The Seahawks didn’t beat the Cardinals on star power alone. In a 31-7 win in Week 2, Seattle got the kind of layered contribution that coaches love: steady work up front, a rookie getting his first real NFL run, and a punter quietly tilting the field.
Mike Macdonald singled out three players after the victory, and none of them were the obvious headliners.
On defense, Reed made his first sack of the season and kept doing the kind of work that rarely shows up in a box score. He isn’t the flashiest piece of Seattle’s front seven, but he mattered in the moments that don’t always get noticed. Macdonald made clear how much the Seahawks value that.
"He's probably the heartbeat of our defensive line room, probably our defense," Macdonald said. "...
He's a physical presence, he can play multiple spots in the interior D-line, he's a good game runner, he's obviously incredibly tough, smart-he makes a lot of calls out there that go unnoticed that get us aligned and organized, which is really cool. It's pretty high-level stuff."
The offensive line also got a look at a future possibility when fifth-round pick Beau Stephens made his NFL debut. He played 27 offensive snaps while stepping in for the injured Anthony Bradford. Christian Haynes started and logged 43 offensive snaps, but the bigger takeaway for Seattle was simply getting a first-year player meaningful reps in a live game.
With Bradford set to hit free agency after the year, the Seahawks know they’ll eventually need help at right guard. Stephens is in that conversation, and Sunday gave him his first taste of the league.
"I thought there was some really good stuff for both guys," Macdonald said of Haynes and Stephens.
"Different things on, respectively on what we want them to work on, which is great. But to get an opportunity to go in and play really good football, when AB (Anthony Bradford) wasn't able to go, I think, was great for our team depth, their offensive line depth. It was great for Beau being a rookie and getting experience, but, we'll kind of monitor the situation with AB moving forward and kind of take it from there."
Then there was Michael Dickson, who rarely gets the spotlight but earned it anyway. Of his seven punts this season, four have landed inside the 20-yard line. That kind of field position edge matters, and Macdonald pointed to both Dickson and the unit around him for making it work.
"He's tremendous, but it's also the whole unit. It's getting our protections right when they want to rush us, when we're singled up by a gunner, being able to get down the field, when we're getting viced, being able to work through some of those things, some of the mechanics we have with our punt team of directional punts and things like that," Macdonald said of Dickson.
"Michael's the driving force behind it. His talent obviously-it says a lot in terms of being able to pin guys deep and things like that, hitting different types of balls-but our punt coverage unit right now is operating at a high level, and we expect that to continue."
Seattle is 2-0, and the win over Arizona was built on exactly the kind of unglamorous production that can carry a team.
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For Seattle, the timing matters. The Seahawks are positioned to be in the NFC West mix early, and if Los Angeles stumbles again, the division picture could start to tilt quickly toward Seattle and San Francisco after Week 3. A Rams start at 1-2 would not decide anything, but it would give the Seahawks a little more breathing room while their biggest division rival tries to survive without Nacua. [Read more 🡒]