The Seattle Seahawks slipped out of first place for a few hours on Sunday afternoon, after the Los Angeles Rams waylaid the New Orleans Saints. However, a dominating victory over the Washington Commanders
on Sunday Night Football put Seattle back atop the NFC West by way of tiebreaker, with divisional matchups against the Arizona Cardinals and Rams in the next two weeks.
Sunday night, though, the Seahawks gave Washington and former Seattle defensive coordinator Dan Quinn everything they could handle, delivering a 24-point victory to Hawks fans as several members of the 2025 rookie class saw extensive playing time.
On offense, rookies Grey Zabel, Tory Horton, Elijah Arroyo, Robbie Ouzts, Nick Kallerup, Ricky White and Bryce Cabeldue all saw snaps, with Cabeldue once again a dominant force in a game in which the Seahawks posted a huge margin of victory.
On the other side of the ball, Nick Emmanwori and Connor O’Toole played important roles as O’Toole logged the first significant playing time on defense after having played just four defensive snaps on the season entering the game.
The big questions on defense will, of course, be about the health and status of Josh Jobe and Ernest Jones, both of whom left the game due to injury. Jobe is in the concussion protocols after a friendly fire hit to the helmet from teammate Ty Okada, while Jones suffered a knee injury of undetermined severity when he he got rolled up on in just before half.
On special teams it was, as it always is, the Brady Russell show, but on Sunday night he shared the team lead in special teams snaps with Mike Morris at 22. Just behind them were veteran special teamers D’Anthony Bell and Chazz Surratt, with second year players George Holani and Nehemiah Pritchett, along with rookie O’Toole rounding out the top six.
Seattle has such a comfortable lead that those players who are typically only special teamers made their way onto the field on both offense and defense late in the game. Thus, the only members of the roster who only saw the field on special teams were the specialists in Jason Myers, Michael Dickson and Chris Stoll.
And now it’s on to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 10.
