At kickoff on Sunday afternoon, the temperature is expected to be a sticky 74 degrees in northeastern Florida. It’s literally a cross-country road trip for Seattle, as they will flip time zones and forecasts while trying to flip a switch on their young season.
At 3-2, no one is counting the Seahawks out of the playoff race yet. Still, with both losses against conference opponents, including one against a division rival, they will need to start putting together wins against teams competing for playoff spots in the NFC. Seattle has wins over Arizona and New Orleans in the NFC, and while its road win over Pittsburgh was impressive, it doesn’t do much for them in playoff tiebreakers. Now every person working for the Seahawks will rightly tell you that it’s way too early to worry about the playoffs or even playoff tiebreakers, but they need to make sure conference wins matter more than games against AFC opponents.
After last Sunday’s game saw them literally fumble (ok, it was a tipped pass, but still) a chance to knock off NFC rival Tampa Bay, Seattle will be looking to put together a win streak regardless of who they are facing. A matchup of two darkhorse contenders with nothing on the line against each other this early in the season and coming from opposite conferences should be intriguing to watch, even if it does not move the needle in their quest for the playoffs.
Seattle travels to Jacksonville to play the Jaguars at 10 a.m. Pacific time, or 1 p.m. local time, Sunday morning. With the weather expected to be unseasonably warm, Seattle is opting to wear white away jerseys and white pants to keep their players cool and calm under the afternoon sun. With high humidity expected, the white jerseys could be their saving grace in the sweltering atmosphere they will be playing in.
Jacksonville is planning to wear teal jerseys, and while their players will likely be acclimated to the local weather, it’s interesting they are not choosing to wear their away jerseys in the heat and humidity. Still, those folks living on the surface of the sun always look odd compared to those of us who live in a very mild climate.
Aside from the jerseys being used and how they might impact the matchup, there are a few fun storylines to watch in this game.
Mike Macdonald vs Liam Coen
The head coaches in this contest call plays for one of their starting units, and it should be a fun cat-and-mouse game of chess as Macdonald calls plays on defense for Seattle, and Jacksonville head coach Coen calls plays for his offense.
Macdonald likes to call a steady but aggressive scheme without blitzing much, as he gambles that his eleven athletes can outmaneuver their best eleven offensive players, and he is often correct. He will need to be at or close to his best in calling this game, however, as the Jaguars have an offense that can attack in a lot of different ways and is very different from any other offense they have played this season.
Tampa Bay presented many of the same challenges the Jaguars will face on Sunday, yet it did so without some key offensive players and still won a shootout on the road. Tampa even ran the Coen offense last season and likely still has some holdover plays. Still, with two of their top playmakers sitting out and multiple offensive linemen being absent, you really can’t take much from their film to compare to a year ago. Even if any plays they presented this season, when everyone was healthy, won’t help much, so Macdonald may have to work with what little film he has on Jacksonville and make adjustments on the fly.
Coen is a similarly steady, until he’s aggressive, kind of play caller, lulling the defense to sleep with short passes and runs before going deep for a kill shot. Coen has no problem going for a run on third down as his offense is among the highest graded rushing attacks, but he can also dial up some diabolical pass plays when the situation calls for it. He is still getting to know his players, and they are getting to know him, but they are all finding new ways to get along each week, and sooner or later, this offense is going to blow up. We hope it’s not this week.
Macdonald will likely be short-handed on his preferred starters again this week, and his defense was exposed, blitzing more than usual to cover up some weaknesses but ultimately highlighting others. Tampa QB Baker Mayfield is a little quicker to pull the trigger when he smells blood in the water, but Jacksonville QB Trevor Lawrence can uncork some scary passes when he feels like it. You can’t always tell if he is finding openings as quickly as some other QBs his age.
The coach who calls the better game on Sunday is likely to come away with a win, but sometimes the play on the field defies even the best play callers so that we will see.
Diet Gary Kubiak vs Jeff Hafley lite
On the other hand, you have two young, unproven coordinators calling plays for units not under the head coach’s command. Klint Kubiak is in his first season running the offense for Seattle, and while his scheme has produced a mixed bag of results so far, it’s tough to deny that his scheme has a shot at being very successful if he can find a way to bring it all together. Kubiak has a famous dad, Gary Kubiak, who was one of the most respected offensive coordinators during his career. Still, Kubiak the younger has not exactly made a name for himself in the big leagues just yet, and his time in Seattle is off to a questionable start.
Seattle nearly forgot to run the ball in week one, then seemed overly intent on running it in week two, and were so successful against a team without a pulse in week three that they went into weeks four and five just trying to establish balance. They seemed to find their footing at the end of their week four road win in Arizona, but stumbled early at home against Tampa Bay before going nuclear in the second half and leaning almost entirely on the passing game. So which version of Kubiak’s plan will we see this week? With a banged-up secondary and a questionable offensive line, it probably makes the most sense to run the ball early to slow the tempo and give their defense time to catch their breath in the humid conditions, but that will depend on the defense getting stops, which were rare a week ago.
Jacksonville DC Anthony Campanile has done an admirable job converting the Jaguars’ defense into an above-average unit capable of slowing or stopping the best offenses, and he has done so just five weeks into his first stint calling plays at the pro level. While teams have had trouble figuring out his scheme early on, Seattle may want to look at how Campanile’s former boss, Jeff Hafley, called plays against Kubiak when he was the OC in New Orleans last season, and Kubiak’s offense had to live through a nightmare on MNF. That won’t be a great tell for what Campanile might do, but he worked on the Green Bay staff last season and likely brought some of those calls with him. It wouldn’t be the first time a young coach has learned from a guru and built his own scheme around it.
Jacksonville has a steady defense that prefers to drop guys into zones and switch players up front to confuse offenses and make them guess who is dropping versus who is rushing the passer, and they like to drop their safeties down for run support. A very athletic and aggressive team can create a lot of turnovers, but they can also give up a lot of big plays, and Jacksonville is doing both. Against this Seattle offense, they will likely have their share of shots at both categories, and the young coordinator who puts their unit in the best position to capitalize on those moments could help decide the contest as long as their head coach does the same on their end of the bargain.
Old Man Sam Darnold vs Young Gun Trevor Lawrence
It feels like Darnold has been in the league for decades, but this is actually just his eighth season as a pro. He has played for five teams already, so that could be what makes it feel like he has been around forever. Lawrence is just two years younger than Darnold and is in just his fifth season in the NFL. It feels like we have been watching Darnold forever: he was a bust with the Jets, then a castoff with the Panthers, then a journeyman with the 49ers, then a what-the-bleep-is-going-on with him in Minnesota. I thought Darnold was a bust, and now he’s in Seattle. Geno Smith turns 35 today, and I would have bet money he and Darnold were freshmen in college at the same time, but according to Google, my math is a bit off on that.
Darnold has had flashes of brilliance early in his time in Seattle, but has made enough costly mistakes that you begin to wonder if he is the best long-term answer. Then Jalen Milroe comes into the game for 5 seconds, hands the ball to the other team, and you suddenly love the idea of Darnold living out his remaining years as your QB.
Lawrence is just two years younger than Darnold, but in NFL years, that is like twenty. TLaw has had to learn three new systems and was on his way to being the next Darnold if Coen hadn’t arrived. We will see if he can get him back to his Pro Bowl ways, as we last saw in 2022.
Lawrence has no shortage of playmakers around him with a very good running game and the chance to throw passes to Brian Thomas Jr and Travis Hunter, but he can’t seem to get on the same page with them when they get in scoring position. Sooner or later, that chemistry will come, or on the other hand, it won’t. There’s no reason Trevor and Thomas can’t string together the type of numbers Darnold had with Justin Jefferson last year or is getting with Jaxon Smith-Njigba this season, but for whatever reason, 16 and 7 don’t like getting stuff done until they absolutely have to. If those two ever get on the same page, this league is in big, big trouble. But until they do, this offense will remain in second gear, begging to get into the higher gears finally.
Prediction
I would love to pick Seattle to win this game, especially given how well they have played on the road in Macdonald’s short tenure, but I think there are too many factors against them this week. Between the speed and strength of the Jaguars, the heat and humidity, the Seahawks’ secondary being banged up, and the offense struggling to figure out what kind of offense they want to be, I think they will be relying too much on the Jaguars to make uncharacteristic mistakes.
Seattle is excellent on the road this season, but Jacksonville is very good at home and is fresh off beating the Chiefs in a great game this week and going to SF to beat the 49ers the week prior. This is not just a team winning on luck; they have had to survive some tough battles early in their season. The Jaguars’ only loss came against the Bengals when Burrow was still playing, so there is a chance some offensive wizardry could help Seattle win the game, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Kubiak is not his dad, and Darnold is not Burrow.
Seattle has some dangerous weapons on offense and has a better defense than the Bengals, so anything is possible, I suppose. The game won’t be a landslide in either direction, but I don’t like the Seahawks having to go all the way to Florida to play in warm weather against an excellent team and still steal a win. Weirder things have happened this season alone.
I think Jacksonville takes this game 27-21.
