ESPN’s Mina Kimes on What’s Ailing the “Confounding” Seahawks

Rich offered Mina Kimes a candidate for the NFL's most confounding team, one that hits close to home for the ESPN analyst: the Seattle Seahawks.

Kimes wasn't confounded. "I think I have a good feel for them," she said.

Her read starts with the defense, which she still considers extremely good, even if she believes Chicago is probably the best team in the NFL right now. "We can safely say this is still an elite defense," Kimes said.

The offense is another story. Sam Darnold, in her view, has been about the same all year. He played better against Kansas City, but the Seahawks "haven't been able to run the ball all season long," and the passing game has been inconsistent, with turnovers mixed in.

There was a reason for some of it. Kimes said learning afterward that Darnold was playing with a cracked rib "makes a lot of it make sense," because he was so off target and jittery. "I would be jittery in the pocket with a cracked rib against Jeffery Simmons, too," she said.

So where does that leave Seattle? With "an offense that is probably going to be average," Kimes said. Whether that's good enough over the course of the season, or good enough to sneak into the playoffs, will depend on the schedule.

Rich pushed back. How can an offense be average when it has an extraordinary wide receiver who can make the case for going back-to-back as Offensive Player of the Year?

"Because he's it," Kimes said. "That's it. The entire offense is JSN."

Kimes argued that none of this should be surprising. Seattle was "basically average" on offense last season too. That gets forgotten, she said, because Darnold had a couple of incredible performances at the end of the year, the Rams games loom large in people's minds, and Kenneth Walker finished so strong. But the Seahawks started hot in the first part of last season and were "extremely up and down" in the second half, including at quarterback.

They also lost offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, and now the offense looks unbalanced. The inability to run the ball, Kimes said, is what is really killing them, because she thinks Darnold can play better.

The key is understanding what kind of quarterback he is. Kimes contrasted him with Jordan Love in Green Bay, whose team has no run game but who is "performing this high-wire act of pushing the ball downfield regardless and making these high degree of difficulty throws."

"It's kind of not who Darnold is," Kimes said. "So you have to be realistic about the quarterback you have and the needs you have, and they got to figure out how to run the football better."