After upset loss to Giants, Jamal Adams guarantees Seahawks will ‘figure it out’
Jamal Adams was constantly crowding the line of scrimmage, getting in the backfield and added another sack to push his team-leading — and league-leading among defensive backs — total to 7 1/2.
Carlos Dunlap — who has keyed Seattle’s revitalized pass rush the past four weeks — was active and played nearly half of the Seahawks’ defensive snaps despite a sprained foot.
Quandre Diggs hauled in his team-leading fourth interception of the season.
For the second consecutive week, the Seahawks’ defense limited an opponent to a season-low 17 points. For the first time this season, they held an opposing quarterback to less than 200 passing yards.
But, none of it was enough to undo a pair of decisive third quarter touchdowns and keep an underwhelming Giants team from pulling off a 17-12 upset Sunday at Lumen Field.
The stunning loss also knocked the Seahawks (8-4) out of first place in the NFC West with four regular season games remaining.
“That’s not our standard,” Adams said of the Giants’ second half scores on a postgame Zoom call with reporters. “That’s not Seahawk football. That’s not Seahawk defense.”
But, for much of three quarters it appeared a Seattle defense that has been on a recent surge would help its suddenly lethargic offense escape with a win.
The Seahawks held the Giants offense — which ranked fourth-worst in the NFL entering the day — scoreless and to 80 yards on five drives in the first half. They forced three punts, a safety and Diggs’ interception.
New York opened the second half with another short drive resulting in a fourth punt, and Seattle momentarily held onto a peculiar 5-0 lead.
It wasn’t until midway through the third quarter that the Giants passed 100 yards of offense. But, they grabbed the lead when they finally did.
Wayne Gallman Jr. gashed Seattle’s typically solid run defense for 60 yards down the left sideline and Alfred Morris — who hadn’t scored a touchdown since 2018 with the 49ers — punched in the go-ahead 4-yard score two plays later. The Seahawks never led again.
“We weren’t doing our job, and when you don’t do your job on defense and they’re running the ball the way they’re running it — very efficient — you’re going to have a long day,” Adams said.
“We didn’t do our job.”
The floodgates — at least briefly — seemed to open from there. The Giants turned the Seahawks over on downs on the next drive, and Gallman rushed on three consecutive plays — including runs of 13 and 23 yards — to set New York up inside Seattle’s 10.
Morris scored again moments later on a 6-yard pass from Colt McCoy, who was making his first start of the season in place of injured Giants quarterback Daniel Jones, to push the lead to 14-5.
When it was over, New York had rushed for a season-high 190 yards paced by Gallman, who became the first Giants running back to eclipse 100 yards this season with 135 on 16 carries.
No running back has rushed for more yards against the Seahawks this season. The only other back to reach the century mark was Minnesota’s Alexander Mattison (112 yards) in Week 5.
The Seahawks entered the week allowing 89.3 yards per game on the ground — which ranked third-best in the league. But, the third quarter lapses resulted in Seattle allowing an opposing offense more than 100 rushing yards for the fifth time. Only the Vikings — 201 yards in that Week 5 win — combined to gouge Seattle more on the ground than the Giants.
“I was really surprised that we weren’t able to slow them down in the third quarter running the football,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “They ran some basic stuff and they got away from us, and those two drives in there, they were able to get enough going where that was the difference in the ballgame.”
Carroll said on Gallman’s 60-yard break the Seahawks “hit a pressure that didn’t catch up with the play.”
“And then we were just a little out of whack making tackles and knocking them back and doing the things that we normally do,” Carroll said. “There was just a space and time in there where they were able to run the football. … We just weren’t clicking.
“As they shifted gears you could see it, where they weren’t even thinking about mixing (plays). They just wanted to see if they could run it and try to play the game that way, and it worked out for them, and they kind of gained control of the game by doing that.”
In only his eighth start since 2012, the Seahawks did limit McCoy, and got enough pressure to hold him to 13-of-22 passing for 105 yards, the touchdown pass to Morris and the one interception.
But, despite Seattle holding him to the fewest yards its allowed an opposing quarterback this season, McCoy still celebrated his first win as a starter since 2014 with Washington.
Dunlap, the two-time Pro Bowl defensive who has rejuvenated the Seahawks’ pass rush in the five weeks he’s been active, played despite missing practice in a short week with the sprained foot, but logged fewer snaps than usual. He was in on 23 of 55 defensive plays, but was used sparingly early on third downs before playing most of the fourth quarter.
Seattle’s pass rush did slow some without Dunlap carrying his usual workload. After combining for 19 sacks for 101 yards in Dunlap’s first four games since arriving from Cincinnati, the Seahawks dropped McCoy in the backfield twice for a combined 5 yards.
The Seahawks did rally to limit New York to one field goal on its final three meaningful drives, but it wasn’t enough to overcome what Carroll called an “uncharacteristic” game on offense.
“Obviously we’re going to bounce back,” Adams said. “We’re going to figure it out. We’re going to correct (our) mistakes. But, it definitely stings.”
Adams assured the Seahawks will remedy the miscues down the stretch.
“When you lose, you take it as a lesson,” he said. “There’s always something you could have did right to make sure we didn’t have this outcome — individually and as a team. So, I can’t really say where our focus was, but at the end of the day we didn’t get it done. … This is a tough loss. Obviously it’s not where we want it.
“But, we’ll figure it out. Guaranteed. I guarantee we will figure it out.”
