By the time the Seattle Seahawks had finished pummeling the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII, their defense wasn’t just considered the best in the league, it was entering historically-great territory.
But in Sunday’s 30-21 loss to the San Diego Chargers, the Seahawks defense, which had again been impressive against the Packers to open the season, looked downright pedestrian, to borrow Doug Baldwin’s favorite derogatory term.
“We know who we are, and we know that Sunday wasn’t Seahawks football, especially on defense,” linebacker K.J. Wright said. “We’ve just got to go out there and prove to ourselves that we can bounce back from a loss. We know how good we are; we’re one of the best defenses in the NFL, and we’ve got an opportunity to show it.”
And if the Seahawks hope to again subdue a Peyton Manning-led Broncos offense, that defensive turnaround will have to happen in a hurry. Responding well from last week’s loss isn’t optional for Seattle’s defense if the Seahawks want to avoid a 1-2 start. It would be one thing to rebound with a strong performance against, say, Jacksonville, but the schedule dictates that the Seahawks have no choice but to try turning things around against a Hall-of-Fame-caliber quarterback and his high-scoring offense.
“I don’t think we felt like we played like we can,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “… So they’re really anxious to bounce back and show a really good game. It just happens to be the Denver Broncos and Peyton, so it’s going to be pretty hard.”
Seattle’s defense did lose some key players in the offseason, but the nucleus is still intact, meaning there shouldn’t be much fall-off in 2014, last week’s game notwithstanding. But part of repeating last season’s success is maintaining the mental edge that made Seattle’s defense so lethal.
Earlier this week, safety Earl Thomas talked about getting “my championship spirit back after that loss.” Of course that would imply that Thomas, at least to some degree, lost said championship spirit. If you looked Thomas in the eye and listened to him talk about football prior to this season, there was no doubting that the fire is still there, and that money and a Super Bowl ring haven’t at all changed his desire to be great. But his admission that something was missing serves as a good reminder of just how hard it is for even the most locked-in players to be at their very best every week.
“That game was so weird,” Thomas said. “It was different. It just felt funny out there — even my body language when I watch myself on film. I have no regrets from the game, but one thing I can say, just my technique and my posture wasn’t aggressive. I just think that’s part of my mindset that I need to turn on.”
So getting the mindset right is step one, but just important are some physical things the Seahawks need to clean up if they’re going to look more like the team that held the Broncos to eight points in the Super Bowl, and less like the one that gave up 30 last week. Defensive coordinator Dan Quinn said he counted 12 missed tackles in the Chargers game, which explains how San Diego had so much success while mostly working their way down the field with short passes.
Even at their best, the Seahawks will give up completions to offenses like San Diego’s and Denver’s. Seattle won’t let an opponent beat them over the top for big plays, but they’ll happily let a team dink and dunk its way down the field assuming that they’ll eventually either force a punt, or force a mistake that leads to a turnover. There’s no better example of that than last year’s Super Bowl, a game that saw Manning set a Super Bowl record for pass completions while only leading the Broncos on one scoring drive.
“The way our defense is structured, those passes are going to be open, but the key is when they catch it is to punish them and not let them get extra yards after that,” Wright said. “If they catch it, like you saw last week, and get 13 yards, they can do that all game. But if they catch it and go down right then, we get to third down and we get off the field.”
If the Seahawks can tackle like they did in the Super Bowl, and get a pass rush resembling the one that had Manning rattled in that game — “If you affect the quarterback, you affect the offense,” defensive end Cliff Avril said — they’ll create the turnovers that have eluded them in the first two games, and they’ll improve on third down. A title isn’t at stake this time around, but what is, at least to a degree, is the reputation of the league’s best defense.
“This defense as a whole — you’re talking about three teams in the history of football: the ‘85 (Chicago) Bears, the 2000 (Baltimore) Ravens and these guys (the Seahawks) — that’s where these guys ranked in defensive football,” Broncos offensive coordinator Adam Gase told reporters in Denver. “These guys are one of the best teams to ever play and they are trying to show it again this year.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com.
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