Seahawks defense quickly rising up DVOA rankings after terrible start

As has been the case for the past couple of seasons, the Seattle Seahawks’ start to the season on defense was absolutely terrible. The low point was undoubtedly the consecutive road games against the Detroit Lions and New Orleans Saints, when they conceded a combined 84 points and over 950 yards of offense two teams missing several key skill position players.

Then we get to the two wins over the Arizona Cardinals and Los Angeles Chargers and it’s like a different unit showed up. Arizona was held out of the end zone and only put up 3 offensive points, while the Chargers’ 23 points came with the caveats of a safety, a garbage time touchdown, and a 33-yard touchdown drive off a turnover. They had a stretch of five consecutive possessions ending in punts, which compared to the September and early October Seahawks felt like an impossibility out of this group.

It’s through these two wins that Seattle’s defensive DVOA on Football Outsiders has shot up to 19th, and no team’s defensive DVOA has been better over the past two weeks than the Seahawks.

We’ve been here before with the Seahawks defense looking disorganized before much more stable play later on in the season, but this is a remarkably abrupt change that is a welcome sight to see. They’ve admittedly not been playing high-powered offenses over the past two weeks but those results are not worth discarding just because it’s not Kansas City or Buffalo on the other side of the field.

The New York Giants are 7th in offensive DVOA and rank top-10 both in passing and rushing. If the Seahawks can keep Daniel Jones (!!!) and Saquon Barkley in check on Sunday, we might be witnessing a young defense growing up fast.