The Seattle Seahawks ended up winning the NFC West, yet again. They won at double-digit games, yet again. They got bounced before the conference championship, yet again. The Seattle Seahawks have turned into a great regular season team that can’t punch it in in the playoffs, having made it to the conference championship twice in the eleven seasons with Pete Carroll as coach, despite making the playoffs eight times and winning the NFC West five times. In the end, they fired their offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer for… not wanting to run more? What should we remember about this iteration of the Seattle Seahawks? Russ cooking? D.K. dropping? Rashaad Penny existing? What should we remember from the 2020 Seattle Seahawks for our 2021 fantasy football leagues?
What to Remember from the 2020 Seattle Seahawks Season
- All offseason, Seahawks fans demanded that the team Let Russ Cook. Personally, I would have gone with Establish the Russ, but that’s just me. Russell Wilson started the season giving opposing teams hell, and ended up as burnt as an errant beef wellington on Hell’s Kitchen. In his first eight games, Russell Wilson was unstoppable. He averaged 317.6 passing yards, 3.5 touchdowns, and a pick per game. He also kicked in 33.1 yards per game on the ground. After that point, things started to shake apart. From game 9 through the end of the season, Wilson averaged 1.8 touchdowns per game, 209 passing yards, 1.5 touchdowns per game, four picks every five games, and 31 rushing yards per game. The pace in the first eight games would have made him the #1 fantasy football quarterback of all-time. His second-half pace was QB15 on the season, just behind Ben Roethlisberger.
- If you had Tyler Lockett on your roster, you were really happy for a while. Then, he had 15 catches for 200 yards and 3 touchdowns in week seven and you were really happy. But, then something happened. Russ forgot how to properly spice the offense and Tyler Lockett fell off a cliff. From weeks eight through sixteen, he passed 65 yards twice and didn’t cross the 67-yard threshold once. He averaged 4.8 catches for 47 yards per game in that span. Then, in week seventeen, he blew up for 12 catches against the Niners. All told, he ended up with exactly 100 catches, for 1,054 yards. It’s unlikely you forget his 15/200/3 game, but you have to remember his mostly bad second half when looking at his 100 catch, 1,000 yards, 10 touchdown stat line next draft season.
- When we think of the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive line, we tend to see them as a butt of a joke. For years, they tried (and failed) to convert defensive linemen to block for Russell Wilson and his myriad of running backs throughout the years. This year, however, they ranked second, with 3.1 yards before contact on rush attempts. That should mean great things for Chris Carson, given the opportunities provided to him. He had his best yards per carry of his career, thanks to that run blocking. Unfortunately, Carson’s limited receiving game chops meant that he averaged just the twelfth-most fantasy points per touch on the season.
- Let’s talk about D.K. Metcalf and tying a wide receiver’s production to his quarterback’s. Metcalf averaged 5.4 catches, 98.5 yards, and a touchdown per game in the Let Russ Cook Era. After that point, he averaged 64.4 yards on five catches per game. He also scored just two touchdowns in the last eight games. On a week-to-week basis, Metcalf topped 80 yards once in the second half of the season 60 yards just three times. Metcalf’s drops get highlights, but he had the #32 drop rate, he also had just a 21% target share… which rated eighty-sixth in the league. His 31 deep targets rated third, and his air yards share was sixth. Russ getting takeout took out Metcalf’s second-half production but in 2021, D.K. likely won’t do things like “fumble the ball at the one-yard line for no reason,” so expect a step forward.
- It feels like every season, we hype up Seattle Seahawks tight ends. I am begging you to not do this any longer. Greg Olsen tore his plantar fascia in week eleven, clearing the path for Will Dissly, TE sleeper extraordinaire. In the last five games of the season, Dissly had 12 targets, 10 catches, 88 yards, and a touchdown. Not per game, total. A hot start to his rookie year had people theory crafting a world where Dissly was useful. He isn’t. Just one-in-five Seattle targets in 2021 went to tight ends, which ranked in the bottom half of the league. This is consistent with the Seahawks: their TEs average between 18 and 21 percent of the targets in each of the last three seasons… since they dismissed Jimmy Graham.
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