Rapid Reaction: Seahawks Survive Chargers Comeback Attempt, Own Mistakes in 30-23 Victory
SEATTLE, Wash. - Though the home team made things far more interesting late than they would have preferred thanks to their own miscues, the Seattle Seahawks sealed a 30-23 win over the Los Angeles Chargers with a Uchenna Nwosu strip sack on Justin Herbert, improving to 3-1 on the season.
Recovering from an interception on his first pass attempt, Sam Darnold threw for 168 yards and a pair of touchdowns to Emanuel Wilson and Tory Horton, while Wilson and Rashid Shaheed each scored touchdowns on the ground to pace Seattle’s offense. Linebackers Drake Thomas and Ernest Jones each intercepted Herbert once and four different players sacked the quarterback as the defense coaxed three turnovers and held off a late comeback by Los Angeles in the closing minute with Nwosu’s critical sack.
Here are five takeaways from a bizarre, flag-filled victory for the Seahawks at Lumen Field:
1. Flurry of early turnovers in frenzied first half ends up favoring Seahawks to build commanding advantage.
The first minute of action on Sunday made history, though not necessarily the kind of history Sam Darnold or Justin Herbert would like to have their names linked to. On the first play from scrimmage, Herbert locked in on a receiver and didn’t see Thomas dropping back into his zone hook, and after initially not catching the ball cleanly, he regathered it off the deflection for a crowd-satisfying interception in L.A. territory. But before the defenders could even get their helmets off, Darnold turned the ball immediately back to the visitors as he and Wilson weren’t on the same page and his first pass sailed into the hands of defensive end Tuli Tuipolotu for the interception. The Chargers used two first down conversions to get into field goal range and took a 3-0 lead on Cameron Dicker’s 40-yard kick.
But the points of turnover differential didn’t stay in favor of the Chargers for long. After Michael Dickson’s first punt boomed into the sunny fall sky, returner Derius Davis botched the catch as the ball bounced off his chest, allowing for linebacker Connor O’Toole to recover the muff at the 23-yard line. On the ensuing play, Wilson caught a quick halfback screen from Darnold and followed a caravan of blocks to the end zone for his first touchdown of the season. Inside two minutes to play, Jones benefited from another telegraphed throw from Herbert and picked it off, setting up Wilson’s second score on an eight-yard run that pushed the lead to 20-3, bringing the half to an end with a 14-3 edge in points coming off turnovers.
2. The unexpected pairing of Wilson and Shaheed fuels Seattle's run game without Jadarian Price.
Receiving the worst kind of mid-week news, Price re-aggravated a chest injury originally suffered in a Week 2 win over Arizona and after being ruled out for this weekend on Friday, the team placed him on injured reserve on Saturday, creating major questions about where Seattle would be able to muster much of a run game with him out at least the next four games. But to offensive coordinator Brian Fleury’s credit, he came in with a solid game plan to attack the Chargers off the edge after the Bills were wildly successful doing so last weekend, and at least rushing to the left side, they replicated that success. Wilson ripped off a 15-yard run on the second drive and in the second quarter, he found a big seam in the red zone and rumbled off the left tackle Charles Cross for an eight-yard score.
But while Wilson did plenty of damage as a conventional running option, albeit with a pedestrian average under four yards per carry, the fireworks on the ground came from an unexpected source in Shaheed. Putting the dynamic speedster into the backfield for a handful of plays, his first carry on a toss sweep ended with a 28-yard rushing touchdown behind excellent blocking on the perimeter, his first rushing score since the 2022 season. He later added a second carry on a wide zone run for five yards, looking more than comfortable being utilized in that role as the type of gadget weapon most teams don’t have on the roster. With Wilson thumping defenders and Shaheed providing the electricity, they rushed for 140 yards and nearly hit five yards per carry as a team, holding up quite well without Price in the lineup for at least one game.
3. A flood of relentless pressure and tight coverage made life miserable for Justin Herbert, Bolts’ offense.
From the first snap to the final whistle, Herbert made several head-scratching decisions from the pocket as a passer, including both of his ugly first half interceptions to Thomas and Jones. But much of that had to do with the quarterback never feeling comfortable from the get go due to the Seahawks harassing him from every level. As part of five straight drives that ended with punts in the first half, Byron Murphy II and Jones generated a pair of drive-ending third down sacks, while Thomas forced a wobbly duck of an incompletion on the blitz on another one to send out the punter once again. As a result of that pressure, the Chargers had just 92 total yards of offense in the first two quarters.
Continuing to ratchet up the heat on Herbert in the second half, the quarterback found himself under constant duress moving in and out of the pocket. Two sacks were wiped out by penalties - more on that in a moment - but safety Nick Emmanwori managed to get home for his first sack of the season on a blitz, discarding the tight end Hayden Rucci before throwing Herbert to the ground for an 11-yard loss. To put the dagger in the opponent in the final minute, Nwosu hunted down Herbert from behind and knocked the football out of his right hand, allowing Derick Hall to recover the fumble for a game-sealing turnover. In total, the eight quarterback hits recorded by Seattle’s defense didn’t do full justice to the non-stop ambush that seemed to come after Herbert throughout the course of the game.
4. Penalties served as self-inflicted wounds for Seattle's defense that kept Los Angeles within striking distance.
For all of the positive plays generated by the Seahawks slowing down Herbert and company, they played far from a flawless game, making more than enough mistakes on their own to allow the Chargers to stay competitive. In the waning seconds of the first half, Los Angeles had no timeouts left and barely had advanced the ball past midfield, creating a very difficult kick for Dicker to attempt before the half. But safety Nick Emmanwori dished out a headbutt against guard Cole Strange and got caught in the act by officials, earning himself an undisciplined 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty that stopped the clock and allowed for Dicker to split the uprights to make it 20-6 going into intermission, drawing the ire of coach Mike Macdonald going into the locker room.
In the second half, a litany of penalties aided multiple touchdown scoring drives for the Chargers. On the first possession that ended with Kimani Vidal nine-yard touchdown on a shovel pass from Herbert, cornerback Devon Witherspoon was flagged for unnecessary roughness tackling Keaton Mitchell out of bounds and throwing him violently to the ground. Only a few snaps later, Emmanwori appeared to have Mitchell down short of the first down marker on a third down catch, only to get penalized for getting a piece of the running back’s facemask as he dragged him down to the turf. On the next series, Demarcus Lawrence and Derick Hall both received flags for roughing the quarterback on hits against Herbert that wiped out third down stops, extending the possession for an eventual touchdown run by Omarion Hampton that cut the deficit to 30-20. Overall, they were penalized 14 times for a whopping 150 yards.
5. Mixed bag on special teams once again with plenty of positives, plenty of negatives in battle of the Harbaughs.
Facing off against his father Jim for the first time in the NFL, Seahawks special teams coach Jay Harbaugh had to be pleased with early results on special teams. Away from O’Toole recovering Davis’ botched punt return attempt and setting up Wilson’s first touchdown, they did a better job in kick coverage and a penalty against O’Toole covering a punt on what looked like a clean hit shouldn’t be viewed as a bad play for the unit at all. Overall, for the most part, it was a day of improvement after a rough performance that drew scrutiny earlier in the week from Macdonald, who said special teams simply was “not good enough” and not meeting the team’s lofty standards.
Still, a few mistakes showed up that will have Macdonald and Harbaugh frustrated, particularly from kicker Jason Myers. Though he made a short field goal, he shot an extra point wide right after Shaheed’s touchdown to keep the score at 13-3. He also failed to get a kickoff into the landing zone for the second straight week, gifting the Chargers field position at the 40-yard line. Looming large at the end, a missed 53-yard field goal in the third quarter was negated by a leverage penalty called on Tuipulotu, and he amended for that miss with a 35-yard field goal a few minutes later, which ended up being the game-winning field goal. He should be counting his lucky stars that officials flagged that initial miss, or the final outcome may have been much worse on Sunday.
