Hawks (

27) at
Titans (

14.5)

Game Overview ::

By hilow >>

• WR Calvin Ridley broke his fibula and is out for the season. Rookie Chimere Dike suffered a chest contusion in Week 11 and did not return, but he practiced in a limited fashion Wednesday. 
• WR Tory Horton missed the previous two games, but the addition of Rashid Shaheed at the trade deadline likely limits the former’s role in the offense once healthy.
• Seattle carries the lowest overall pass rate (48.23%) and second lowest pass rate over expectation (PROE) into a Week 12 matchup with the Titans in which they are 13.5-point road favorites.
• The Seahawks also rank first in defensive DVOA and fifth in offensive DVOA, one of only two teams to rank in the top five on both sides of the ball (Rams).
• I don’t normally side with Vegas when I see a 13.5-point road favorite, but they probably got this one right.
• The only times the Titans scored more than 14 points since Week 3 were behind two D/ST touchdowns against the Chargers and in that fourth-quarter comeback against the Cardinals in which Emari Demercado fumbled the football crossing the goal line. They were down 21-3 in the second quarter against the Cardinals.

JM’S JOURNAL ::

Find JM’s Journal on Friday in The Scroll. If you are an Inner Circle member, you can read JM’s Journal on Thursday in Discord.

How seattle Will Try To Win ::

It’s currently a three-team race to be the most run-leaning team in the league between the Jets, Panthers, and Seahawks, with all other teams significantly more balanced. The Seahawks have parlayed a moderate pace of play with a suffocating defense to yield the lowest pass play rate in the league (48.23%), keeping opposing teams off balance with increased rates of play action and pre-snap motion to average the third-most yards per play behind only the Colts and Bills. Interestingly enough, their defense has held opponents to a 47.83% red-zone scoring rate at home while ceding a touchdown on 72.73% of opposing red-zone trips on the road (the biggest delta in the league), although that split might mean far less against the Titans than it would an average opponent. From a macro perspective, this is a run-first team with a split backfield and heavy emphasis on their top playmaker in Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

The Seahawks have had a slight shakeup of their backfield since their Week 8 bye, with Kenneth Walker leading the way in snaps and opportunities while accounting for 66.7% of the opportunities inside the five. Even so, Zach Charbonnet remains an integral part of the offense while averaging 11.0 carries per game during the most recent three-game stretch (13.67 per game for Walker). That has effectively left the backfield devoid of upside throughout the season, with the two backs seemingly flipping who the lead rusher is on a weekly basis. And while it appears to be Walker since their bye, the split in workload has left both lacking usable ranges of outcomes. Walker has averaged 12.5 expected fantasy points per game (XFP/G) to the 7.8 of Charbonnet since Week 9. The matchup is a solid one on paper against a Titans defense allowing 4.7 yards per carry (ninth most), 2.52 yards before contact per attempt (worst on the slate) , and 25.1 DK points per game (ninth most) to opposing backfields this season.

Crash the leaderboards

PFP the OWS pennant

Shaheed worked his way up to a 54% snap rate in his second game with the team last week, something I expect to continue to grow after the Seahawks acquired him at the trade deadline. What was most interesting to me was the fact that Shaheed effectively mixed right into what the Seahawks had done throughout the season as opposed to the offense fundamentally changing with his addition, which left him as a rotational piece behind Jaxon Smith-Njigba. That is pretty much how everyone other than Cooper Kupp had been utilized in this pass offense before Week 10. Furthermore, he has already been in a route at a solid 70.7% rate on the limited snaps he has played but has yet to influence the elite role, metrics, and production of Smith-Njigba. Let’s once again pause to appreciate the truly remarkable season being put forth by JSN, who continues to lead the league in targets per route run (TPRR) (tied with Puka Nacua), yards per route run (YPRR) (4.37, leads the league by a mile), and fantasy points per route run (FP/RR) (0.84), of receivers to run more than 20 routes this season. What is craziest still is that he has done all that on 262 total routes. For comparison, Ladd McConkey currently leads the league with 381 routes run, or a whopping 45% more routes than JSN. And for those keeping track at home, JSN’s 43 routes a week ago raised his per-game average to just 26.2 (he had averaged just 24.3 routes per game before Week 11). Tight end AJ Barner and his 5.8-yard aDOT requires absurd volume and or touchdown variance working in his favor to return a usable GPP score.

HOW tennessee WILL TRY TO WIN ::