The five most interesting matchups on the Seahawks 2022 schedule

The schedule is out, and there are some nifty storylines to keep this season intriguing for the Seattle Seahawks.

Here are the five most interesting games Seattle will play this year. Not in how they affect the standings, because let’s face it who cares this season. These? These are for fun.

Week 1: Denver Broncos

Obviously the most interesting game of the entire season, the NFL kindly obliged by making it an opening week Monday Night affair.

The Bad: Russell Wilson, prime time, at the beginning of the season.

The Good: Wilson could be without what would have been his top-two receiving threats of last year. Noah Fant is now with Seattle, and Jerry Jeudy’s legal status is suddenly up in the air with a no-bail arrest made this week. These things don’t tend to affect NFL games all that often, but if it does, Wilson finds himself with significantly less pass-catching talent than he had a year ago.

Week 4: Detroit Lions

Jared Goff didn’t play in the matchup against the Seahawks last year, but is historically very good at throwing to Quandre Diggs. Seattle’s most complete game of 2021 came against the hapless Lions, and if there’s one team that this roster could do work against regardless the quarterback, it’s Detroit.

Week 6: Arizona Cardinals

Seattle indeed gets a game against Arizona within the DeAndre Hopkins suspension. It’s at home, too, which is fantastic because the opportunity to play a Cardinals team without Hopkins while not losing three players to injury in Glendale is a good thing.

It will be just the second divisional game for the Hawks, and the first against an Arizona franchise that is not without its share of drama right now. Kyler Murray is offseasonally weird, and they’re just never a consistently good team. Should be interesting.

Week 12: Las Vegas Raiders

The Seahawks played against Chandler Jones and Davante Adams in 2021. Now they play them again, on the same team. For all the years of playing the Raiders in the preseason, this game should come right in the middle of a playoff push for Las Vegas and will be more loaded and meaningful than Seattle wants. On Jones:

Jones now has 16.5 sacks in 11 career games against the Seahawks, the most of any other NFL franchise in his career. He has 12.5 sacks in six career games at Lumen Field and is now tied for 10^th all-time in sacks at the venue, which opened in 2002.

The Raiders also traded away Yannick Ngakoue for CB Rock Ya-Sin as they build a very different defense this season.

Week 17: New York Jets

This is my personal favorite matchup of the year.

D.J. Reed! Draft dream Sauce Gardner! Jamal Adams revenge game! George Fant reverse revenge game!

(Did you know that Jacob Martin, after being traded to the Houston Texans in the Jadeveon Clowney deal, is now with the Jets?)

The point is, this game has easily the most amount of former players on each other’s roster, and interesting players at that. D.J. Reed was the free agent signing I most wanted the team to retain, and is just an awesome dude, left in style, and remains vocal and funny on social media. I wish him absolutely nothing but the best, and there are so many fun on-field matchups, storylines, and recognizable names that a Week 17 which may involve absolutely nothing to play for, should simply be a really fun game. Is Drew Lock better than Zach Wilson? Can he even throw on these corners? Will Jamal try to do something crazy?

Looking forward to the little things this season.