‘We Got to Do Better Job’: Seahawks’ Slumping Offense Remains Concern Despite Win vs. Colts
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Indianapolis Colts safety Rodney Thomas II (25) pressures Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold (14) during the first quarter at Lumen Field. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Ng-Imagn Images [/caption]
SEATTLE, Wash. - For the top teams in the NFL, special teams play remains a crucial aspect of making the playoffs and competing for championships, and fortunately for the Seattle Seahawks, when their offense has struggled, Jason Myers has been more than ready to deliver.
On an afternoon where Sam Darnold, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and company failed to find the end zone a single time, Myers came through time and time again, splitting the uprights on all six of his field goal attempts. With less than 30 seconds to play, he put a dagger into the visiting Colts, nailing a 56-yard kick with room to spare, sending the Seahawks to an 18-16 victory at Lumen Field, marking only the fourth time in franchise history that the team hailed victorious without the offense scoring a touchdown.
From coach Mike Macdonald to receiver Cooper Kupp, everyone rightfully sung praises in post-game interviews for Myers, who has had an unbelievable 11th season thus far. His six made field goals pushed him atop the league leaderboard (37), while two makes from 50-plus yards slid him up to second in the league behind only Tampa Bay’s Chase McLaughlin, showcasing how he has continued to be quite the weapon for Seattle, particularly in close games.
With that said, echoing sentiments shared by teammates, Kupp would love if the Seahawks could give Myers a bit more of a break moving forward, limiting most of his work to extra points after touchdowns rather than asking him to regularly boot 50-plus yard kicks to salvage stalled drives as he has had to do quite often lately.
“It is 100 percent a luxury and he has bailed us out so much this year,” Kupp told reporters. “He’s an unbelievable kicker, he’s an unbelievable person. Just love being around J-Mey and his process is just awesome. Seeing how he goes about his day to day work. But, yes, I’m campaigning for more PATs for J-Mey.”
There’s no such thing as a bad win in the NFL. And even in the biggest of blowouts, there’s always room for improvement. But at least from an offensive perspective, it’s not hard to understand why Darnold, Kupp, Smith-Njigba, and others were disappointed in their latest subpar performance, breathing a collective sigh of relief that Myers and the defense picked up the slack to elevate the team to a victory in spite of their struggles.
Sunday marked the third consecutive game where the Seahawks failed to score a touchdown or eclipse six points in the opening half, as Myers accounted for all of their offense once again with two field goals as the Colts went into the locker room with a 13-6 lead. Three of their five first half possessions resulted in a Michael Dickson punt, starting with an ugly three-and-out on their first series and culminating with back-to-back drives in the second quarter that did nothing but go backwards deep in their own territory as they produced a net of negative 15 yards before the punter had to boot the ball out of the end zone.
By the time both teams headed into the locker room, even after Darnold led a nine-play, 44-yard drive in the closing moments to set up Myers for a 52-yard field goal as time expired, Seattle had just 80 combined yards of offense. Most stunningly, with offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak making an earnest effort early to establish the ground game, the team finished the first half with three rushing yards. And no, that’s not a typo.
This continued a not-so-exciting trend for the Seahawks as of late. They haven’t scored an offensive touchdown in the first half since a Week 12 road win against the Titans and have failed to do so in four of their past five games, consistently getting off to sluggish starts before eventually turning things on in the second half. On Sunday, starting field position didn’t help matters at all, as Darnold and the offense started inside their own 18-yard line on all three possessions that ended with Dickson punts.
“We’ve got to improve, be better, start faster. We'll look at our openers here,” Macdonald said. “Couple games where our openers weren't hitting as well as we want. We'll look at it. But we want to start fast. The field position in the first half, we were in tough situations. Like the field was definitely tilted against us. When we're in those situations we’ve got to get out of those things. And when we did, then we have a big kick return there at some point, and so it flipped again. We’ve got to improve in that area.”
Field position certainly didn’t do Seattle any favors. But the offensive woes that dragged well into the third quarter went beyond being in the shadow of their own goal posts. Self-inflicted wounds, including a rare offensive offsides penalty on tight end AJ Barner, wiped out first down plays and drove the unit backwards. Missed pass protection assignments, including two whiffs by running back Zach Charbonnet in blitz pickup, left Darnold hanging out to dry and forced to vacate the pocket quickly, resulting in a sack, a fumble that thankfully bounced out of bounds, and a couple of rushed throws that didn’t move the chains.
Given all of those issues and a rare Smith-Njigba drop that could have resulted in a 30-plus yard reception, Seattle converted on only one out of six third down opportunities, preventing the offense from finding much of a rhythm.
“I think there is stuff on our end that is just not dialed in all the way,” Kupp remarked. “There are details that need to get fixed. I know two plays just off the top of my head in that first half that if we had just executed it how we were supposed to, if we just do the things that we’re supposed to, they are touchdown plays. We are going to see it on tape and be sick to our stomachs because we are doing things that are completely in our control. It’s not like we’re asking anyone to do anything outside of what their abilities are, it’s just doing what you’re supposed to do. There are touchdowns out there.”
Meanwhile, the Seahawks couldn’t muster anything on the ground with the Colts swarming Ken Walker III throughout the first half. Only two plays into the opening drive, multiple defenders hit the speedy back in the backfield on a toss play, resulting in a two-yard loss. On the ensuing series, guard Anthony Bradford lost his footing on a pulling assignment and collapsed to the ground on a 3rd and 3 run, leading to Walker colliding with him before dropping to the turf for a one-yard loss that stalled out a promising drive and sending Myers onto the field for his first field goal.
Including Charbonnet’s lone carry going for a two-yard loss and Rashid Shaheed getting blown up on a jet sweep for a three-yard loss, Seattle averaged a dreadful 0.3 yards per carry on nine rushes before halftime. After their third punt, Kubiak could be seen on the sidelines trying to light a fire under the offense, irked by everything from dropped passes to penalties to whiffed blocks.
“We were just talking about accountability,” tight end Eric Saubert said of the sideline meeting. “That's what it's about, everybody taking pride in what we're doing. We know everybody takes their responsibilities incredibly seriously. There's not much we really have to change. It's just execution. That's all it is.”
Unfortunately, Kubiak’s in-game pep talk didn’t seem to spark the desired change, at least initially. While the Seahawks did drive 43 yards on 11 plays for a Myers field goal on their first drive of the half, they could only muster three yards on three plays after advancing to the Colts’ 31-yard line. On the next series, they only had the ball for five plays before a Darnold third down incompletion led to another Dickson punt, and at that stage, they still had barely over 140 yards of total offense while trailing 13-9.
But with the game feeling like it was slipping away, the Seahawks finally started to get something rolling in the final minute of the third quarter. In a four-play sequence, Darnold hit Shaheed for a 27-yard completion on an out route and threw a strike to Smith-Njigba on a crossing pattern over the middle for a 29-yard gain, moving the offense into the red zone for the first time all afternoon. That drive wound up stalling again, however, this time with Darnold’s third down throw to Kupp having too much mustard on it and sailing out of bounds a few yards in front of the receiver on an out-breaking route, leading to another Myers three-pointer.
On the next drive, Smith-Njigba struck again, this time spinning away from a tackle back to the sideline for a 39-yard completion. An eight-yard run up the gut by Charbonnet advanced Seattle back into the red zone, only for Darnold to misfire on consecutive incompletions to Kupp and Shaheed, with the latter one being a missed opportunity for a touchdown with his throw sailing behind the speedy wideout. The broken record played again with Myers coming on for three points after another whiff inside the opposing 20, putting the Seahawks ahead 15-13 with 2:30 to go.
While Kupp credited the Colts for mixing in a few coverages the Seahawks weren’t anticipating in those red zone situations, the devil remains in the details for the Seahawks, who simply aren’t executing at the standard they have set for themselves offensively.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to me and Sam being on the same page on one of those plays, and say ‘hey, we can fight through that and find a way to make it happen.’ This is why I keep saying it’s the details,” Kupp explained. “It’s not exactly what the play call says, but it’s completely within the bounds of what is appropriate to expect from us, to be able to execute those things and make them come to life and get us to a place where it might be a touchdown, it might be a first down, and we have another opportunity to get into the end zone. And we 100% need to dial in our stuff in the red zone. The margins get that much thinner, they get much smaller when you get down there, and we got to do a better job.”
If there’s a reason to view the glass as half empty, even after the Colts answered with their own field goal inside a minute to play, shrewd clock management by Macdonald and the coaching staff granted Darnold with another opportunity to win the game. The Seahawks used their three timeouts to stop the clock around midfield on a pair of runs and a completion to Tyler Warren, leaving 52 seconds on the clock for the quarterback to operate with.
Executing perfectly to open the decisive series, Darnold zipped a bullet over the middle to Shaheed for a 17-yard gain and a first down, promptly rushing to the ball to spike it and stop the clock with 29 seconds left. Another completion to Shaheed for eight yards resulted in the receiver getting out of bounds at the Colts’ 38-yard line and after a third down incompletion, Myers strolled onto the field and calmly booted the game winner from 56 yards out, sending a relieved crowd into a frenzy.
Darnold praised Macdonald for his approach, believing the scenario of having more time with no timeouts provided a better opportunity for the Seahawks to get the job done, and the offense did what they needed to do to give Myers another shot.
“In that position, I think we handled it perfectly because you would rather have 50 seconds with no timeouts than 20, 15 or 20 seconds and all three timeouts or maybe two or one timeout. So I thought we handled that situation perfectly.”
As things stand, the Seahawks still rank fifth in the NFL in scoring even after another underwhelming performance, this time failing to score an offensive touchdown for the first time all season. And when the game was on the line Sunday, Darnold, Smith-Njigba, Shaheed, and others came through, finding a way to snag the win in spite of the offense’s prior state of hibernation, so the sky isn’t falling.
At the same time, a five game sample size is more than enough to raise legitimate concerns about Seattle’s once-potent offense entering a pivotal rematch with the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday Night Football. Since Week 11, though Kubiak’s group still ranks a respectable 11th in scoring (23.2 points per game), they sit 24th in third down conversion rate (35.9%) and 29th in red zone efficiency (37.5%), a far cry from how they were performing in both metrics during their first nine games and not close to where they need to be to win playoff games.
To this point, the Seahawks have been able to overcome such poor production in key situational departments, managing to win four straight games since their loss to the Rams at SoFi Stadium behind a stingy defense. But as Darnold, Kupp, and Macdonald would all attest to, the margin for error won’t be there in Thursday’s prime time battle or the last three games, for that matter.
Turning the page quickly in a short week, the Seahawks will have three days to come up with answers and how they fare in that regard holds the keys to whether or not they win the NFC West and/or land the top seed or have to settle for a wild card. If they can find a way to help Myers kick more extra points than field goals, that’d be a great start.
