Daniel Jeremiah: Seahawks feel the absence of Julian Love

Julian Love was one of the NFL’s best safeties over the first two weeks of the season, totaling two interceptions, three passes defensed and two tackles for loss while anchoring an injury-depleted Seattle Seahawks secondary.

On Sunday, the Seahawks seemed to feel his absence.

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With Love sidelined by a calf injury, Seattle’s ‘Dark Side’ defense showed some uncharacteristic cracks while surrendering three touchdown passes to backup quarterback Marcus Mariota in a 33-31 loss to the Washington Commanders.

“Defensively, the safeties were just late to trigger, whether it was the run or whether it was the pass,” NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah told Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk on Tuesday.

“And when we have these conversations every week and we talk about Julian Love being one of the most underappreciated studs in the league, well, then that stands to reason you’re going to feel it when he’s not out there.”

To be clear, it wasn’t a poor performance by Seattle’s defense. The Seahawks surrendered just 258 total yards and 4.0 yards per play. And Washington capitalized on short fields and a pick-six, scoring 20 points off turnovers.

But after the Seahawks held opponents to an NFL-best 3.8 yards per pass attempt through the first two weeks, they gave up 5.9 yards per pass attempt on Sunday. That’s still pretty good, but not up to the unit’s elite standard.

It’s also worth noting that while Love missed nine games last season, Seattle still had safeties Coby Bryant and Ty Okada for each of those nine games.

On Sunday, the Seahawks were essentially down to their fourth and fifth options at safety in Rodney Thomas II and AJ Finley. In addition to Love’s injury, Okada has missed the first three games with a hamstring injury and rookie second-round draft pick Bud Clark suffered a season-ending ankle injury in the preseason.

Finley made his first career NFL start on Sunday, and his lack of experience was evident to Jeremiah on tape. Jeremiah pointed to Finley’s reads being a split-second late both in run defense and pass coverage, including on Mariota’s 11-yard TD pass to Treylon Burks in the second quarter.

“He was just late to see it, so he doesn’t trigger and get to it and cut it off,” Jeremiah said. “And that’s something with Love – he plays with really, really fast eyes back there and he triggers.”

Head coach Mike Macdonald indicated Love could return to practice this week.

“It’s a day-to-day thing right now, so we’ll see how that shakes out,” Macdonald said Monday. “He did some extensive work this morning and it went well, so we’ll see how that translates to Wednesday and moving forward.”

Listen to the full Brock and Salk conversation with Daniel Jeremiah at this link or in the audio player near the middle of this story. Tune into Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.

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