By Dave Boling The Spokesman-Review
What do you do when you have three secondary stars out with injury?
The Seattle Seahawks compensate by making a punching bag out Jacksonville Jaguars’ quarterback Trevor Lawrence (seven sacks and 16 quarterback hits).
What do you do when you have a receiver on the threshold of league eminence, like Jaxon Smith-Njigba, going against a secondary that leads the NFL in interceptions (10)?
You just keep feeding it to JSN – Just So Nice – who picks up 162 yards on eight catches.
And if you’re the 2025 Seahawks, and you have to travel across the country to play a one-loss Jaguars’ club coming off wins over San Francisco and Kansas City?
On the road? Well, all they do is win. This was the ninth straight road victory for the Seahawks, who haven’t lost on away turf for more than a calendar year (falling at Detroit, Sept. 30, 2024).
The surprising Jaguars had already won as many games as they did all last season, but on Sunday managed just a touchdown and two field goals in a 20-12 loss that lifted the Hawks to 4-2.
Especially given the diminished manpower in the secondary, the comfortable win by Seattle had to give fans any number of reasons to be optimistic.
Top questions asked at the start of the season involved 1) the potency of a receiving corps that had lost DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, and 2) the potential of free-agent quarterback Sam Darnold, who was taking over for departed Geno Smith.
Six games into the season, Smith-Njigba and Darnold have joined the league-elite batteries. Seriously.
This was the fourth game this season above 100 receiving yards for JSN. His connection with Darnold only appears to becoming more dialed in as the games stack up. If you care to extrapolate his early numbers, that puts him on a record-smashing pace of roughly 120 catches and nearly 2,000 receiving yards.
Detroit’s Calvin Johnson holds the all-time record with 1,964 receiving yards (2012, 16-game season). At his current average of 116 yards per game, JSN could hit 1,972 over the 17-game season.
So smooth, so quick out of his cuts, with such adhesive hands, Smith-Njigba has shown he can more than compensate for the departure of the veteran receivers. It just allows him to get more targets.
Julian Love, Devon Witherspoon and Riq Woolen were all ruled out in the secondary. But Lawrence never had the chance to feast on deep passes as he was harassed by Byron Murphy II (2 sacks, 4 hits), DeMarcus Lawrence (2 sacks, 5 hits), Uchenna Nwosu (1.5 sacks, 4 hits), along with Leonard Williams’s general bullish play on the interior.
Murphy set the tone for the game, sacking Lawrence on the first play, and then drawing a holding call on a Jaguar lineman on the second play. Most of the pressure the Hawks applied was generated by a four-man rush, allowing seven others to spread across the secondary.
And on one play that got called back, Leonard Williams pursued from deep in the interior all the way to the sideline to track down a receiver after a completion. Williams is in his 11th season, is 6-5, 310 pounds, but had to have sprinted 25-30 yards to make a diving stop.
That kind of hustle has inspired the rest of the defense, surely the front four, a group that has become a reliable force.
With the kind of front-seven play the Seahawks now present on a weekly basis, a return to health of the secondary should the lift the entire unit to elite status.
Giving up 38 points in the 38-35 loss to Tampa Bay, at home, is the only black mark against the Seattle defense that has, otherwise, held opponents to an average of fewer than 16 points a game.
Historically, a win over Jacksonville deserves minor acclaim. But this was legit. The Jags might have been a little hung over from an emotional win over Kansas City on Monday.
Even so, to dominate while shorthanded was an impressive accomplishment.
But now, the huge mystery of recent Seahawks teams remains their trouble winning games at home.
Winning 10 of 11 on the road since the start of 2024, they’ve gone 4-8 at home.
They next play Monday against Houston in the late start (7 p.m.) at Lumen Field.
Maybe the Hawks should try to fly over to Spokane and spend the night before there, to simulate the road atmosphere for a home game.
Short flight. No time zone issues.
They could likely get a good rate on rooms.