The Seahawks haven’t had a fully healthy starting defense for one game all season until today. If you read that and were thinking, ‘But Seattle’s defense has been good almost all season.’ You’re not wrong and that is a testament to the Seahawks’ depth on defense.
“We haven’t been as a whole in a long time,” Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon said. “But I think the special thing about us, [is the] next man up mentality, everybody prepares like they’re going to play. And that’s the culture we built. Coach Mike, helps us build on defense. Everybody’s going to play. We always talk about it in practice, so we always prepare as one. But it feels good to get the whole group back out there again. But like I said, we’re going to need those guys come down the stretch and I know they’ll be ready.”
With safety Julian Love and Jarran Reed back from injured reserve, Seattle’s defense was at full strength on Sunday and proved as much by not allowing the Atlanta Falcons to get into the end zone the entire game. The Falcons finished the day with 9 points, all of which were field goals.
The Seahawks defense, as a unit, finished with 62 tackles, two interceptions, seven quarterback hits, 1.0 sack, three tackles for loss, 10 passes defensed and a forced fumble and fumble recovery.
The defense started early and started fast. On Seattle’s first defensive drive of the game, the defense forced a three and out thanks to a Julian Love pass break up on a third-and-7 play. The Falcons were forced to punt the ball away from the 50-yard line. That pass break up was Love’s “I’m back,” play.
“I knew I wasn’t going to get to play the whole game,” Love said. “I had some reps, they were monitoring and so I just wanted to make every play count, hustle to the ball and try to make some sort of impact on the game. The last few months, I’ve been itching to contribute to this thing we have going. I had to take some of my pressure off of it this week. I’m like ‘Alright just be you. Everybody has your back.'”
While Love didn’t play the whole game, Ty Okada who stepped up while Love was on injured reserve, played on Sunday also.
“We had a bit of a pitch count for Julian [Love] and he felt really good,” Macdonald said. “I felt like he executed well. We felt he was confident, and we were fortunate the way the game played out where we could let Ty [Okada] close it out for us. I thought Ty played really good football as well. I just want to take a second, Ty Okada deserves a massive shout-out from the coaches, everybody. This guy has played incredible football for us. All he does every day is just prepare his tail off. He’s a phenomenal teammate. He plays so hard. He executes at a high level. Everything matters to him. We’ve played great defense since he had to take over for Julian. I know his production isn’t as high, but, man, this guy. I just love having him. I’m really happy for him. He’s playing really, really well, so shout-out to Ty.”
Okada said, “It’s awesome,” to have Love back. He added, “I just have so much love for Julian. He’s played such a big part in my development as a player. And he’s such a great player on this defense. So to have him back as a catalyst and a cornerstone for what we do on defense, it’s tremendous. We have a lot of energy coming down this last stretch of the season. We’re super excited to have him back.”
Reed, who was on injured reserve following a wrist surgery, made his return on Sunday after missing four games.
“Happy to have Jarran [Reed] back,” Macdonald said. “Outside of just being a really good player, just having him back emotionally as a leader on our football team, strapping it back up with the guys is awesome.”
For Reed, he was happy to get back on the field with his teammates.
“Just to be able to go out there and play with my brothers,” he said. “To just get back [to] enjoying the game. I missed it for the four games I was out.”
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