Seahawks 26 Chiefs 13: Winners and losers from Seattle’s penalty-filled preseason victory

The Seattle Seahawks improved to 3-0 on the preseason with a sloppy-as-hell 26-13 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. Seattle’s first-team offense looked sharp, and the defense made sure the Chiefs didn’t manage any chunk plays. In fact, Kansas City had no 10+ yard plays for the whole of the 1st half.

Here’s a rundown of the winners and losers from Friday night, which will likely be the last time we see many of the regular starters in action until week 1 at Green Bay on September 10th.

Winners

Russell Wilson

How can you not be excited to watch what Wilson does when the regular season starts? Another stellar performance from Russ, who averaged 10.5 (!!) yards per attempt and was wheeling and dealing some dimes down the field. This one to Jermaine Kearse was superb.

Chris Carson

He’s just on fire. Carson had 10 touches for 90 yards, including a 37-yard catch as Russell Wilson extended the play and found him matched up with linebacker Dee Ford along the left sideline. The fifth-to-last pick in the 2017 NFL Draft has lived up to the training camp hype, and today was his best game by far.

Eddie Lacy

I didn’t really understand the “Cut Lacy” sentiment from a small section of fans not pleased with his first two preseason games. Lacy had a couple of 11 yard runs and finished the night with 4 carries for 21 yards. These aren’t eye-popping numbers but you can see him running with power and the ability to bounce off of tacklers.

Offensive line

Did I really just write that? Okay, it wasn’t perfect given the penalties on Joeckel (holding), Ifedi (false start on 4th and 1), and Aboushi (holding), but pass protection held up and the run-blocking on the right side was very good when the first-team was out there. New starting left tackle Rees Odhiambo did give up the only sack of the game, but otherwise looked good to my untrained eye.

Darrell Bevell and the uptempo offense!

I’ve been a critic of the Seahawks offense’s habit of working at a slow pace, often needlessly burning timeouts at crucial moments of the game. When Wilson was out there, we saw a quicker tempo being set, the ball snapped with more than 15 seconds on the play clock, and I couldn’t have been happier. I’m not saying the Seahawks will make this their go-to system when the real games start, but seeing it function outside of a two-minute drill is sweet.

Tramaine Brock

Seattle’s newest secondary signing was really effective on the corner blitz, including a strip-sack of third-string QB Tyler Bray to give the Seahawks offense the ball back so that they could run the clock out. In coverage, I did see him allow a couple of catches, but he kept YAC to a minimum.

The health of the Seahawks

Pete Carroll confirmed this was an injury-free day for the Seahawks. Rejoice!

Austin Davis

By virtue of not crapping his pants, and in fact going 5-5 for 64 yards and the game-clinching touchdown to Tanner McEvoy, Davis has pulled himself right back into contention for the backup spot. Of course, he’s in the mix because...

Losers

Trevone Boykin

It is impossible to sugarcoat this performance. This was straight garbage virtually every snap Boykin dropped back to throw. He completed none out of six attempts and threw an interception right after Seattle got the ball back on the crazy blocked punt play. He was wildly inaccurate on a couple of downfield passes, and just looked so lost after playing well in the first two games. Boykin was abysmal from start to finish. I said last week that he should have the backup job locked up over Austin Davis, but he swung the door wide open.

Special Teams (except Blair Walsh)

Blair Walsh made all of his field goals and extra points, so he’s exempt. Special teams otherwise had a rough day, including allowing a 95-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to De’Anthony Thomas, as well as allowing the blocked punt, which turned out to benefit Seattle temporarily due to a mindless play by Kansas City’s Orson Charles. A few of Seattle’s 13 penalties were on special teams, including holds committed by Kasen Williams and David Bass. The Chiefs have a great ST unit, so I’m not too worried, but this was a messy showing.

Alex Collins

He didn’t get a single offensive touch and was only on special teams coverage. JD McKissic took his snaps at running back. I think the writing is officially on the wall now.

Amara Darboh

Darboh is in a weird spot. He didn’t play game 1 due to injury, he got injured on his only target in game 2, and his two targets on Friday were both incomplete. One pass was broken up as he had zero separation on Kenneth Acker, and the other one was thrown out of bounds. I might be being a little harsh on Darboh because Trevone Boykin was so pitiful, but tonight we needed to see Amara show something, and he didn’t. He is arguably the Seahawks receiver with the most to prove on Thursday, even though I’d be surprised/disappointed if the team released a third-round rookie on cutdown day.

Final Thoughts

• David Bass continues to play well, as he sacked Patrick Mahomes in the 3rd quarter as the rookie was searching for someone to throw to on 3rd down. I also saw him beat his man around the edge on a couple of other plays.
• The first-team defense was flying all over the place. Richard Sherman stonewalled Albert Wilson on a screen pass, KJ Wright stuffed Kareem Hunt on a 3rd and 1, Bobby Wagner was great in pass coverage as usual, and Earl Thomas was Earl Thomas. We do not need to see any one of these guys even dressed to play on Thursday against the Raiders.
• I don’t really think either JD McKissic or Mike Davis will make the team, but they’re both at least practice squad material. Davis is arguably good enough to start regularly on another roster.
• Thankfully Spencer Ware’s knee injury wasn’t as serious as feared. Apparently it’s a sprain and not a tear, so the Chiefs will be without his services for a couple of weeks, but we didn’t need to see yet another notable player lost for the season due to getting hurt in the preseason.
• 27 accepted penalties tonight, plus several more declined. We had a few ticky-tack calls, but a lot of it was just bad football. It’s a miracle that the game only lasted until about 11:15 PM ET.