Lawful months a ways from justifying calls from the peanut gallery to “Let Russ Prepare dinner,” ?Russell Wilson? and the Seattle Seahawks appeared fully cooked on Saturday evening.
In Seattle’s 30-20 wild-card loss to the divisional rival Los Angeles Rams, the Seahawks mustered 11 first downs and 278 entire yards towards L.A. and reworked ethical 2 of 14 third-down makes an attempt.
Seattle used to be level-headed in the ball sport in the 2nd half no topic its paltry manufacturing. Nonetheless after kicking a discipline aim and cutting L.A.’s lead to three on the first drive of the third quarter, Seattle then punted on four consecutive drives, consuming the ball ethical 21 yards on 17 plays, selecting up ethical two first downs and never reaching midfield. Meanwhile, Los Angeles and an injured ?Jared Goff? stretched their lead from three aspects to 17. All this, while the Rams’ famous particular person defender, ?Aaron Donald?, used to be sidelined by a rib rupture.
Wilson and Co. did no longer clutch excellent thing about Donald’s absence and to accumulate up on offense till it used to be too late in the fourth quarter.
“We compulsory to accumulate going there,” Wilson acknowledged, per The Seattle Times. “The game roughly felt former for us in a formulation — we roughly flatlined. We compulsory to accumulate going and receive that happen. And the following ingredient you know, we did no longer.”
Assign for a fundamentally excellent improvised touchdown pass to ?DK Metcalf? in the first half, Wilson had an especially uncomfortable day, watching the Seahawks’ season flat-line beneath a crush of Rams sackers. Wilson’s mistakes were plentiful: He threw a salvage-six on a WR computer screen screen supposed for Metcalf, took five sacks and performed ethical 40.7 p.c of his passes, a season-low. In step with ESPN, Wilson posted a 17.6 QBR in the loss to the Rams, the fifth-worst efficiency of his profession.
Unheard of might perhaps perhaps furthermore be blamed on Seattle’s offensive line, which allowed Wilson to be forced on a season-worst 43.8 p.c of plays. Nonetheless for a QB who’s handled stress in the pocket and off the discipline successfully his entire profession, that’s no excuse.
“I despise this sense, clearly,” Wilson acknowledged. “We felt indulge in we had a probability nowadays. … I hoped for us so as to do away with it all, and we did no longer construct that.”
Wilson and the Seahawks appeared destined for glory in the season’s early-goings. As Seattle got out to a 5-0 originate, calls for Wilson to be atop the MVP conversation elevated, and justifiably so; Wilson used to be completing 72.8 p.c of his passes and bolstered a 19-3 TD-to-INT ratio on a staff main the NFC standings.
Nonetheless then the turnovers came in droves, the losses soon followed, and Seattle’s offense never recovered the promise of its early-season success.
As an alternative of cooking up a Sizable Bowl speed, the Seahawks are heading dwelling in early January for the 2nd time in three seasons and lacking out on the NFC title sport for the third straight time in the postseason.
“We gotta be better,” Wilson acknowledged. “We gotta accumulate strategies to do away with all these matchups.”
