By now you know what happened at Ford Field on Monday Night Football. The Seattle Seahawks defense got spanked by Dan Campbell and the Detroit Lions, who look an awful lot like a Super Bowl team. Given that their loss was due mostly to the massive defensive line injuries they're dealing with,we're going to throw out the tape so to speak when it comes to the defensive Pro Football Focus grades for Week 4.
Long story short, Derick Hall was good, but overall it was pretty ugly defensively. Let's focus on the only unit that really pulled its weight against the Lions. Here's how several key offensive players graded out according to PFF.
Kenneth Walker III, Zach Charbonnet top offense
The highest-graded player on the team this week was of course starting running back Ken Walker. After getting shut down in the first half, Walker exploded out of the gates in the third quarter the same way he did in the season opener against Denver. Despite having less than 10 rushing yards at halftime he finished with 80 to go with three touchdowns. Walker's 90.7 overall grade from PFF was boosted by an incredible 93.3 in running. Right now Derrick Henry and a healthy Christian McCaffrey are probably better than him, but it's difficult to think of anyone else who can match Walker at that position.
If we leave out wide receiver Laviska Shenault - who only played one offensive snap - then backup Zach Charbonnet posted the second-highest grade for the Seahawks offense this week. Charbonnet only had two carries but both were good runs, earning him an 81.0 run grade to go with 73.2 in pass blocking.
Geno Smith gets mediocre grade from PFF
In general we tend to trust PFF's grading matching the eyeball test, but sometimes we disagree. This is one such case, as Geno Smith only earned a barely-better-than-average 63.4 grade, including a 59.8 in passing. Smith was under constant pressure from what is clearly an elite Detroit defense and he still put up 395 total yards. His decision-making and accuracy were sharp and he was as aggressive as anyone could reasonably expect given the situation. Smith gets an A- grade from us for the week.
Anthony Bradford, Stone Forsythe at the bottom
Now we get to the elephant in the room, which is Seattle's completely hopeless right side of their offensive line. As expected, when Aidan Hutchinson lined up on that side the Seahawks struggled mightily trying to keep him in front of them. Hutchinson had a bunch of pressures and three of the Lions' nine quarterback hits on Geno Smith.
Right tackle Stone Forsythe earned a team-low 22.3 grade in pass blocking for his efforts and his run blocking grade (36.5) wasn't much better. So, we should probably expect to see long-time veteran Jason Peters re-sign with the practice squad at some point this week.
Right above Forsythe at the bottom of PFF's grades for the offense this week was right guard Anthony Bradford, who was on the field for 54 snaps. Bradford earned a 44.7 overall grade, brought down by his bad mark in run blocking (30.8).
Meanwhile, rookie Christian Haynes finally saw his first significant action of the year, putting in 36 snaps at right guard in Bradford's place. Haynes earned a decent-enough 61.8 overall grade, including 67.9 in pass blocking. As long as Bradford continues to struggle, expect to see Haynes worked in more and more as we go forward.
More Seahawks stories
Seahawks MVP, studs and duds, takeaways, injury updates for Week 4
Ken Walker earned a first down with a crazy wrestling move vs Lions
What Mike Macdonald said about the sobering road loss to the Lions
