Seahawks beat Bears: Looking back at the Pro Football Focus Signature Stats of the week

This season, we'll be partnering up with Jim Seki from Pro Football Focus to bring Field Gulls readers a few "signature stats" for the Seahawks and their opponents each week. PFF's Signature Stats are excellent resources -- tracking production with stats like elusiveness rating, pass rush productivity, accuracy percentage, yards per pass route run, and a few others in particular -- are some of my favorites. But, they've got a ton worth looking at and we'll get a few of them each week.

Let's take a look back at the Seahawks win over the Bears. Seki's notes are in italics, and mine follow.

Signature Stats

-- Even though Russell Wilson was under pressure on 51.4% of his dropbacks (highest for QBs this week), his 81.8% accuracy while under pressure is extremely admirable. His four throwaways were also the most in Week 3.

Wilson continues to be one of the most-pressured quarterbacks in the NFL and that likely won't change quickly. Not only does the Seahawks' offensive line tend to leak like a sieve, Wilson's bouts with indecision and his unwillingness to climb the pocket and throw from the mud there could contribute to this stat. Instead of stepping up and letting the pass rush go by him on the outside, like many quarterbacks do, he often tries to escape outwards with spin moves or jukes instead when that rush comes. It's something to monitor, but not likely something that will change much.

Regardless, the accuracy percentage (which eliminates dropped passes, throw aways, spiked balls, batted passes, and passes where the quarterback was hit while they threw the ball) is still very solid, which is good to see. Wilson continues to be among the league leaders in throwaways.

-- Overshadowed by Graham, Kearse quietly had a solid game catching all six of his targets and finishing the week as the 13th-best yards/route run for receivers at 2.62.

Yeah, Jermaine Kearse really did quietly have himself a game with six catches (on six targets) for 76 yards. A few of his catches were off target too, and he reeled them in nonetheless.

-- Seahawks rank 20th in pass block efficiency this week at 78.2. On the year they rank 24th at 74.1 with six QB hits and 32 hurries allowed.

No surprise here. Seattle has struggled with pass pro -- often getting beat one-on-one -- and again, this isn't likely to change a whole lot.

-- After feasting on the Bears, Avril (17.8) and Bennett (14.6) are now 1-2 in pass rush productivity for 4-3 DEs. Between them they have 30 total pressures

This is similar to what happened last year -- Seattle got tons of hits and hurries but a sub-par number of sacks. The Seahawks' first goal is to get the quarterback "off his spot" and to make him move, though, so this makes some sense. The idea behind this is that by forcing the quarterback to move, it highly disrupts the timing of quick plays and can affect angles and throwing lanes for the opposing QB.

That said, you'd like to see them convert more of those hits and hurries into sacks, because sacks are drive killers.

Either way, Bennett and Avril are off to a strong start.

-- Rookie Frank Clark has only played 18 run snaps on the year but his 11.1% run stop rate is sixth-best.

The usage of Clark has been a little confusing, particularly after he was so dominant in the preseason, but they may just be easing him in to action and hoping to not ask him to do too much this early. Either way, to my eye he's played well, and I know Pete Carroll has talked about getting him more and more snaps as the year goes on.

-- Ahtyba Rubin is really holding down the defensive interior—his 14.8 run stop rate is fifth-best among 4-3 DTs thus far. To provide some context, Mebane finished the year with nine stops, good for a 6.8 run stop rate, 53rd among DTs. This season, Rubin already has eight.

I have not watched Rubin closely but this is good to hear.