What Robert Turbin is looking for Seahawks to do coming out of bye

It’s been a surprisingly successful year thus far for the NFC West-leading Seahawks (6-4), but they went into their bye on a sour note after falling to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 21-16 in Germany on Nov. 13.

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Some of the issues that hindered Seattle during its 2-3 start to the season popped back up in the Bucs game, with Tampa Bay able to run against the Seahawks’ 3-4 defensive front and Seattle’s offense being held under 20 points for the fourth time in 2022 but the first time in four weeks.

Robert Turbin, a former Seahawks running back and current analyst on the Seahawks radio pregame and postgame show, joined Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy on Friday and shared his thoughts on the state of the team. During the conversation, he detailed a few things he’s looking for the Hawks to do when they return from a two-week break from action to host the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.

Here’s what “Turbo” had to say.

Keys for the Seahawks in the final seven games

First of all, we certainly have to be able to fill our gaps, be disciplined in the run game. That’s where it starts and finishes – up front. We’ve got to be able to run the football and we’ve got to be able to stop the run. I’m totally comfortable right now with our passing game. … I’d like to see Geno Smith get outside the pocket a little bit more. But other than that, man, you know, DK (Metcalf) is ballin’, receivers are ballin’ and the tight ends are getting involved for the most part. Didn’t see a whole lot of it last week but I think that’s OK. It’s the run game that you want to be able to sustain.

And then on the flip side, I think in the secondary, guys are playing at a really, really high level. Love to see especially because the majority of those guys are young players. But it’s the front seven… especially second half of the season, where everybody’s hurting, everybody’s sore. This is where the cream kind of rises to the top, the real teams start to separate themselves, and you’ve got to be able to stop the run on the defensive side of the ball. We’ve had some issues at that in the beginning of the season, we corrected that, but obviously Tampa Bay did a really good job against us last week. So we want to be able to fit that up if you want to really have a chance to win the NFC West and compete in the playoffs.

One player to step up after the bye

Turbin is looking for free safety Quandre Diggs to have more of an impact. And that’s not to say the two-time Pro Bowler is having a bad season, but it certainly would be a good time for him to make his presence felt a little more.

I’m going with a vet – I want to challenge my dog QD. It’s not that he’s playing bad football but he’s been inconsistent a little bit. Some missed tackles and things out there, no interceptions yet this season. After the bye week I’m gonna need No. 6 to step up.

You can listen to the full conversation with Turbin in the podcast at this link or in the player below. You can also catch him filling in as guest host alongside Bob Stelton on both Monday and Tuesday on Seattle Sports’ Wyman and Bob, which airs from 2-7 p.m. weekdays.

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