Russell Wilson, Seahawks continue their evolution in fourth straight win

BALTIMORE – This is an offensive football team.

I thought former NFL coach Tony Dungy was joking when he said that about the Seahawks two weeks ago on NBC’s telecast. Or maybe he was just caught up in the energy of Seattle’s victory over Pittsburgh in which Russell Wilson threw for three of his five touchdowns in the fourth quarter.

I remember thinking that if Dungy was right and Seattle’s defense was so unimposing that the Seahawks truly were an offensive team, then they weren’t going to make the playoffs.

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Turns out that Dungy wasn’t joking. He wasn’t wrong, either, and while he may have been criticizing Seattle’s defense, the Seahawks’ offense has gone out and played up to that compliment he bestowed upon them.

Seattle is an offensive football team. That’s what is special about this team right now, from the quarterback who’s thrown for 16 touchdowns in the past four games without getting picked off to the wide receiver who’s caught eight of those touchdowns to the rookie kick returner who has turned out to be a big-play threat on offense, too.

“Sometimes you just get in a rhythm,” Doug Baldwin said after Seattle’s 35-6 win over Baltimore. “It has been amazing the past few weeks.”

Seattle has scored more than 30 points in three successive games, something that has happened three times before during Pete Carroll’s tenure.

Never like this, though. Never with a passing offense that’s this efficient, this dynamic and this predicated around the precision of Wilson’s passing from the pocket.

Wilson has thrown 16 touchdown passes over the past four games. Sixteen. He had never thrown more than nine touchdown passes in any four-game stretch of his NFL career prior to that. He’s completing 75 percent of his passes in that stretch, and he hasn’t been picked off. Not once.

“He’s playing his tail off,” Baldwin said. “He’ll be humble with it, but I can’t say enough about what he’s doing right now. It’s Russ.”

For three years, Wilson’s ability to scramble and create big plays has been unparalleled in the NFL. That hasn’t changed. What’s different now is the decisiveness he’s showing when he’s in the pocket. It’s not that he’s suddenly become a pocket passer so much as the fact that he’s suddenly as dangerous throwing from there as he is when he’s on the move.

“He’s doing something that he hasn’t done up to this level inside the pocket,” Baldwin said. “It makes it so much easier on everybody else. And to his credit, he’s playing unbelievable right now.”

He’s playing so well that a defense that kept an opposing offense from scoring a touchdown for the fifth time this season is suddenly an afterthought. It’s not like they’re bad. In fact, Seattle’s defense is statistically very good. The Seahawks very well could finish this season having allowed the fewest points of any team for a fourth successive season.

But there are holes on that side of the ball, whether it was blowing back-to-back fourth-quarter leads back in October or watching Jimmy Clausen take shots down the field on Sunday. Yep. Jimmy Clausen. He completed five passes for more than 20 yards.

That’s an afterthought, though, a footnote to another offensive showcase for the Seahawks. Their turnaround is as surprising as it is important.

After a home loss to Arizona in Week 10, I thought Seattle’s offense had bottomed out. Less than one month later, it has never looked better in Carroll’s time with the team.

The Seahawks are going as far as their offense takes them this season.