The Seattle Seahawks did an admirable enough job of keeping Ezekiel Elliott from hurting them too much in his first game back from suspension, and they took motivation from an interesting source.
After being mauled a week earlier by Los Angeles Rams running back Todd Gurley, the Seahawks knew that they had to keep Elliott from beating him. It looked like they were in trouble after a 51 yard first quarter, but buckled down to keep him at 97 yards and no touchdowns.
It turns out that Seahawks defenders had taken note of Eric Dickerson’s comments about Elliott going for a 200-yard game, and they didn’t like it much.
“He had that bet,” said linebacker Bobby Wagner, via Jori Epstein of SportsDay. “We wanted to make sure he didn’t win it.”
Cornerback Justin Coleman admitted that mimicking Elliott’s celebration in the Salvation Army kettle after a pick six on a pass that was intended for the running back wasn’t coincidental.
There was a lot of hype around Elliott’s return. It turns out it all had a side effect of giving the Seattle defense a lot of bulletin board material that they used to their advantage.
