Seahawks’ woeful special teams under Jay Harbaugh can no longer be ignored

One of the few great things about the last few years of Seattle Seahawks football under Pete Carroll was the special teams. Larry Izzo had Seattle top 10 in DVOA in all three seasons under his watch. When Carroll was let go, Izzo went to the Washington Commanders, who are just outside the top 10 right now , and Jay Harbaugh was hired as his replacement.

It's five weeks, and we can see performance levels improve or regress as the season rolls on, but Harbaugh's unit is on the precipice of being an unmitigated disaster.

The Seahawks special teams is currently 27th in DVOA and probably will drop after Sunday's loss against the New York Giants. Whether or not the Giants committed a penalty on Jason Myers' game-losing blocked field goal for a touchdown, it still happened and it happened at the worst possible time. Mike Macdonald indicated it was a legal play.

Michael Dickson's first punt of the game should've been downed inside the 10. Coby Bryant was unable to down it and it went into the end zone for a touchback. Dickson is on pace for the worst "punts inside the 20" rate of his career , and by far the worst in net punting, which is a combination of touchbacks and bad punt coverage.

That 95-yard touchdown drive by Geno Smith and the Seahawks offense? Probably would've been a shorter drive (and less time consumed) if not for Dee Williams AGAIN letting a ball bounced with no defenders anywhere near him. It bounced to the 5. This is at least the third or fourth time (including "no-plays" for penalties) he's let this occur, and that contributes to Seattle having some of the worst average starting field position in the NFL.

Seattle's game-tying/game-winning drive effort almost didn't happen because Williams bobbled the punt return. He's already muffed a punt into a turnover, and even in his defense, one of his best returns was wiped out due to a penalty on Dareke Young. Still, Williams is not a demonstrable upgrade from DeeJay Dallas, someone who was derided for not being a dangerous returning threat.

Jason Myers has now had three straight games with a failed field goal attempt. One was a 50-yarder that should've given the Seahawks a 20-3 lead over the Dolphins, another one was a 61-yarder in a dome that wasn't remotely close—in an era where kickers are at least having the distance on 55+ yard attempts, being way wide and short is concerning—and now this blocked kick, which obviously isn't his fault. When field goals are an adventure, you've got a problem.

Seattle is no better than below-average in every special teams DVOA metric and there are no signs of improving. It's costing them field position, it's costing them points, and today against the Giants it helped cost them the game.