Seattle Seahawks tie a franchise record on defense

The Seattle Seahawks enjoyed a historic night on the defensive side of the ball during their victory over the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. The Seahawks were listed as slight favourites but dominated the whole way enroute to a 24-3 win. The most dominant part of their game came on the defensive side, most specifically, their defensive line.

During the game, Seattle’s defensive line racked up 11 sacks. This ties a franchise record for most sacks recorded in a game that has been standing since 1986 when they did it against the Los Angeles Raiders. When you ask Pete Carroll about the performance his d-line had, he said, “The mixes and the changeups, the variety of ways that we came after them, we used everybody on the field just about, hitting the calls at the right time so the guys could create some explosive plays out of it. You’ve got to give Clint a ton of credit.”  The Clint that he is referring to is the team’s defensive coordinator, Clint Hurtt. 

When you look at the stat sheet, Bobby Wagner, Devon Witherspoon, Uchenna Nwosu, and Jordyn Brooks all had two sacks. This was the highest number of players on a team with two plus sacks in a single game in franchise history. Not to mention that seven players in total recorded at least one full sack, the second most that has ever been done before in Seahawks history. Then you can throw in the 97-yard interception that got returned for a touchdown from Witherspoon late in the second half, and this defense looked stout.

Reporters caught up with the veteran linebacker Bobby Wagner after the game and asked him about their ferocious effort. He said, “I think we needed it. I think each game defensively we’ve been getting better. We’ve been doing a good job stopping the run, but the one thing was just applying pressure.” He later talked about how he felt like they had great pressure in their previous game but couldn’t turn them into many sacks. This time around, they were able to capitalize off that. Seattle was entering the game with just five sacks in the entire season and doubled that number during just Week 4. 

Unfortunately for the Giants, Daniel Jones was the recipient of 10 sacks, only avoiding one of the registered sacks. With that lone extra sack going against Parris Campbell, when the Giants attempted a trick play with Campbell throwing the football. Overall, the New York offensive line looked horrendous, with zero improvement whatsoever from what we’ve seen in the past. Some blame definitely goes towards Jones in the pocket, but the rest goes towards that offensive line. What do you expect Jones to do when he has less than a second to scan the field before needing to break the pocket? The Giants have some serious questions to answer or else this season will just keep on getting longer.