Seahawks lose to Rams: Pro Football Focus Signature Stats

As we do every week, here are a few notes and tidbits on the Seahawks' loss to the Rams from Pro Football Focus' Jim Seki. His notes in italics, and my comments follow.

Signature Stats

-- Russell Wilson leads the league in deep passing touchdowns at 14, adding two more vs. the Rams. Pretty crazy since his 12.5% deep passing attempt rate is right at league average for quarterbacks.

Wilson's deep passing efficiency this year has really been off the charts. Seattle doesn't feel too much like one of those teams that chucks it up deep a lot like Pittsburgh and Arizona (and volume-wise, they're not, I don't think), but they have had a ton of success on deep shots nonetheless. Seattle is thriving in the vertical passing game -- Wilson is tied for second in the NFL right now for yards per attempt (8.4) behind only Carson Palmer, and he's completed 57 passes of 20 yards or more, 4th in the NFL behind Blake Bortles, Palmer, and Drew Brees (on significantly fewer attempts).

-- Wilson was under pressure on 44.9% of his drop-backs yesterday but that only ranked fifth. Tom Brady actually was top at 48.5%.

Yeah, the Rams did an excellent job of creating pressure and Seattle's offensive line didn't have a ton of answers for it. For whatever reason, looks like that was a common theme for Sunday's slate.

-- Garry Gilliam is second-to-last among tackles with a 87.2 PBE (pass blocking efficiency). Only Green Bay's Don Barclay was worse this week.

Not a good game for Gilliam, who got beat repeatedly by William Hayes, among others, as Stephen White illustrated here.

-- Seahawks are tied for second with 17 QB hurries allowed this week. Eagles led at 18.

Woof. Talk about regression. That's without Robert Quinn on the field too. Obviously having Alvin Bailey in there for Russell Okung kind of upset the balance the Seahawks had on the offensive line, but they were just not winning their one-on-one battles Sunday.

-- On the year, Sherman is allowing only 0.73 yards/coverage snap, third-best among cornerbacks.

That touchdown pass that Sherman gave up to Kenny Britt might've been the worst play of Sherman's career, honestly, but that does not trump or ruin what's been a great year for the Pro Bowler overall. Sherman missed the jam, and when you miss the jam in press coverage, it really hurts. He couldn't recover, and the Rams made a great play over the top with a perfectly timed and placed football and a nice catch. The stat above points to the fact too that it's always funny how much we focus on a small handful of plays that Sherman has given up rather than the enormous amounts of plays he stops. Dude is still elite.

Offense

-- Every starting O-lineman allowed multiple hurries, with RT Garry Gilliam giving up six.

Yeah, that kind of day again.

-- Seahawks halfbacks ran nine times between the left guard and center, nearly half of all rush attempts.

Seattle really struggled to get the run game going. This propensity to run between left guard and center may have been a gameplan thing, but the fact is, they never really got into running as much as they wanted to after falling behind early on.

Defense

-- Michael Bennett had the quietest +3.9 grade ever with two QB hurries and one defensive stop.

I saw a stat the other day that Seattle got zero sacks and zero quarterback hits. That's awful, especially considering the Rams have been known to have a very bad offensive line.

-- K.J. Wright with a nice +2.7 bounce-back game and was +2.1 in coverage. He and Bobby Wagner led the team with four defensive stops.

Seattle's linebacker seem to be improving as the year goes on, which is encouraging.

-- Kelcie McCray had a decent game filling in for Kam Chancellor, allowing two receptions on three targets (for only eight yards) with one pass defensed.

This trade is looking better and better.

-- Bruce Irvin is -5.8 over his last three games with only one defensive stop (none in the last two games) and four QB hurries. The first seven weeks of the season he had a higher defensive snaps played rate than normal and this could be having an effect coming down the stretch.

Yeah, Bruce has been very quiet of late. He'll be one of the more interesting free agent targets this offseason because I genuinely don't know how much interest he'll receive on the open market. Do teams see him as a SAM linebacker or a pass rusher? It seems unlikely that he'll be viewed as a top tier pass rusher, which could complicate what he fetches in the open market. Will be very interesting.

-- Defensive stops: Wright/Wagner 4, Mebane/McCray 3, Rubin/Sherman 2

-- QB hurries: Bennett 2, Cliff Avril/ Ahtyba Rubin/Bruce Irvin/Frank Clark 1

-- Coverage targets: Bobby Wagner 5, K.J. Wright/ Jeremy Lane 4, Richard Sherman/DeShawn Shead/Kelcie McCray 3