There are moments in nature where a young bird of prey takes on a target that is bigger and stronger than they anticipated. An eagle or an osprey dives into water and snags a fish in its talons, but cannot fly away because the fish is too heavy and the fight is happening in the environment they were built for. The battle can go a few different ways. The bird can adjust to the unexpected weight and resistance, and find a way to fly away the victor. The bird can release the prey and live to fight another day. Or, there are occasions where the fish is too strong, and the bird’s talons are stuck, and the bird can be at risk of drowning. Your young Seattle Seahawks started Sunday soaring on a beautiful fall day. They spotted their prey and struck quickly, but it gave them far more of a fight than they were expecting. Pulled under multiple times, the Seahawks finally fought their way to shore. As their heart rate began to slow, and they could enjoy the taste of their victory, they found a surprise inside: first place in the NFC West. Survival is not always graceful, but these young Hawks are learning to hunt.
Nothing in this game went according to plan. The Browns entered with the best defense in football, the best pass rush in football, and an anemic offense that is hopeless through the air. Seattle entered with a rising defense that excelled in stopping opposing run games, and an offense that was struggling in the red zone. So what happens?
The Seahawks blitz the Browns defense for 17 first quarter points, including two red zone touchdowns. Geno Smith has more passing yards in that quarter than four of the six of the Browns opposing QBs have totalled in full games. The Browns offense moves the ball up and down the field, putting up almost more yards in the first half than the Seahawks defense has surrendered in the last three full games, and does it first through the air, and then on the ground.
The cherry on top was the Seahawks winning the game on a screen pass. No play has flummoxed this franchise more in the past 20 years than the screen pass. Suddenly, they have run a few successful screen plays, including the game winner to Jaxon Smith-Njigba. It was fitting to win that way while wearing the throwback jerseys. Somewhere, John L. Williams is smiling.
Most football games make sense. Even if the play on the field is wild, the game scripts are familiar. It is like watching a movie. The actors might be different. The era and setting might be different. But the story is somewhat recycled. This game made little sense.
Myles Garrett is the closest thing to superhuman in the NFL these days. You do not stop him. You just hope to limit the damage. He was personally responsible for 17 of the Browns points last week in Indianapolis.
Seattle decided to counter this living nightmare by rotating in a 41-year-old right tackle (Jason Peters), and playing with less pass protection help from tight ends than in any other game this season. The Seahawks ran 11 personnel (1 RB 1 TE 3WR) on 70% of their plays in this game. Then, they decided, despite some big, explosive, success running the football, to have their fewest rush attempts on the season (only 13 by running backs).
That sounds like one of the worst game plans one could imagine to slow down the league’s top pass rush. It must have been a disaster, right? Not in this hall of oddities we witnessed yesterday. Garrett would finish with just 1 sack. That was the Browns only sack to go along with just 3 QB hits. Garrett’s sack took 4.76 seconds. The average time to throw in the NFL is around 3 seconds.
Pete Carroll even seemed surprised in his postgame comments. When asked why the Seahawks ran the ball so few times, Carroll made reference to, “protecting better than we expected.” If there was not a King of Understatements, there is now.
We will almost certainly find in the coming days that Smith had a lot to do with limiting pressure with quick throws, but I am pretty sure my eyes saw a solid-to-very good performance by the offensive line.
It was good to see the team finally give Peters some reps at right tackle. Jake Curhan was killing this team. Stone Forsythe is a passable backup. Peters could have been (and might still be) unplayable at his age. He also could be the best right tackle on the active roster, capable of allowing the offense to run plays they would not feel comfortable running without better tackle protection.
Something tells me Peters is probably going to be the right tackle the rest of this season. We can hope Abe Lucas returns, but that feels optimistic at this point.
There is a big difference between a tackle that can play 55.0-65.0 (in PFF grading) and one who can play 65.0-75.0. I think Forsythe is the former (Curhan is 35.0-55.0, btw), and Peters may be the latter. Time will tell.
Smith continues to feed his doubters with erratic decision making and costly turnovers. He has made critical errors in three straight games after playing mostly clean football through the first four. He was elite at times in the first quarter. He was painfully inept at times for the next three quarters.
But like the rest of this wacko game, he did exactly what many detractors insist he is incapable of doing, which was lead a game-winning drive. He now has more game-winning touchdown passes in the final minute of the game (including OT) than any other quarterback in the NFL, dating back to last year.
The truth about Smith is that he is capable of throws that only 3-5 other players in the league can make. When he is good, he is elite. He also makes enough turnover-worthy throws to belong in the bottom half of the league’s signal callers. Everyone is trying to sum him up as either worthy or not worthy of being “the guy.” There is no sense of imagining what’s possible, only fixation on what currently is.
Was Matt Hasselbeck “the guy” when he was benched in 2001 for Trent Dilfer? Did he ever truly conquer his tendency toward interceptions? You might think so, but the truth is that he threw interceptions on 2.5-3.5% of this throws even after recapturing the starting spot. Smith threw interceptions on 1.9% of this throws last season, and is up to 2.7% after throwing a whopping 5 picks in the last three games.
If he continues to turn the ball over at this rate, there is no defense for him. What I see is a guy who is capable of doing things very few QBs are capable of doing. That elite upside is not something you toss aside casually. The coaches and Smith need to work on reducing the errors, and accentuating the strengths. It has been especially tough to design a game plan that takes advantage of one of the best intermediate-to-deep passers in the game when they do not trust their offensive line to protect.
What folks likely have forgotten about Hasselbeck was that his resurgence and development was more marked by a dramatic increase in touchdown rate than it was in reduction in interceptions. He went from throwing a touchdown on 2-3% of this passes to throwing them on 4.5-5.5% of his attempts. Smith was at 5.3% when he played in place of Russell Wilson in 2021 and at 5.2% last season. He is at 4.0% this year. His game-winning touchdown pass yesterday put him at 5.4% TD rate in that game.
If this is all too many numbers, think of it this way: games are not won by eliminating mistakes. They are won by making more plays that lead to points for you than those that lead to points for your opponent. Brett Favre famously hold the record for most interceptions thrown (336). He won Super Bowls and MVP awards by throwing a bunch more touchdowns (508).
These games from Smith deserve real criticism. This team is also 5-1 over the last six games, and the one game they lost, he led them to five red zone possessions while throwing for a ton of yards and explosive passes behind an offensive line that allowed pressure on 46% of the throws.
Favre had seasons where his touchdown pass rate was 6.7-7.2%. That’s not realistic for Smith. Get him back to throwing scores on 5%+ of his passes and whittle away at that interception rate, and you have a quarterback that you can win a lot of games with. It will take more than a three game rough patch for me to be ready to move on from a guy who has shown elite arm talent.
One of the changes to the passing game has to involve D.K. Metcalf. The injured and mercurial receiver returned to the field and was mostly an inefficient part of the offense. Smith completed just 5 of 14 passes to Metcalf, making it two straight games where the completion rate to Metcalf was less than 50%. He was 18/23 passing to all other receivers.
Some of that is on Metcalf. Some of it is on Smith. Some of it is on Waldron. Metcalf’s buddy from college, A.J. Brown, is setting the league on fire with games over 120 yards receiving every week. That is what Metcalf should be. It is not what he is.
Smith was better at taking advantage of his outlets and being willing to throw the ball away last year. He is locking onto Metcalf and forcing throws his way too often. Metcalf is also not winning his matchups. Every other receiver on the team created more separation (nearly twice as much) as Metcalf in this game.
Tyler Lockett was a huge part of the first quarter and then disappeared. Smith-Njigba has not yet become a primary target, and lost some trust when he ran the wrong route and nearly contributed to a game-ending pick six.
Some of this is likely due to Metcalf not practicing since week two when he hurt his ribs against the Lions. Smith and Metcalf need timing that is missing and only comes from repetition. Something needs to change here.
Kenneth Walker had a 45 yard run in the first quarter, but was largely ineffective the rest of the way as he totalled 21 yards on his other 7 carries. Zach Charbonnet was the best back on the field and the team seems unwilling to ride him.
The penultimate drive by the Seahawks was a perfect example. Charbonnet ran for 13 yards, then caught a pass for 7 yards, then ran for 20 yards, and then they pulled him. Will Dissly got a false start that changed a 2nd and 5 to a 2nd and 10. Smith threw an incompletion and then Garrett got his one sack.
That sequence nearly cost the team the game. They were in field goal range. Maybe Charbonnet was still nursing his sore hamstring enough that they wanted to be careful. All I know is that guy is part of the solution and should be getting far more touches than he has seen so far.
The most confounding part of this bizarre game was the defense struggling to stop this Browns offense. Given the Cleveland coaches credit for a great game plan, and their players credit for executing it well. They caught the Seahawks with screen passes multiple times, and PJ Walker made a few nice passes. Mostly, though, the Browns pounded the ball in the middle of the Seahawks line for productive gains of 3-6 yards.
They only averaged 3.9 yards per carry, but they rarely were stopped for less than three yards. In total, they had 40 carries for 155 yards. Nobody has done that to Seattle this season. Had this been last year’s defense, they would have had 250+ yards rushing. This was exactly the type of physical football that team could not stop.
This group did not stop it, but they kept it from dominating the game. Oddly, the Browns kept calling passes on 3rd and 4 yards or less. The Seahawks stopped them from converting those more times than not, including the last time when Jamal Adams used his gleaming silver helmet to knock a pass into the air on 3rd and 3, and have it settle into the arms of Julian Love for a game-changing interception.
There was 2:04 left in the game when that ball was snapped. A first down there ends it. Wild and bizarre storylines permeated this game.
As much as this game was unsatisfying defensively, allowing so many yards and points to a bad quarterback and bad offense, it would have been better had the referees not made so many terrible calls. The 4th and 3 penalty against Riq Woolen was awful and resulted in a touchdown. The hands to the face from Devon Witherspoon was so minor you needed to watch in slow motion to see it happen. That turned what would have been a 3rd and 18 at the Cleveland 12 yard line into a 1st and 10, which had a big impact on field position. Then there was missing the Browns lining up offsides on what became the first interception from Smith at the end of the first half.
The score of this game could have been quite different. Even so, the defense held the Browns to two field goals in their final six possessions while also netting an interception and turnover on downs. That made the win possible.
Truthfully, the 17 points the Seahawks scored in the first quarter should have been enough to win this one. There is some work to do on that run defense and on screen passes.
It was another great game for Boye Mafe, who has a sack in five straight games after getting another one against the Browns. Woolen had what might have been his best game of the year, and should have had two picks. Darrell Taylor may not be getting consistent pressure, but he has shown a knack for getting a big sack at the end of games to seal wins. That is a valuable contribution. He now has 2.5 sacks in the last two games, and he has a history of being streaky with sacks, so maybe this is the start of a heater.
There is not a lot of solid conclusions to make about this game. It was too weird. One thing we can say with certainty is that the Seahawks won, and are now in first place in the division. Seattle has faced down injury adversity and a dud season opener to find ways to win. The 49ers faced a little injury adversity and have lost three straight.
That 49ers roster is still loaded, and they will get healthier and better. What Seattle has to focus on is finding ways to improve and develop each week. They are incredibly young, which people continue to overlook. At least eight players getting significant snaps are in their first or second seasons. That doesn’t include guys who are new to Seattle and are likely still adjusting to their roles here.
There is every reason to believe the Seahawks will improve as the year wears on. They will have to as their competition will ramp up. This game against the Ravens next week is an excellent test. These Hawks have caught something bigger than anyone could have reasonably expected at the halfway point of the season. They will need to get stronger to truly take flight.