Seattle Seahawks vs. Atlanta Falcons Preview & Prediction | PFF

Seattle Seahawks vs. Atlanta Falcons Preview & Prediction | PFF

The PFF Plus holiday sale is going on right now. Use the promo code holiday30 to get yourself 30% off a PFF Plus subscription. That means that you get everything. The grades, the premium stats, all of the fantasy tools, all the betting tools, all the draft tools. It’s everything a football fan could want year round. Holiday 30. That’s what gets you 30% off that year-long PFF plus subscription at subscribe.pff.com. [Music] For the Seattle Seahawks, they’re traveling to Atlanta to take on the Falcons this week. For Seattle, obviously coming off of an easy win last week against a Minnesota Vikings team that, let’s face it, basically just gave them the game as as we have seen from Minnesota Vikings quarterbacks throughout this season. Um, what do you think about the Seahawks? What we could take away from last week and then how that goes into their matchup against the Falcons this week? Um, honestly, I don’t think there’s a ton that you can take away from last week considering the matchup they have and how much Minnesota is struggling on offense and against a defense like Seattle’s. They just weren’t going to have a whole lot of success, especially when they’re turning the ball over the way they were. So, I think Seattle’s defense obviously a threat to Atlanta’s offense and Kirk Cousins and what they’re trying to accomplish on that side. But, I’m going to look at the other side. I’m going to look at Sam Darnold against this Atlanta Falcons. Jeff Olrich led defense that is blitzing at the second highest rate in the NFL. Sam Darnold this season for the year has the seventh highest uh passing grade in the NFL against the Blitz. However, over the last three weeks, he started to struggle a little bit. He’s got the fourth worst passing grade against the Blitz. Three turnover worthy plays against the Blitz in that stretch. We saw it against the Rams with the different looks they were throwing on him. And he look, he didn’t grade very well against Minnesota last week. And that’s the one team ahead of the Falcons in blitz rate. I would expect Jeff to continue to be aggressive for for the most part this year. He’s really been aggressive in attacking quarterbacks with all the different pass rushers and all the different looks that he has. The Atlanta Falcons, they’re eighth in the in the league in pass rush grade and pressure rate when they blitz. Okay, first in the league in sacks. They have the most sacks in the league this year when blitzing. I believe that’s 23 sacks and 10th in pass rush win rate. So, not only do they have better individual guys rushing the pass through this year, Leonard Floyd, Jaylen Walker, James Pierce, Brandon Doris, Arnold Evetti, all these guys. It’s a really good group of defensive linemen, but the way that Jeff is creating pressure could create a problem for Seattle’s offense. Seattle is 28th in pass blocking grade when a blitz is on. Sam Darnold has been really good because he’s been able to get the ball out quicken quicker than ever, but the onus is really on him to beat the blitz as opposed to relying on his offensive line picking it up. They haven’t done a great job, especially in the in the interior of picking up blitzes. So, I think that’s going to be a battle, especially if Seattle finds themselves in third and long situations. Sam Darnold versus Jeffrey. Can he make the right decisions? And he hasn’t really been doing that at a high rate the last three weeks. Can he make the right decisions against Jeff’s uh uh blitz packages? If he can do that, I think Seattle’s going to be just fine on offense. It would it would really behoove them to play well on early downs, get the run game going, and stay out of all those exotic blitzes. But if they get in third and seven, third and eight too consistently, you could see a real battle between Darnold and the Falcons could win that battle with the way they’ve been creating pressure this year. I agree that side of the ball is is going to be closer than I feel like I’ve seen most people talk about so far this week. I think people just look at this matchup and they just go, “Oh, okay.” Like easy one for Seattle. And I do think that that side of things, especially with Atlanta at home, um could even go in their favor and keep this game a lot closer than most people would expect. The the line on this one is the Seahawks favored by seven even though they are on the road here. But unfortunately, Dalton, when I look at the other side of the ball, outside of Bejian Robinson having a crazy game where they’re just I mean, I’ll throw Tyler Algier in there as well where they just dominate on the ground and they have an extremely explosive day uh on the ground. I don’t really know how the Falcons passing attack is able to best what Seattle has boasted over this season, but especially especially over the last month. When you look at Kurt Cousins, you pointed this out last week on throws of just 10 or more yards, 1 for seven, 19 yards, 51.5 passing grade. That was last week. When you look at Kirk Cousins this entire season, whether he’s come in relieved for Michael Penn or when he’s been the starter when Pennix has gone out, 39.9 PFF passing grade under pressure. Dalton, since week nine, can you tell me which team has the most total pressures in the NFL? It’s like a wild guess and say the Seattle Seahawks cuz it’s wrong. It’s the Seattle Seahawks. Don’t love that. So now we have a quarterback who doesn’t really have the juice in his arm to make up for, you know, some of those quick tight windowed throws or even the ones deep down the field, right? Let’s say that Seattle’s getting aggressive. They’re sending a lot of people at the pocket. They want to pressure, although they don’t have to cuz their defensive line’s been fantastic. But let’s say Kirk goes, “Okay, well now I got some wide receivers I could take chances on.” He has not been good throwing the ball 10 or more yards down the field this season. And then you’re in a situation where he doesn’t have a lot of mobility to him either. So, and I think you pointed this out on Monday, the Falcons really struggled in pass protection last week, too. I I I think that the the side of the ball that you talked about could be really close. That’s going to be a fun matchup there with Seattle’s offense versus uh the Atlanta Falcons defense. The other side of things, I think that part of it could get really ugly. I’m going to go with Seattle 24, Falcons 13. It’s hard for me to imagine again outside of Robinson and LG are just really taking control that the Falcons are able to move the ball the way that they need to to keep up in this one. Yeah. No, I I agree with you. I have it a little closer. I have a 24-7 Seattle. I do think the run game um could have a little bit of success early for Atlanta, but if they get in obvious passing situations, they have a real problem. And Drake London on a Wednesday today, not practicing. Um not sure if he’s going to play this week. It would help them a lot to keep this game close having your best receiver out there. But I do think Atlanta’s defense can play well for a while in this game. It’s just that offensively, you’re right, not explosive enough to attack this defense on a consistent enough level to win this game. I also think it could be a little closer just because you have the kind of west coast to east coast early game bit there playing at 10:00 at you know Pacific time there for Seattle in Atlanta. So that could be one thing that you maybe they get off to a sluggish start, but eventually I think Seattle’s just a better team

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Seattle Seahawks and The Atlanta Falcons.

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