NY Jets: 5 questions about Week 14 with a Seattle Seahawks expert

The NY Jets are set to take on the Seattle Seahawks in this Week 14 matchup.

The NY Jets will travel out west this week to face a Seattle Seahawks team fresh off a surprise upset loss to the Jets’ cross-town rivals, the New York Giants, a week ago.

With an 8-4 record, the Seahawks are understandably the heavy favorites in this matchup facing a winless Jets squad. But Seattle has a tendency to play down to the competition and the team always seems to find themselves playing in close games.

Perhaps that trend will continue when they play host to the 0-12 Jets in Week 14.

The Jets are coming off a miraculous last-second loss to the Las Vegas Raiders that resulted in the firing of defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Somehow, someway, the Jets continue to find ways to lose.

And as a result, they continue to inch closer to the No. 1 overall pick and Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence — the prize of the 2021 NFL Draft class.

The result of this game seems like a foregone conclusion, but the Jets have come awfully close to winning a few times in recent weeks. Perhaps this is the game that they finally achieve the seemingly impossible feat of winning a football game.

To gain some better insight into the minds of Seahawks fans coming off last week’s major upset, we teamed up with Lee Vowell of 12th Man Rising. Lee was apprehensive about the Seahawks’ chances this week, but even he admitted that the Jets are unlikely to win this game.

Here are the results of our discussion.

 1. How the Seahawks can avoid an upset against the NY Jets

1. After losing to the New York Giants last week, how can the Seahawks avoid another crushing upset this Sunday?

“I was actually a bit worried about last week’s game. The Giants have a good defense and the Seahawks have been struggling offensively lately. Seattle’s offense, especially Russell Wilson, just seems to be in some kind of funk. This might be difficult to fix as well. If a player gets injured, he just needs to get healthy again and should be right back to top form. But if the issue is more mental and confidence, that’s a problem. Russell Wilson is a great quarterback but he seems to be playing some of the worst football of his career over the last eight games. To answer your question on what Seattle needs to do to avoid another upset in Week 14, Wilson and the offense need to score touchdowns — plural — early. This will not only get the offense to believe in itself again but will force the Jets to throw and that should be a good thing for Seattle.”

2. What to expect from Jamal Adams in his “revenge game” against the NY Jets

2. What do you expect from Jamal Adams this week? How much do you expect the “revenge” narrative to come into play?

“As I am sure you know even better than I do, Jamal Adams is an emotional player. With most other players a “revenge” game might simply be something the media is making up but in Adams’ case it might be true. He will be amped for this game. That said, he might be a little less amped since the Jets have now fired Gregg Williams. Whether Adams is specifically motivated to play in Week 14 or not, I expect him to be great. This could be a very productive week for him as he is at his best playing closer to the line of scrimmage and not deep in coverage and I think he plays in the box — a lot like Kam Chancellor used to do for the Seahawks — more this week. I expect him to get at least one sack and a tackle for loss or two.”

3. How can the Seahawks take advantage of the NY Jets’ secondary?

3. What can the Seahawks do to take advantage of an inexperienced Jets secondary?

“The Jets appear to be pretty good against the run and if there is one week that Seahawks offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer does design a pass-heavy plan this would be that week. D.K. Metcalf is hard enough to cover for even the best of cornerbacks but this week he is a clear mismatch against whoever is trying to blanket him. Tyler Lockett isn’t that far behind, if behind at all, compared to Metcalf in talent and should be able to work his way into seams and on deep posts for a bunch of yards. But I think one thing that Seattle might do is get running back Chris Carson a lot of targets this week as he normally has excellent hands and then can do damage once he catches a pass.

My one fear is that Schottenheimer decides this week to try to run Carson a lot and that would be a mistake. Yes, the Seahawks have had some issues with their passing game lately, but the talent is there and if Wilson takes what the Jets give him — meaning, throw underneath and not always try to hit the deep pass — this should be a huge week for him and Seattle should score a lot of points.”

4. What positional matchup between the NY Jets and Seahawks are you looking forward to?

4. What positional matchup are you most looking forward to in this game?

“I think one of the Jets who could totally wreck the Seahawks is Quinnen Williams. Seattle has struggled with good defensive tackles over the years and Williams is one of these. Center Ethan Pocic has been fairly solid since taking over that spot this season, but left guard has been a battle of attrition and no one player seems to play near 100 percent of the snaps in a game and Damien Lewis at right guard has been good at run blocking but not pass protection. If Seattle does decide to throw the ball a lot, and they should, then protecting Russell Wilson from Williams is of utmost importance. If Seattle cannot do that well, Seattle won’t be able to score a lot of points and this game will be close enough for the Jets to win.

On the defensive side of the ball, Seattle struggled at stopping the run against the Giants even when Seattle knew that the Giants would need to run. The Jets ran well against the Raiders and if they can do that against Seattle this becomes a shorter game and one where the Jets can win, much like the Giants beat the Seahawks last week. To be honest, even though the Jets haven’t won any games, I don’t think many 12s think Seattle can simply walk onto the field and easily beat the Jets. Seattle doesn’t easily beat anyone so this game will be closer than some expect.”

5. Final predictions — how many points will the Seahawks beat the NY Jets by?

5. Final prediction — how much do the Seahawks win by?

“I feel conflicted about this. Having watched the Seahawks for so many years, even when they had an amazing defense in the early 2010s, I know that Seattle has a way of playing up or down to their level of completion. New York could make this a really close game and actually win it in the end with good run production and limiting Seattle’s big plays.

On the other hand, Seattle’s strength of offense goes against the Jets weakness on defense and there is no reason that Wilson, Metcalf and Lockett shouldn’t have huge games. Part of me thinks they will and Seattle will win 45-17. The other part of me, maybe more logical based on the history of Seattle’s recent teams, thinks that this game is tight until the fourth quarter and the Jets pull off a huge upset. In the end, it will probably be somewhere in between and Seattle wins 28-20.”

Thanks again to Lee for taking the time to talk with us this week. Here’s to hoping that the Jets continue on their journey for the first overall pick with another loss against the Seahawks.