garbage time down 23. It was this cute little run:
A little blown away by the optimism some Colts fans have in the immediate aftermath of Daniel Jones’ injury. They’re in a complete freefall and didn’t do much against an above-average Jacksonville defense, and yet “we will be okay”?
Regardless, the Seahawks head into next week with just monstrous momentum on defense. There are one or two All-Pro type gamewreckers at each level of the defense right now, resulting in the turnover palooza we’ve witnessed the last two games.
Again, the defense is just not very nice:
Granted these have not been the elite crop of the NFL, but that’s precisely the point here isn’t it? Bad quarterbacks have been made to not enjoy football against the Seattle MOB Death Zone whatever you want to call the defense. Riley Leonard is neat. Not good enough.
Can the Seahawks chase down yet another thing that not even the 2013 defense could do, and get three consecutive games without a touchdown allowed?
It’s as good a shot as they might...
