What To Watch In the Seahawks’ Week 5 Game vs. The New York Giants

Yes, the Seahawks were severely shorthanded against the Lions, with Leonard Williams, Boye Mafe, Uchenna Nwosu, Byron Murphy II and Jerome Baker all missing the game, and with Julian Love leaving with an injury before halftime, but regardless of who was on the field, the performance that allowed the Lions to score 42 points wasn’t good enough according to players and coaches.

Now, with at least some of those players likely to return, the Seahawks defense will get a chance to get back on track and show that they’re closer to the unit that looked dominant for much of the first three games, and not the group that made too many mistakes and gave up too many explosive plays against the Lions.

“We just need to play our style of football all the time,” safety Rayshawn Jenkins said. “We were fortunate enough to be in a prime-time game Monday, and it didn’t really go too well for the defense. I thought the offense played well enough for us to win, I said that after the game. But the defense, we really just need to be on the details. Everything that they did or we gave them was all self-inflicted. Had we played a few things better, it would have been a way better game.

Jenkins added that “things just got out of whack a little bit Monday night,” and now he and his teammates are eager to make it right, but not so eager that they’ll get away from the fundamentals that helped them play so well the first three weeks.

“You have that bad taste in your mouth for a couple of days, and you want to go out there and make things right again, so you’re eager to the get to that next game,” Jenkins said. “But at the same time, you have to respect the process as well. You may be eager and can’t wait to play, the Giants in this case, but at the end of the day, you still have to go through the Tuesday, the Wednesday, the Thursday, the days of preparation leading up to the game. I always say, you’ve got to earn the right to win.”

And speaking of the defense bouncing back…