Seattle and Atlanta will play on Monday night, and the Seahawks will be without two thirds of the Legion of Boom. They lost Richard Sherman to a season-ending Achilles injury a week ago, and now Kam Chancellor apparently also is out for the season, with a neck injury.
Normally it’s a bad idea to start quarterbacks and wide receivers against this defense, especially at this stadium, but the situation is starting to look a lot more palatable now. Matt Ryan and Julio Jones look like top-10 players at their positions, and Mohamed Sanu could be just fine as a second receiving threat.
After Sherman got hurt at Arizona, the Cardinals immediately started completing passes in that part of the field. Drew Stanton is a lesser passer, but he finished with 273 yards.
The Falcons are mostly healthy for this game, but they’ll be missing Devonta Freeman (concussion). This will elevating Tevin Coleman into the starting lineup, with Terron Ward probably getting 20-30 percent of the workload off the bench. Seattle has been really good against the run recently, holding Adrian Peterson under 2 yards per carry, but with the back end crumbling, that could also help to loosen up things at the line of scrimmage.
Seattle might also be without left tackle Duane Brown (ankle). They’re calling him questionable, but he didn’t practice all week. When the Cowboys tried to play Atlanta last week without their left tackle, it didn’t end well.
The Seahawks also will be without guard Luke Joeckel and linebacker Michael Wilhoite. Joeckel has missed the last four games after undergoing knee surgery.
The complete listings can be viewed at Seattle’s official team site.
—Ian Allan