Opponent Scouting Report: Seattle Seahawks
By Andrew Ites
Seattle has dominated the NFC for many years now, but can they keep their hold on the conference with aging veterans and some major weaknesses?
The Seahawks have made the playoffs in six of the past seven seasons with a Super Bowl trophy and another Super Bowl appearance thrown in there.
However, their window may be closing as they’ve had to pay big money to their star players and had to make sacrifices elsewhere on the roster.
Weaknesses
Seattle has clearly shown that they’re willing to have an insanely cheap offensive line in order to afford the contracts of their important players.
Russell Wilson‘s mobility helps negate this weakness a bit, but they are putting him in danger by placing a poor offensive line in front of him year in and year out.
The Seahawks’ projected starting line will be LT Luke Joeckel, rookie LG Ethan Pocic, C Justin Britt, RG Germain Ifedi, and RT George Fant.
Only two of those players have played at even an average level in the NFL, and there is inexperience throughout the unit.
The offensive line was exposed in their playoff loss to the Falcons last season, and it will probably be exposed against good teams in 2017.
Strengths
We’ve mentioned that the Seahawks’ defensive stars are getting older, but they’re all still playing at a high level.
DL Michael Bennett, LB Bobby Wagner, CB Richard Sherman, SS Kam Chancellor and FS Earl Thomas are all among the top five players at each of their respective positions.
When you add players like LB K.J. Wright, DE Cliff Avril and DE Frank Clark to that group, they still make up an elite unit.
Next: 2017 Positional Preview: Safety
The Colts’ defensive line isn’t great, but even they could have a field day against Seattle’s offensive line.
Indianapolis will struggle to score against this Seahawks defense, but they could have success in the passing game throwing away from Richard Sherman.
Winning at Seattle has proved to be nearly impossible during Pete Carroll’s tenure, and the Colts would need to play near-perfect football to beat this team.
In case you missed it, here are the rest of our scouting reports of the Colts’ 2017 opponents: