As the Seattle Seahawks begin preparations for Sunday's game against the Arizona Cardinals, here are five leftover thoughts after having reviewed their Week 6 win against the Atlanta Falcons.
1. Earl Thomas delivered his best performance of the season and put on an absolute clinic on how to play safety. He finished with three pass-breakups and an interception but was even more impactful than those numbers indicate.
Early on, he did a terrific job of reading Matt Ryan and breaking on the ball, hitting Mohamed Sanu and forcing an incompletion on third down. Later, when the Falcons tried to get a running back matched up on K.J. Wright in coverage, Thomas closed and forced Ryan to make a difficult throw that fell incomplete. On the next play in the red zone, Atlanta got a tight end matched up against Cliff Avril downfield, and Thomas was there to help again.
And he had a great pass-breakup on the final drive when the Seahawks sent a six-man pressure at Ryan.
Thomas has said multiple times that when he has a bad game, he sometimes skips showering, puts on his "pool shorts" and just drives home. It sounds like he might be joking, but he's not. On Sunday, Thomas was the last player to get out of the locker room. He earned it with a classic performance.
2. The Seahawks blitzed Ryan on 37 percent of his dropbacks, according to ESPN Stats & Information. That's their highest percentage in any game since Kris Richard became defensive coordinator. And they were extremely effective when sending five or more rushers.
Against the blitz, Ryan went 7-for-16 (43.8 percent) for 60 yards. That's 4.19 yards per attempt and 3.53 yards per dropback (there was one sack). Part of the blitzing had to do with the fact that defensive end Frank Clark was inactive and Michael Bennett left the game in the third quarter with a knee injury.
Still, linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright are doing a fantastic job when their numbers are called. This is something to keep an eye on going forward.
3. The Seahawks' run game is not good enough right now. Seattle is eighth in passing efficiency and 29th in rushing efficiency, according to Football Outsiders.
The offensive line is having communication issues. Multiple times, players mistakenly passed defensive linemen off, allowing them to get into the backfield unblocked. Christine Michael averaged 1.56 yards before contact, which ranked 26th among players in Week 6.
The Cardinals' defense ranks first against the pass and 13th against the run. Figuring out a way to get the ground game going will be a priority this week.
4. Russell Wilson is getting rid of the ball (on average) in 2.39 seconds, which is 10th fastest among quarterbacks, according to ESPN Stats & Information. Wilson has never finished higher than 32nd in this category.
Part of that obviously has to do with him playing with limited mobility, but part of it has to do with scheme.
"This isn't new this year," coach Pete Carroll said. "This goes back to last year. I keep telling you that. Go back to the middle of last year, and we made some great adjustments and some really nice decisions that were made by Tom [Cable] and Darrell [Bevell] and the offensive staff to put this thing in the kind of mode that it's in now."
5. One area where the Seahawks struggled Sunday was against 12 (one RB, two TEs) and 13 (one RB, three TEs) personnel. The Falcons kept the Seahawks in their base defense but threw on them quite a bit.
Ryan had 158 passing yards out of multiple-TE sets, the most of any quarterback in Week 6. He was 9-for-11 on those plays, averaging 14.36 YPA and 12.58 yards per dropback.
The Seahawks' base defense features Kevin Pierre-Louis at SAM linebacker and Ahtyba Rubin and Jarran Reed (or Tony McDaniel) as defensive tackles. It's easier to protect and throw against their base than when the Seahawks bring in their nickel personnel (Clark, cornerback Jeremy Lane).
It will be interesting to see if other offenses try to follow the Falcons' lead.