The Seahawks paid Josh Jobe like a player they expected to trust, but Week 5 didn’t look like the kind of performance that locks down a starting corner job.
Seattle was comfortable moving on from Riq Woolen in free agency because Jobe appeared ready to step into that role. Instead of being just another piece in the Dark Side defense, he turned a roster-bubble story into a three-year, $24 million deal. After the loss to the San Francisco 49ers, though, that contract feels a lot less like a bargain.
Jobe had a rough day trying to deal with Brock Purdy, who picked apart the coverage. Jobe allowed six catches on nine targets for 98 yards and a touchdown, added 10 yards after the catch, and finished with a 140.0 passer rating against him. He also had no answer for Mike Evans.
That kind of outing matters even more because the Seahawks just signed Trevon Diggs off the practice squad. Diggs was inactive for the game, but he has been around the building long enough to learn the playbook and get comfortable.
Seattle’s cornerback room has been in motion since the offseason, with the team making multiple changes and even bringing in Terrion Arnold despite his legal turmoil. That’s not the behavior of a team fully settled on what it already has.
Jobe has earned plenty of goodwill in Seattle. He was once a practice-squad player, then turned a strong half-season into a return deal worth $1.2 million last season before landing the bigger payday. But the version of Jobe that made his name was the physical, reliable defender who played the run hard and avoided mistakes.
He hasn’t looked like that player lately. And for a Seahawks defense that’s still one of the league’s toughest and most versatile, that’s a problem.
Nehemiah Pritchett is playing well, Diggs is waiting in the wings, and Arnold remains part of the equation. However it shakes out, Seattle has already shown it isn’t afraid to keep adjusting that cornerback group until it gets what it wants. There could still be another move coming.
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Those issues mattered more than the miscues that tend to grab the headlines after a defeat. Turnovers and a dropped pass were part of the picture, but they were not the real story of this one, and that is what makes the setback sting for Seattle: the loss looked less like a fluke and more like a reminder of flaws the team has not been able to clean up as the season has unfolded. [Read more 🡒]