“The rust part that you’re talking about, I think when you don’t play football for a while it takes you a little bit of time to get back in and feel the flow of football,” HC Jonathan Gannon of Ojulari said, via the team website. “That’s natural I think, and everybody’s a little bit different by age, by position and by what we’re asking to do. Yeah, there’ll be a — I don’t want to say a learning curve — but the first time he’s having to bend the corner off of a surgically repaired knee, I’m sure that’s in his brain. He’s out there now and why he’s practicing is we feel good and he feels good enough to go do that without hopefully thinking about it too much. But I’d be lying to say he is not going to be thinking about it. That’s natural.”

“I’m built for this league and I know what type of player I can be,” Ojulari said. “Now I just have to go out and show it.”

Seahawks

Seahawks QB Sam Darnold carved up the Commanders’ defense like Freddy Krueger on Sunday night, drawing praise from HC Mike Macdonald after a perfect first half.

“Believe me when I say, I’m not surprised,” Macdonald said of Darnold, via the team’s official website. “We watched Sam every day on how he operates, and he’s the same guy every day, which is what you love about him. And we’re chasing it. The guys are determined, and it’s fun to watch. And when the team comes together, that’s this type of stuff that you can do when you play the right way, you prepare the right way.”

Darnold joked that a teammate jinxed him at halftime when it was mentioned that he never threw an incomplete pass in the first half, which led to his second-half interception.

“Obviously, I can feel the flow of the game and understand that we’re doing really good on offense, but no, I didn’t know that I hadn’t thrown an incompletion,” he said. “It’s pretty cool. Someone at halftime said to me that I hadn’t thrown an incompletion, so I think he’s to blame for throwing an incompletion in the second half. [I’m] not going to say who it was…You can feel that kind of flow and feel like every single play that we’re calling is for the exact defense that they’re rolling out there. Sometimes that flow just happens, especially in football. It feels good when it happens, but you just gotta take advantage of it when you get those looks for those plays that are being called.”

• Seahawks GM John Schneider on putting S Julian Love on IR: “We decided let’s just play it safe and do the right thing and get him 100 percent so we can finish the season strong with him running things back there.” (Bob Condotta)
• Macdonald on the knee injury sustained by LB Ernest Jones: “It’s not season-ending, but we’ll see how it goes.” (Brady Henderson)