Better Execution - And Better Fortune - Fuel Seahawks Comeback Win in Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH, Pa. - Nursing a seven-point lead with inside seven minutes to play, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold took the shotgun snap on 3rd and 9 from his team’s own 28-yard line and with his first read to the right covered, he felt an oncoming defender bearing down on him.
Playing a guessing game as to which side of him the rusher would attack, he guessed right by spinning out to his left, managing to slip away from the grasps of blitzing Steelers linebacker Patrick Queen and scramble to extend the play. Sensing the scramble, tight end A.J. Barner astutely uncovered from his chip block, providing a wide open outlet for the quarterback to dump off to and turning the broken play into a back-breaking 19-yard conversion.
With the clock slowly melting away, Seattle could have turned an handed it off three straight plays to force Pittsburgh into considering burning timeouts. But after letting the season opener slip away late against San Francisco one week earlier, offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak had other plans, putting the ball into Darnold’s hands to make winning plays rather than play not to lose.
After missing out on a similar shot play to Tory Horton one quarter earlier, Kubiak dialed up a play action out of shotgun on the ensuing first down, giving his quarterback the option to air it out on the offensive. With the Steelers not having any safety help in Cover 0, Darnold lofted a perfectly placed deep ball to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, dropping it over the top of cornerback Jalen Ramsey for a 43-yard completion into the red zone, setting up a game-clinching 19-yard touchdown run by Ken Walker III three plays later that pushed the lead to 31-17, the score that would hold true when the final whistle blew moments later.
“We felt on one of the plays, especially I think it was in the third quarter, the safety just driving on one of our plays,” Darnold explained afterward. “That’s when I took a shot to Tory deep, but if fell incomplete. But we had a little opportunity there, and we knew that we had a chance to be able to make that same play. They played a little bit different coverage with no safety help. But I was able to - that’s a ball that me and Jax have thrown ever since the start of OTAs. I felt very confident about that one.”
With the game hanging in the balance, unlike the previous Sunday on their home turf, Darnold and the Seahawks came through and executed down the stretch in all three phases, making the plays needed to overcome a 14-7 halftime deficit largely created by their own doing. Despite having over 100 yards of offense more than Pittsburgh in the first two quarters, a pair of interceptions by Darnold and a missed field goal by Jason Myers left them playing catchup in a game they had dominated in every way except for the scoreboard.
Understanding their deficit stemmed from self-inflicted wounds more than anything and that the game was far from over, Darnold felt “very positive energy” in the locker room at intermission with coaches and his teammates. As they quickly, yet calmly went through their in-game adjustments, after seeing the offense move the ball effectively and the defense hold serve on short field several times in the first half, he had no doubts the Seahawks would make the plays they needed to turn things around and win the football game.
That confidence manifested itself on the field and then some, starting with Darnold orchestrating a nine-play, 80-yard touchdown drive after the Seahawks forced a punt on their opening defensive possession. Buoyed by 17 and 16-yard completions to Cooper Kupp on back-to-back plays, they marched into the red zone, using two runs by Walker to set up first and goal. On the next play, he fired a fastball to Barner over the middle for a seven-yard touchdown, knotting up the score at 14 apiece.
Following up that score, the Steelers looked primed to quickly re-take the lead, as running back Jaylen Warren caught a quick dump off from Aaron Rodgers and broke through multiple tackles to turn a first down into a 65-yard catch down to the opposing five-yard line. But cornerback Riq Woolen demonstrated remarkable effort chasing the back down from behind, preventing him from getting into the end zone, and three plays later, cornerback Derion Kendrick intercepted a deflected pass in the end zone off the hands of receiver Calvin Austin to abruptly end the drive.
Looking back at that sequence of plays, Macdonald couldn’t help but gush about Woolen running down Warren, which created the opportunity for the defense to successfully defend the shadow of their own goal post. After the fourth-year cornerback had a “rough week,” he couldn’t have been happier to see him bounce back from a challenging ending giving up the game-winning touchdown to the 49ers, fitting in nicely with the prevailing theme on Sunday of finishing plays.
“I though he played a tremendous football game,” Macdonald said. “What people don’t realize is we missed a ton of tackles. C.P. [Chris Patridge] is going to have a field day tomorrow with the tape. But Riq is the guy who chased him down from the backside. Talk about ultimate effort, committed to the process, having your teammates’ back, playing with shocking effort, he does that. And he got hit down and we ended up leaving that drive with no points. We defended a blade of grass and Riq was the guy who deserves a ton of credit on that front and helped us win the football game. I’m really proud of Riq.”
Though the Seahawks didn’t muster anything offensively after Kendrick’s pick, the defense forced a three-and-out on the next possession and Darnold marched the team nine plays for 45 yards to set up Myers for a 56-yard field goal, as the kicker avenged his earlier miss to retake the lead 17-14. Then on the next play, luck combined with opportunism on one of the most bizarre plays to be seen on an NFL field to further extend that advantage.
One of two returners back deep for the Steelers, rookie running back Kaleb Johnson allowed Myers’ kickoff to bounce over his head after hitting inside the landing zone, which is between the goal line and the opposing 20-yard line. Per NFL rules, the ball becomes live once it hits the ground in the landing zone, but the returner didn’t chase after the ball and Seahawks running back George Holani did, securing the ball in the end zone before drifting out of bounds for a rare touchdown in kick coverage.
Suddenly, the Seahawks had a 10-point lead in front of a shell-shocked crowd that seemed to misplace their Terrible Towels in the process. Boo birds began to sing in the stadium, both from confusion and aggravation, and the Steelers couldn’t recover. Aside from a field goal that briefly trimmed the lead back to seven, it was the home team that couldn’t come through with the clutch plays when it mattered most as the visitors kept swiping back momentum at every turn.
In the closing moments, in addition to Walker’s touchdown run that increased the lead to two scores, defensive tackle Byron Murphy II and safety Coby Bryant put the dagger in Rodgers and company. Moments after Murphy’s second sack of the game, which set a new career-high for the former first round pick, Bryant picked off an airmailed deep ball from Rodgers and returned it 28 yards, all but sealing the deal as fans started to disappointingly march for the exits.
Just as he thought they would coming out of the locker room, Darnold loved the resiliency showed by the Seahawks as a whole to finish off the comeback in a hostile road environment, crediting the other two phases of the game for keeping them close in spite of the mistakes he and the offense made in the opening 30 minutes.
“Not necessarily taking care of the ball the way that I would have loved to in the first half, our defense and special teams, the way they played throughout the first half kept us in the game,” Darnold remarked. “And I felt like we were able to kind of finally play the style of ball that we wanted to in the second half. It wasn’t necessarily the exact way we wanted to play, but we were able to protect the football and march down the field.”
Looking towards a return home to face New Orleans next weekend, Macdonald obviously knows Seattle has a long way to go to get where the team wants to be as a contender in the NFC. Turning the football over twice, dropping interceptions, and missing field goals in the same game rarely leads to wins in the league, and they won’t be expecting gifted touchdowns like the one Holani scored every week. There’s a ton to clean up in all three areas of the game for players and coaches alike.
But at the same time, the Seahawks made clear improvements from Week 1 in several noteworthy aspects as well, including being more efficient on third down and generating more yardage after the catch for sustained drives, allowing them to win the time of possession battle by three minutes. Their defense also improved significantly on money downs, limiting the Steelers to five third down conversions on 15 opportunities to help hold an opponent to just 17 points for a second straight week to open the season.
With those improvements in mind and all of the mistakes they overcame to win, Macdonald can’t wait to hit the tape and see what the next steps look like for his squad with much different vibes on their first flight home.
“I’m sure there’s some details we need to get cleaned up. Let’s use this now - it went from what’s the big difference between Week 1 and Week 2? We need to make a big jump from Week 1 to Week 2. I feel we did. We’re not satisfied. We need to keep growing and keep getting better as a team.”
