Note: In a game they should have won, our Seattle Seahawks fell to the Arizona Cardinals last Sunday in overtime 37-34. I say “should have won”, knowing full well that there is no consolation prize in the NFL for “coulda-shoulda-woulda.” The fact is the team that should have won did; and in this game that was the Cardinals. With all the interceptions, crucial penalties and missed blocks, Seattle just committed too many mistakes, and in the end, it was too much to overcome. For the story of this game, please read on…MA

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My boyhood hero, the famous Hall of Fame and Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas, once said, “When you know what you’re doing, you don’t get intercepted.”  If ever anyone knew whereof they spoke, it’s got to be Unitas. The great Colts signal caller practically invented the modern NFL passing game. When he called it quits in 1973, after 17 seasons, he owned virtually every NFL career passing record, from most passes attempted and completed to most passing yards and touchdown passes. And yet, despite his confident statement, Unitas was intercepted a bunch of times throughout his career; nearly as many times (253) as his number of scoring passes (290). In fact, the first pass he ever threw in an NFL game was picked and returned for a touchdown. The simple truth is interceptions and mistakes of all kinds happen in football, and generally it’s the winning team in any single game that makes the fewest. Last Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Arizona, that team wasn’t the Seahawks.

Nevertheless, there was much that Seattle did right in this game, particularly on offense. Forget, if you can, about Russell Wilson’s 3 interceptions, and his stats for this game were exceptional: 33 completions in 50 attempts for 388 yards and 3 touchdown passes, to go with 84 yards rushing. Unbelievably, that’s nearly 500 yards of offense from the Hawks quarterback alone. Seattle’s brilliant slot receiver, Tyler Lockett, had the best game of his career and one of the best in Seahawks history, catching 15 passes for 200 yards and all 3 of Wilson’s scoring throws; two of which were of the unbelievable variety—exquisite Wilson touch passes, dropped from the sky and into the receiver’s waiting hands. Also, in the first half the Seahawks put 27 points on the board against the Cardinals defense; which, going into the game, was one of the best “points allowed” defenses in the NFC. Arizona couldn’t stop Seattle, and at half-time I was convinced that this game would be won with relative ease by our team.

Perhaps after that first half many of you Twelves felt the same; and If you did, like me, you were wrong. In the end the Seahawks just made way too many mistakes in this game, and their effect was too much to overcome. More so than great play by Arizona, those mistakes did us in. To me that was the story of the game, and so I am devoting most of this post to describing what I thought were the main miscues; not to be carpingly critical, but to show what must be corrected for the Hawks to get where they want to go—the Big Game in February.

The first of these mistakes I am mentioning, however, not because of the negative effect it had on the Seahawks, which turned out to be minimal, but because of the absolutely amazing play it turned out to be. Following a DeAndre Hopkins 2^nd quarter fumble, recovered for Seattle by KJ Wright at the Arizona 31-yard line, Wilson rapidly drove the Hawks to a 1^st and goal at the Cardinals 3. Coming to the line of scrimmage for that 1^st down play, the Seahawks quarterback had his team in what looked to be a running formation, with DK Metcalf stationed on the outside shoulder of left tackle Duane Brown, and Freddie Swain and Lockett in tight on the right, with Swain right up against tight end Will Dissly, so that the three receivers created a “bunch”. This, of course, concentrated the Cardinals pass coverage in the area just on the other side of the scrimmage line. In the backfield with Wilson was running back Chris Carson. On the snap of the ball Dissly took off on a shallow crossing route to the left, while Locket and Swain went straight up field and engaged the defensive backs waiting there, creating a confusion that Wilson and offensive coordinator Brian Shottenheimer no doubt hoped would distract the Cardinals defenders, thus allowing Carson to leak out into the right flat undetected, catch the short lob from Wilson, and waltz into the end zone untouched. It was a great play in theory, the only problem being that Arizona safety Budda Baker, who only a few years ago was making a name for himself as a UW Husky, wasn’t fooled at all.

I’ve watched this play a bunch of times now, and it’s clear that Carson was Baker’s responsibility on the play, as the Arizona safety paid no attention whatsoever to the scrum created by Lockett, Swain and their defenders, instead running straight toward the running back. Meanwhile Wilson, who obviously never saw Baker, just assumed Carson would be wide open and lobbed a short, arcing pass toward the running back that would never hit his hands. Instead it hit Baker’s, who timed his arrival to the ball perfectly, made the interception at about the 2-yard line, and then proceeded at warp speed in the opposite direction, with nothing but yards of green turf in front of him. To appreciate what happened next, you must understand that Budda Baker is fast; timed at 4.45 seconds in the 40-yard dash. To expect anyone to catch him, with the head start he had, just wasn’t realistic. We didn’t yet realize it, but we were about to see one of the most amazing feats of athleticism that has ever taken place on a football field.

When Budda Baker made his pick, Seattle’s DK Metcalf, who is widely known for his own world-class 40-yard dash speed (4.3 seconds), was in the middle of a shallow crossing route at about the 2-yard line. On seeing the pass go to Carson he had slowed to a near stop, but on seeing Baker running the other way with the ball, the big receiver took off after him and shifted into overdrive, his long legs eating up the yards between him and Baker, until he finally tackled the Arizona safety at the Seattle 6-yard line. There is no way to do this play justice with verbal description—you literally must see it to believe it. As I said, Baker is fast, and it was just incredible to watch DK chase him down on the football field. Metcalf’s phenomenal play saved a touchdown for Seattle; and when the Hawks defense then prevented Arizona from getting any points at all, forcing a Kyler Murray incompletion on a 4^th and goal play, the impact of Wilson’s mistake was negated, except for the fact it blew a red zone scoring opportunity for the Hawks. Even that aspect was negated, however, when Wilson and company, on the ensuing possession, drove 97 yards for another touchdown to take a 20-7 lead.

It isn’t often you will see a red zone interception returned 90 yards, and not only not result in a touchdown, but result in no points at all for the other team; yet, due to Metcalf’s unreal play, that is exactly what we witnessed in this game. Simply unbelievable!  

The other Hawks mistakes in this game had no such mitigating factors, and their consequences were devastating. The first of these took place at the 7:40 mark of the 3^rd quarter with Arizona in possession, 3^rd and 5 at their own 12-yard line. The play was a short Kyler Murray pass to his tight end Dan Arnold, designed to gain the 5 yards for the first down and not much more. Defending Arnold on the play was Hawks middle linebacker Bobby Wagner. As the Cardinals tight end was crossing left to right in front of Wagner, Murray released a poor pass that was uncatchable, at least a yard behind Arnold. Despite this, Wagner came up and blasted the tight end from behind, resulting in a personal foul 15-yard penalty on the Hawks. The penalty bailed the Cardinals out of what would have been a punting situation, thus giving the ball back to Seattle. Arizona then went on to complete a 97-yard drive to a touchdown. In his post-game interview Wagner said he thought Arnold had caught the ball, and couldn’t understand why he was penalized. The game announcers called it a bang-bang play, indicating that maybe Wagner was justified in feeling that way. It’s clear on the replay, however, that the pass was nowhere near Arnold and was well past the receiver when Wagner hit him. Given today’s rules, the refs were probably justified in the call.

The next Seattle game-costing mistake took place at the 12:25 mark of the 4^th quarter with the Seahawks in possession and driving at the Arizona 30-yd line. On a 3^rd and 5 play Wilson took the snap from shotgun and was flushed out of the pocket to his right by the Arizona pass rush. On the run, he launched a deep pass down the right sideline towards the end zone that was intended for DK Metcalf. For some reason, however, the receiver cut his route short, leaving only Cardinals defensive back Patrick Peterson in position to make a play on the ball, which he did, intercepting it in the end zone. It is hard to know whether this was Wilson’s mistake or Metcalf’s. Obviously, the Seattle quarterback thought the big receiver would continue his route into the end zone; but regardless of who’s mistake it was, it cost the Seahawks at least 3 points, as they were well within field goal range when the turnover happened.  

Further damage from Wilson’s interception was prevented when, on the ensuing Cardinals possession, Kyler Murray made another poor throw, resulting in an interception by Seattle safety Quandre Diggs at the Arizona 45-yd line. From there the Hawks took 12 plays to negotiate the 45 yards to a touchdown, with Wilson hitting Lockett with his 3rd scoring pass of the game, and Tyler’s 3^rd TD catch, on a short, gorgeous, high, arcing, 4^th down throw at the very back end of the end zone. Lockett’s toenail tapping catch on the play was a sight to behold; another of his great catches in this game.

That Wilson to Lockett touchdown gave Seattle a 34-24 lead with 6 minutes and 44 seconds left in the game. With Seattle’s old Legion of Boom defense, a two- score lead with 6 minutes left would put that game in the win column, but that’s not this team. The Cardinals took the following kickoff and within one minute of game time had driven into Seahawks territory; but at the 3:02 mark of the 4^th quarter the drive had stalled at the Seattle 35-yd line with Arizona facing a 4^th down with 12 yards to go for a new set of downs. Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury opted to try a long 52-yard field goal, and the stage was set for the next mammoth Seahawks blunder.  On the field goal attempt, which was good by the way, Seahawks defensive lineman Benson Mayowa was called for two penalties. The first was for off-sides, which the Cardinals declined. The second was for using an Arizona lineman for leverage to elevate himself over the line to expedite his rush on the kick. That infraction incurred a 15-yard penalty, which gave Murray and his offense a much needed first down. Less than a minute later, at the 2:28 mark of the 4^th quarter, Murray hit his receiver, Christian Kirk, with an 8-yard touchdown pass, cutting Seattle’s lead to 3 points.

From that point on, outside of winning the overtime period coin toss, not much went right for the Seahawks. On the possession following the Cardinals touchdown all Seattle needed to do was get a couple first downs and run out the clock, but the offense couldn’t do it. Inexplicably, on a night where Tyler Lockett was running wild with catches, the Seahawks went conservative and tried to run out the clock with the ground game. A Russell Wilson 9-yd scramble was followed by 4 straight Carlos Hyde runs, which left Seattle with 4^th down and 2 yards to go at their own 34-yd line, thus forcing a punt. In a season in which the Hawks brain trust has “let Russ cook,” in this game at the crucial time they left him stirring soup—a huge coaching error in my estimation. As noted above, this current Hawks D in no way resembles the old Seattle defenses, as what happened next clearly demonstrated. In the possession following the Seattle punt, with 52 seconds left in the game, Arizona drove right down the field and kicked the game tying field goal; and the Seahawks defense could do nothing to stop it.

Seattle’s mistakes continued in the overtime period, the two major ones being a David Moore holding call that wiped out a 48 yard Wilson to Metcalf scoring pass that would have won the game; and the third of Wilson’s interceptions a play later, which gave Arizona field position at the 50-yard line, thus setting up the game winning field goal. The Cardinals even handed Seattle a tailor-made chance to win the game during the overtime, by missing a very makeable 38-yard field goal with 2 minutes and 42 seconds left in the period; but because of the errors the Hawks were unable to accept the gift.

I’m going to wind up my summation of this frustrating game with a bit of football philosophy, which I hope helps. Russell Wilson says he handles the highs and lows of a season by always striving to remain neutral, no matter what happens. It’s good advice for us Twelves too, I think. The NFL season is long, and any team is bound to have a clunker or two along the way. As Seahawks fans we would do well to realize that, put this game behind us, and get ready for the 49ers, who will hit town this weekend for another big NFC West game.

For sure, that’s what Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson and the Hawks are doing.

 And wherever he is, I know Johnny Unitas would agree.

Go Hawks!!

Copyright © 2020

By Mark Arnold

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