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Quarterback
Macdonald Thinks Drew Lock Is Starting. Nobody Has Actually Told Him.
Sam Darnold’s hip is not broken. He had an MRI Thursday morning, the hip is intact, and Mike Macdonald said the tests came back as really good news, with the injury looking muscular rather than structural. A source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that Seattle dodged a bullet. That is the good half. The other half: NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported Darnold is expected to miss the Week 2 trip to Arizona on Sept. 20, though he should be back sooner rather than later, possibly inside a few weeks.
So who plays at State Farm Stadium? Macdonald, on his weekly show with Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk, gave the most gloriously human answer a head coach has given all season. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “In my mind, I’m kind of thinking Drew’s gonna play, but no one’s told me that. That’s just the way I’m thinking, but maybe that’s a hedge.”
Nobody has told the head coach. I love it here.
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Practice snaps Drew Lock took during Week 1 prep, per Cooper Kupp. He threw the only touchdown of the night anyway.
Drew Lock will be fine, and we know that because he already did the hard version. He came off the bench cold on Wednesday with zero practice snaps all week, and Seattle won 13-10 anyway, with Lock hitting Jaxon Smith-Njigba on a 45-yard fourth-quarter touchdown. Now he gets nine days, a full install, and a defense that just made an MVP candidate look ordinary. That is an upgrade on his last assignment by roughly everything.
Jalen Milroe was the emergency third quarterback Wednesday and slides up the pecking order if Darnold sits. Nobody has floated injured reserve, which tells you what the doctors think.
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Seattle won its opener by three points, lost its quarterback on the first drive, and somehow that is the second-most alarming thing about Wednesday night.
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Cleanup
Ten Flags, Ninety-Eight Yards, and an Unusually Long Time to Think About It
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Penalty yards Seattle gave away in a three-point win. Ten flags total, three of them false starts.
The most painful one came in the second quarter. Seattle finally crossed midfield, AJ Barner converted a fourth-down sneak, and an offside flag erased it and forced a fourth straight punt. You can survive one of those. Ten of them in a 13-10 game is the kind of arithmetic that loses to Arizona.
Macdonald said Thursday the staff had already talked it through and laid out where the problems were. That is the boring coach answer, and it is also the correct one, because the schedule handed him something rare: the Wednesday opener means nine days between now and kickoff in the desert. Most teams get three practices to fix what broke. Seattle gets a mini-bye, a healing quarterback, and no excuse left standing.
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Jaxon Smith-Njigba accounted for 122 of Seattle’s 200 receiving yards and the only touchdown, a 45-yard catch-and-run off a short throw on fourth-and-1. The reigning Offensive Player of the Year caught passes from two quarterbacks and did not appear to notice the difference. NBC Sports
Drake Maye went 3 of 8 for 44 yards with three interceptions on throws of 10-plus air yards. He built an MVP campaign last season on exactly those throws. Two games against this defense, two nights where the deep ball simply stopped existing. Seahawks.com
Jalen Milroe dressed Wednesday as the emergency third quarterback, and nobody has mentioned injured reserve for Darnold. Milroe spent August auditioning for a job that did not exist. It exists now, briefly, and it comes with a headset. Bleacher Report
All five starting offensive linemen played every offensive snap, and Brian Fleury leaned on heavy tight end sets in his first game calling plays anywhere. The run game worked. The pass protection is a conversation for another day, ideally a quiet one. SI
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
Los Angeles flew to Melbourne as the betting favorite to win everything and scored seven points. The 49ers kept them off the board after the first quarter, held on fourth-and-goal from the 1 when Stafford tried to sneak it himself, and won 27-7. With about three minutes left, Sean McVay pulled his 38-year-old quarterback — not hurt, just done — and let Stetson Bennett finish. Two 15-hour flights, one touchdown. The Christmas Day opponent is off to a start.
CARDINALS
Jeremiyah Love, the third overall pick, has been limited in practice since his high ankle sprain and told reporters Thursday he wants to go Sunday at the Chargers. Good for him, genuinely. Arizona has waited a month to see what it bought. Then they host us on Sept. 20, and the honest truth is the best thing that happened to their season so far occurred 1,100 miles north of them, on a third-down sack in the first quarter of somebody else’s game.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
This wide receiver was Seattle’s ninth overall pick in the 2001 draft out of NC State and put up 78 catches for 1,240 yards in 2002. Who is he?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
Koren Robinson. That 2002 season was the high-water mark — Seattle released him in the summer of 2005, four years after spending a top-ten pick on him.
Got a Question? Yell It Into the Void.
The mailbag is open and the standards are low. Contract math, depth chart grievances, a theory about why we keep committing false starts at home — send it in. The best ones get answered, the strange ones get answered first.
Nine days until Arizona. Use them, gentlemen. — The Rooster