Note: Last Sunday at Seattle’s Centurylink Field our Seattle Seahawks defeated the Dallas Cowboys 38-31 in another barn burner that went right down to the wire. Following the pattern so far this season, for the most part the Hawks defense couldn’t stop the Dak Prescott-led Cowboys offense; while Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson continued his personal assault on the NFL record books with 5 more touchdown passes, giving him 14 across the first 3 weeks of the young season—more than any other quarterback has ever thrown to open a campaign. Ironically, as porous as the Seahawks defenders were in this game, they pulled off 3 huge turnovers which swung the game in Seattle’s favor. Please read on…MA

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At the end of my last blog chronicling our Seattle Seahawks’ 35-30 win over the New England Patriots, I made the comment that my weak heart couldn’t take another barn burner type of game. Apparently, I was wrong, for despite the fact that Seattle eked out another incredibly thrilling last second 38-31 victory over the Cowboys, I’m still here to write about it. I have a feeling it’s going to be this way the whole season, so I guess I’ll just have to stock up on the blood pressure medication and make the best of it. One thing for sure, based on how Russell Wilson and the Seattle offense is playing so far this season, and barring injuries, if the Hawks D can just get to the point of being NFL average then we have a bona fide Super Bowl team in our city—Wilson has been that good. Against Dallas he had his second consecutive game with 5 scoring throws; across these first 3 games, besides his league leading 14 touchdown passes, he leads the NFL in passer rating at 139, (15 points better than the next best) and is near the top in nearly all other passing metrics. The Seahawks quarterback says he wants his legacy to be that he was the greatest to ever play the game. Based on how he’s playing, as bold a statement as that is, I’m not sure I’d bet against him.

Seattle’s defense has been another matter, however. In Sunday’s game that defense surrendered over 500 yards to the Cowboys, with Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott throwing for his personal career best of 472 yards. For most of the game Seattle’s secondary resembled nothing so much as sieve, giving up all those yards and 3 touchdown passes to boot, all of which went for 40 or more yards. Sometimes it just seemed ridiculous, watching the Cowboys receivers running free, with almost no pressure being gotten on Prescott. The irony of Seattle’s terrible defense in this game, however, is that without 3 key plays by that same otherwise leaky D, the Hawks most likely would have lost this game. All 3 plays were turnovers, the first two resulting in short fields which Wilson and the offense turned into touchdowns, while the last was an interception in the end zone to close out the game. Due to their importance in this game, I am concentrating the bulk of this article on these plays.

The first of these takeaways took place with 45 seconds to play in the 2^nd quarter and Seattle clinging to a 16-15 lead; Cowboys ball with a 2^nd and five situation at their own at their own 25 yard-line. As Prescott hurried his team to the scrimmage line for the play, he set one receiver, Amari Cooper, split wide to his right, with Seattle corner back Shaquill Griffin facing him in man to man defense.   Split wide to the Dallas quarterback’s left were three other receivers while running back Ezekiel Elliott was next to him in the back field. From the shotgun Prescott called the signals and with the snap of the ball made his initial read to his left, but then very quickly looked back to his right and released a pass to Cooper just before being engulfed by Seattle defensive lineman, Jarran Reed. (Well, the Seahawks did get pressure on some plays.) Whether Reed’s pressure bothered the Dallas quarterback on this throw I can’t say for sure. Cooper was running about a 15-yard deep crossing route and Griffin was playing the receiver in near perfect position, right in his hip pocket. For whatever reason Prescott’s throw was not far enough out in front of his receiver, which allowed Griffin to break on the ball, undercut Cooper’s route, and make the pick right in front of the receiver’s face at about the Dallas 40 yard-line. From there Griffin returned the ball to the Dallas 34, which, with 36 seconds left in the 2^nd quarter, set Seattle up with a scoring opportunity to end the first half.

Plays like Griffin’s pick are game changers; a fact illustrated by what Wilson and Co. did in that last 36 seconds before halftime. It took the Hawks quarterback and his offense 5 plays and 29 seconds of game time to put another touchdown on the board, this time on a one yard pass to Tyler Lockett who was wide-open on an end zone crossing route. The Seattle receiver’s scoring reception was his third of the game, which is a career best for him; but the play was notable for another reason as well—the resulting 23-15 halftime score was a first in NFL history. Never, in any other NFL game ever, has a contest reached halftime with that score. On top of this, Griffin’s interception was his first in 30 games, a period covering nearly 2 years; while for Prescott, Griffin’s theft was the first pick he has thrown in his last 292 passing attempts—a Cowboys team record.

To set the stage for the next Seahawks takeaway, and to see the impact of Griffin’s, you should understand that part of the strategy many teams use, particularly the Seahawks, and in this game the Cowboys, has to do with the first official “play” of any game—the coin toss. For most of my life the goal for most teams at the game-opening coin toss was to correctly guess heads or tails so they could then opt for the game’s first possession and the chance to score first. Since Pete Carroll came to the Seahawks a decade ago he has had his team play the coin toss differently. If the Hawks won the toss he ordered his captain to defer the choice of possession or not to the opposing team. Inevitably that meant the opposing team would opt for the ball first, which meant the Hawks would be on defense first and would receive the kickoff for the 2^nd half. There are several reasons for doing this. First, if a team has a good defense, like Seattle’s Legion of Boom teams of a few years ago, an opponent’s first possession would likely result in a “3 and out” or at least a limited number of plays and resulting punt, which would give the ball back to Seattle with no scoreboard damage and the first possession of the 2^nd half still intact. Second, it gave Carroll and his team a chance to manipulate things so they would have the last possession of the first half AND the first possession of the 2^nd half. Usually teams have settled in to a game by midway through the second quarter and know which parts of their game plan are clicking and which aren’t. This potentially makes possessions from that midway 2^nd quarter point on more valuable to a team—hence the value of having the last possession of the first half and the first possession of the 2^nd.

Having won the coin toss to start this game and then deferring to the Seahawks, Dallas already had the second half kickoff possession in their back pocket. When the Cowboys took possession of the ball following a Seattle punt with just over a minute to play in the 2^nd quarter, the last possession of the first half was also in their grasp. Griffin’s interception destroyed the first half part of that coin toss strategy. The next Seahawks takeaway destroyed the second half part.

The Seahawks second half kickoff carried through the end zone and the Cowboys started the 3^rd quarter with 1^st and 10 at their own 25 yard-line. On the first play from scrimmage Seattle’s D wasted no time in snatching their next takeaway. On the play Prescott lined up under center with his running back Zeke Elliott stationed in classic tailback position 6 yards behind him. With only two receivers, one each split to the right and left, and 7 blockers across the offensive line, it for sure looked like an Elliott run was in the offing. As it turned out, that’s what the Cowboys wanted the Hawks to think; for, on taking the center snap Prescott immediately took a seven step drop, obviously intent on throwing the ball well down field. As the play developed, the Dallas quarterback’s protection was decent, but for one failing: Hawks defensive tackle Jarran Reed got penetration on Dallas’s left side and then crashed in towards Prescott, but a little deeper, to the point where he was directly behind the quarterback. When Prescott, who seemed unaware of Reed’s presence, cocked his arm back to throw, Reed reached toward the quarterback’s arm and knocked the ball loose, causing a fumble that went a few feet vertically into the air before fluttering down into the waiting arms of Seattle’s Benson Mayowa—a defensive lineman’s dream. Realizing what he now had, Mayowa took the gift and rambled down to the Dallas 5-yard line, from where Wilson and the offense made short work of the short field with another short scoring throw, Russell’s 4^th of the day, this time to Jacob Hollister.

Thus, between the end of the 2^nd quarter and the beginning of the 3^rd quarter, using just about a minute of actual game time, Seattle, because of these turnovers, turned a slim one point lead into a 30-15 advantage. If you ever need an example of what takeaways can do to help a team, you’ll find none better than that.

Now, you might think that after assuming a two-score lead on the Cowboys, with the way Wilson was playing, this win was well in hand for the Seahawks. If you thought that you surely haven’t been paying attention to how bad Seattle’s defense has been to start this season. So far in 2020 in terms of yards allowed the Seahawks are number 32 in a 32-team league. It doesn’t get any worse than that, folks. And the chief culprit in all this is the Hawks pass defense; and by that I mean all parts of it, from the pass rush to the secondary play. For those of us so used to our team’s recent great defenses, what we are seeing week in and week out is very hard to take; and It very much explains what happened next in this game; which can be summed up as Dak Prescott and his receivers going wild. Across the next one and a half quarters of football the Dallas quarterback completed 24 of 35 passes for an astounding 291 yards and two 40 yard touchdown passes. By the time that onslaught ended, with 4 minutes left in the game, Prescott had engineered a 31-30 lead for his team. In so doing he made one horrendous mistake, however—he left Russell Wilson with more than enough time on the clock for one of his patented game-saving drives, which is exactly what the Seattle quarterback did.

Following a Dallas field goal, which gave the Cowboys the 31-30 lead, Wilson and the Hawks started their next possession on their own 25-yard line, 75 yards from the go-ahead score. The Seattle quarterback’s idea was to use as much of the remaining game clock as possible while continuing to move the chains, ideally leaving Dallas next to nothing in the way of time to respond to the inevitable Seahawks score; and that is just about the way it worked out—almost. In fact, it took Wilson only 8 plays and 2 minutes and 12 seconds to drive his team the length of the field and score the go-ahead touchdown; this time on a beautiful 29- yard pass to DK Metcalf, who ran a deep crossing route, left to right, all the way across the field to make the catch at the goal line. It was an incredible play, and nearly (but not quite to my way of thinking) made up for a bone head play by Metcalf in the 2^nd quarter when he hauled in a 60 yard Russell Wilson bomb on about the Dallas 8-yard line, and then, thinking he was all alone, slowed down and relaxed, putting the ball in his right hand as he waltzed toward the end zone. This gave reprieve to the beaten Dallas defender on the play, Trevon Diggs, who, upon seeing the ball being held so cavalierly by Metcalf, raced forward and batted the thing from DK’s hand BEFORE he crossed the goal line; whereupon the ball rolled through the end zone for a touchback, giving Dallas the ball on their own 20. It was an incredibly dumb play by the Seattle receiver, and I’m sure he’ll never make that mistake again.

But, I’m just not quite ready to forgive him just yet. A couple more big plays from him and maybe I’ll get there.

Anyway, Metcalf’s touchdown occurred with 1 minute and 47 seconds left in the game and gave the Hawks a 36-31 lead. Seattle then went for the 2-point conversion, which, following a Dallas personal foul penalty on the first attempt, was ultimately successful on the second attempt, giving the Hawks a 7-point lead. Now, being 7 points down, Dallas would need a touchdown AND extra point just to tie the game. It was looking better for the Hawks, but Wilson did make one huge mistake in this otherwise excellent Seahawks scoring drive. As the Cowboys had done for him a few minutes earlier, he left the Dallas team with 1 minute and 47 seconds on the clock and all 3 time outs—way too much time for Dak Prescott, who to that point on this particular Sunday was having the game of his life.

Following the Seattle kickoff, Prescott and the Dallas offense started what would be their last possession of the game at their own 25-yard line. 10 plays later Prescott and that offense had dinked and dunked their way to a 1^st and 10 at the Seattle 22 with 26 seconds left in the game. Interestingly, to this point in the drive  Seattle’s defense  was showing signs of improvement. Mercifully, the Dallas receivers weren’t getting behind the Seahawks secondary for big plays and the pass rush was starting to get some pressure on Prescott, forcing more underneath throws to Zeke Elliott and the Dallas tight ends. The Cowboys were moving the ball, but not in big chunks like they were earlier in the game.  On the 1^st and 10 play from the 22, Prescott tried to hit one of his wide receivers, Cedrick Wilson, on a shallow crossing route at the 18-yard line, but the pass was broken up beautifully by Shaquem Griffin, who was elevated from Seattle’s practice squad just a couple days earlier because of a season ending injury to linebacker Bruce Irvin. When Irvin’s replacement, 1^st round draft pick Jordyn Brooks, went down with an ankle injury, Shaquem was next man up; and from what I could see he played well against the Cowboys.

On the next play, now 2^nd and 10 for Dallas from the 22-yard line, the Seahawks pass rush finally asserted itself. With Prescott taking the snap from the shotgun, he had barely begun to set his feet when Seahawks rookie defensive lineman Alton Robinson broke through from the Cowboys left side and sacked the Dallas quarterback for a 4-yard loss. The sack was the first ever for Robinson, with hopefully many more to come. According to Pete Carroll he was very impressive in training camp and it was good to see him show that promise under fire. Robinson’s sack left the Cowboys with 3^rd and 14 yards to go at the Seattle 26-yard line. With 16 seconds left in the game, the stage was now set for the Seahawks 3^rd and final turnover. The play started with Prescott once again in the shotgun calling the signals. On the snap of the ball Seahawks defensive lineman Benson Mayowa quickly defeated the player blocking him, slammed into Prescott from the quarterback’s right side and desperately tried to fling the Dallas quarterback to the ground. Prescott, however, is a stout fellow, and though he came very close to going down, he miraculously managed to keep his feet as he stumbled to his left, away from Mayowa. He then tried to right himself and launch a pass to the end zone; a critical mistake for the Dallas quarterback, for he threw the ball into heavy traffic when he didn’t have to. Though Dallas was out of time outs, there were still seconds on the clock, and Prescott still had a down to play with. He should have thrown the ball away. Instead his pass was intercepted by Ryan Neal, another practice squad player who had been pressed into service due to a groin injury to safety Jamal Adams. The pick was Neal’s first interception ever, and he chose a perfect time for it. I’m sure he will remember that play for the rest of his life.

Thus, the Seahawks chalk up another victory and are now 3-0 on the season. They are an incredibly exciting team to watch, but with the defense playing like it is I don’t think that winning this way is sustainable. This Sunday they take on the 1-2 Dolphins in Miami, a contest which has all the elements of a “trap-game” for Seattle. It’s another 3,000 mile trip and 10 AM east coast start, and last I heard the weather may be bad, with rain in the forecast. Former UW running back Myles Gaskin is playing very well for Miami, as is veteran quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. Seattle cannot afford a letdown against these guys, for if they do they could well lose this game.

Let’s hope the defense plays better and that doesn’t happen.

Go Hawks!

Copyright © 2020

By Mark Arnold

All Rights Reserved