While Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson is known for his ability to create plays by scrambling, he’s run himself into a sack or two.
Wilson, while off to a spectacular start, has been sacked 17 times this season, the ninth most in the NFL. Tennessee’s Marcus Mariota leads the league with 25 sacks.
The Falcons’ pass rush, which is on the hot seat for Sunday’s game, at 1 p.m. against the Seahawks at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, is looking to end its sack drought that has stretched to 318 defensive snaps over the past four games.
The Falcons have not recorded a sack since the 9:50 mark of the third quarter against the Colts on Sept. 22.
Defensive ends Vic Beasley and Takk McKinley sacked Colts quarterback Jacoby Brissett on second-and-13 from the Colts’ 22 that day.
In subsequent games against mobile quarterbacks, the Falcons failed to bring down Mariota, Houston’s Deshaun Watson and Arizona’s Kyler Murray. They also couldn’t get to Los Angeles’ Jared Goff, a traditional drop-back quarterback.
The Colts ran 21 plays after the Beasley-McKinley sack. There were 76 defensive snaps against the Rams, 69 in the Arizona game, 73 against Houston and 79 against Tennessee.
The Falcons have recorded only five sacks, which ranks last in the NFL. The Dolphins and Jets have seven sacks.
The Falcons are the seventh team in NFL history to go four consecutive games without a sack, according to profootballreference.com. The 2008 Chiefs were the last team to do it.
History is on the Falcons’ side, as no team has gone five consecutive games without a sack.
“Anytime you are not hitting the quarterback and affecting him the way that you want, you have to find new ways to find it,” Falcons coach Dan Quinn said. “You look at it just like you look at any problem. You turn it inside out, outside in, get new eyes on it and fresh eyes to go and look at what ways can we improve that.”
The Falcons have been blitzing more, but that could be dangerous against Wilson.
“We want that (pass rush) for them and they want it, too, so when we are not meeting those results, of course, we are frustrated,” Quinn said. “We have looked at four-man rushes, five-man rushes, and trying to find different ways that we can get a pass rush and are going to continue looking at ways to find one.”
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