With the Seattle Seahawks Wild Card playoff matchup right around the corner and the team seemingly starting to run on all cylinders, one area that they can afford to improve in is defending tight ends. Seattle was once again the best defense in the NFL in points allowed, and only gave up 14 receiving touchdowns all season. Eight of those touchdowns were to tight ends.
In three of Seattle’s six losses they allowed the tight ends to be the leading receivers, including giving up 90 yards and two touchdowns to Tyler Eifert and a 131-yard, one touchdown day to Greg Olsen in back-to-back weeks.
According to footballoutsiders.com’s “defense adjusted value over average” metric, Seattle ranks 26th against tight ends. They also were the sixth worst team in allowing fantasy points to them. This is something the Seahawks will look to avoid through the playoffs.
Seattle has seemed to improve in this category as the season progressed though, not allowing a tight end to gain more than 60 yards since Week 11 when they gave up 65 yards and a touchdown to Vance McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers. In addition, a majority of the production they have allowed to tight ends came prior to their bye week in Week 9. Prior to that, they gave up 565 yards and five touchdowns to tight ends, while after the bye they only allowed just over 300 yards and three touchdowns. It should also be noted, however, that they have only faced off against two top 10 tight ends since their bye week in Gary Barnidge and Heath Miller.
Seattle will have to continue to build off their recent success against tight ends, as four of the other five teams on the NFC side of the playoffs have guys ranking in the top 20 at the position in the league for receptions, including Olsen, Jordan Reed, Richard Rodgers and Kyle Rudolph. All four of them are in the top 20 in yardage and top 10 in touchdowns scored. Olsen and Reed are both in the top-five in every category, and Seattle will face off against Rudolph this week.
If the Seahawks are able to continue to play as they have over the last month, with exception of their Week 16 matchup against the St. Louis Rams, they will be a dangerous team in the playoffs once again. They have been able to get great production on both offense and defense, and if they are able to stand strong against some of the best tight ends in the league, the Seahawk will be even more dangerous.
