At least the Seahawks finally scored points on grass

The poor start to 2017 continued yesterday for the Seattle Seahawks, with the team dropping another early season road game on a natural grass field while playing in a scorching hot environment. With the loss the team’s record falls to 1-2 and continues a pattern of sorts, following up on the team’s 2014 week 2 loss to the San Diego Chargers, and its 2016 week 2 loss to the Los Angeles Ram. The Hawks had some ugly moments in losing to the Tennessee Titans yesterday, but may have finally managed to shake one demon: the inability to score while playing on a natural grass field.

Going back to the end of the 2015 season, the Seahawks offense had managed to score more than 10 points on grass only one time in six games. The lack of production from the offense on natural fields over that timeframe included poor showings such as putting just three points on the scoreboard against the Rams, five points against the Bucs, six points against the Cardinals and just nineteen points in two games at Lambeau.

The team’s ability to score in such games was so bad that heading into yesterday’s game against the Titans, the Hawks had averaged just 9.3 points per game over the last six games played on a grass field. That’s even when including the 25 points the team scored against the San Francisco 49ers in the finale last year, which represents over 44% of the 56 points scored in those game. What that means is that during that timeframe, the team was averaging just 6.2 points per game when playing on natural grass against an opponent that did not end the year with the second overall pick.

With any luck, the ability of the team to put points on the board while playing on a grass field continue because the Seahawks have several more games slated to be played on grass over the remainder of the season. The next matchup on the schedule that will be played on a grass field is in two when when they take on the Los Angeles Rams in week 5, and after that the team will not play again on grass for over a month until week 10. However, beginning with the week 10 matchup against the Arizona Cardinals the Hawks are set to play three games on natural grass over a five week span, including week 12 against the Niners and week 14 against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Of the games the team will play on grass this field, Green Bay and Tennessee are expected to have been the most difficult matchups. However, Jacksonville has shown signs of life and it’s always a crap shoot when playing division opponents on the road, so we the team can’t take anything for granted, especially with the inconsistency the team has displayed both offensively and defensively over the first three games of the year.