Which Seahawk is most primed for a bounce-back season?

It’s hard to find a good bounce-back candidate on a team full of high performers. Doesn’t stop us from trying.

The fRWanchise

Russell Wilson had a 92.6 passer rating, threw for a career-high 4,219 yards and had twice as many touchdowns as interceptions. Most NFL teams would kill* for those numbers from their quarterback.

*hopefully just flies and mosquitoes and stuff

How is Wilson even under consideration, then? Well. His interceptions (11) hit a career high, his Y/A (7.7) reached a career low, as did his TD percentage (3.8). Some costly missteps can be traced to injury, but some of them was just bad quarterbacking. He made bad throws, bad reads, bad decisions. More than before. Doesn’t make him bad. Just means he wasn’t at his peak, or even at his average level of performance over the course of the whole season. If you caught Wilson himself in a honest moment, he might tell you as much.

Rawls Royce: not just meant for the garage

Thomas Rawls looked in 2015 like a budding star. 5.6 yards per carry, several “did he just do that” moments, 906 yards from scrimmage in essentially half a season.

That 5.6 became 3.2 a season later, as Rawls struggled to accumulate half those yards (445). Again, on-and-off health played a part. But for long stretches, it was hard to find the 2015 version of him on the field.

Jeremy Lane is still on the team

Although he appeared in all 16 games last season — a relief — Lane’s coverage skills were panned as deficient by many analysts. It didn't help his cause that the stat sheet went silent.

In 2014 and 2015, Lane tallied two interceptions and 10 passes defensed. All in part-time work spanning just 13 games. In 2016 those numbers fell to zero and three respectively, in more playing time.

(He did snag a pick in the Atlanta playoff loss in January. If you’re looking for a reason to hope.)

Jermaine “Red Zone” Kearse

And then there’s Jermaine Kearse, whose inconsistent and sometimes frankly baffling season has been documented all spring and summer long. Rather than recite the sorry stats again, you’ve got two excellent pieces of reading material linked below.

John Gilbert on Kearse’s statistically atrocious second half

Coleman Crawford with the definitive JK defense and film study

John and Coleman’s pieces aren’t designed to sway you one way or the other, but they do offer a little educatin’ and a little speculatin’ in the suddenly small space of time between now and football games.