Seahawks blow improbable lead late at Detroit, win in OT on Geno Smith to Tyler Lockett
One of the more improbable wins of his Seahawks coaching tenure had just ended. Pete Carroll had heroes he wanted to thank.
Whom did the veteran coach go congratulate first?
Geno Smith, engineer of the game-winning drive in overtime?
Tyler Lockett, who caught Smith’s pass for score that sent Seattle over Detroit 37-31 on Sunday?
How about Bobby Wagner? The captain U-turned the team’s psyche from its deflating loss in its opening game by giving a fiery, impassioned talk to all players before a practice Wednesday?
No. The 71-year-old coach went up to the two guys at the bottom of the depth chart. Guys disparaged all week from Pacific Beach to the Palouse.
Chicken Littles believed these two backups having to start for injured Charles Cross and Abe Lucas at left and right tackles gave Seattle as much chance in Detroit as foreign cars and country music.
But there was Carroll late Sunday afternoon in the middle of a Seahawks mosh pit in the locker room at Ford Field hugging...
Jake Curhan and Stone Forsythe?
What did Carroll say to the, on this day, fabulous fill-ins who kept Geno Smith from getting sacked in 43 drop backs against Aidan Hutchinson and the roaring Lions (save for one damaging play late in regulation when Smith brought the dumping on himself)?
“Oh, man! I didn’t have words, really,” Carroll said.
“I was so proud and so fired up for them. I was amazed by them. They came through in such consistent fashion all game long.”
Curhan was making his sixth NFL start. Forsythe was making his second. Like 10-year veterans, they provided the time for Smith to hit huge pass after huge pass all day and on the only possession of overtime.
Then on the game’s final play, Curhan grabbed, bear-hugged and did everything but get called for holding Hutchinson. He kept the Lions’ premier pass rusher from sacking Smith on the third-down pass that Smith completed to Lockett.
Lockett went against every lesson wide receivers coach Sanjay Lal and the entire team gives ball carriers about reaching out at the goal being too risky for a potential turnover. Lockett smoothly reached the ball into the goal-line pylon while getting thrown out of bounds.
Ball hits goal-line plan equaled 6-yard touchdown. Game over.
The Seahawks ran onto the field faster and screaming louder than kids told school was over forever.
And that’s how Seattle snared one of its more unlikely wins in a minute, inside ear-splitting Ford Field.
“This is as hard as it gets,” Carroll said of the conditions and the run-up to this Seahawks win.
For this Seattle football day, anyway, it was almost as if the team’s face-plant at home in a 30-13 loss to the rebuilding Los Angeles Rams last week in the season opener never happened.
“We needed this. Badly,” Carroll said.
So did Forsythe and Curhan.
“It’s really gratifying. I mean, you’ve got everybody out there saying ‘You can’t do it,’ and (stuff) like that,” Forsythe, Seattle’s sixth-round draft choice in 2021, said outside the Seahawks’ locker room after holding down left tackle all Sunday.
“I was just focused on myself — and proved that I could do it out there.”
The Seahawks were rushing to get Jason Peters, 41, ready to start Sunday three practices after they signed the former Eagles All-Pro tackle off his couch in east Texas this past week. They decided that was too much to ask, and rolled (the dice) with Forsythe and Curhan.
Curhan credited Peters with turning him around from a performance Curhan thought was basically terrible last week. That was after he entered the Rams game in the second quarter because Lucas injured his knee. Lucas is now on injured reserve.
While learning Seattle’s playbook, Peters took Curhan aside and worked on his footwork and pass-protection sets after Peters’ first practices Wednesday and Thursday.
“It was good getting J.P. in here this week,” Curhan said, “because he kind of reminded me to just play like myself, which is something I don’t think I was doing this year through the preseason and through that first game.
“I just got back to the stuff I knew how to do well. ...I felt different than I’d been feeling all (training) camp.”
The game began with the Seahawks keeping three tight ends in to help their fill-in tackles in pass blocking. Tight end Will Dissly even lined up once as a fullback and chip-blocked Hutchinson with Curhan.
By game’s end, coaches were letting Curhan and Forysthe pass protect one on one.
And they won.
“I wasn’t worried about all that noise,” Curhan said.
Speaking of noise...
Detroit was rockin’ Sunday like Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye were back in their primes.
The Lions, who haven’t won a playoff game since 1991, were 9-2 in their last 11 games into last season. They were coming off a win at defending Super Bowl-champion Kansas City in an impressive NFL showcase opener. The downtown dome was sold out. Local hero Eminem commanded “You better Lose Yourself” to the 66,434 who packed Ford Field and roared like they themselves were Lions.
The place was particularly bonkers while the Seahawks blew a 10-point lead late. The Lions (1-1) stormed back from being down 31-21 midway through the fourth quarter. Jared Goff’s touchdown pass inside cornerback Tre Brown in the end zone with 3 minutes left made it 31-28 Seattle.
The Seahawks had a chance with 2:15 left to perhaps seal the win. Smith threw to Colby Parkinson for a first down on third and long. But officials noticed the tight end pushed off his Lions defender to get open on his route.
That offensive pass-interference penalty created third and 18. Smith then ran around frantically looking for a receiver. He couldn’t or didn’t throw the ball away before taking a huge sack.
Smith said he was trying to expire as much time as possible before the Lions got the ball back down by three points.
“If I am in that situation again I’ll just throw it away, and live with the results,” Smith said.
Michael Dickson punted on fourth and 35 — 63 yards amid deafening roars. But Kalif Raymond returned it through two missed tackles 16 yards to midfield.
From there, the Lions set up Riley Patterson for the tying field goal of 38 yards as regulation time expired.
Drew Lock comes through
Yes, the backup quarterback who never plays had a hand in this wild win, too.
Carroll sends his backup QBs out to midfield for coin tosses that begin any overtime period. When Seattle is the road team, the visiting captain calls the toss.
Just before this OT coin flip, Lock raced up to Smith on the sideline to confirm that he had called “tails” and lost the opening coin toss to begin Sunday’s game.
Lock reasoned the coin wasn’t going to land heads a second consecutive time. So, he called “tails” again.
“If he had gone heads and lost heads, I would have called heads again,” Lock said. “If I had called heads and it ended up tails, I’d be kicking myself.”
Lock’s correct calculation gave the Seahawks the ball to begin overtime — and kept Goff and the Lions’ offense that gained 418 yards from ever getting the ball in the extra period while Detroit lost.
The winning drive
Smith began the drive using another formation with three tight ends, a staple Sunday to help Curhan and Forsythe in pass protection. Two of them stayed in while the third tight end, Noah Fant, caught a pass from Smith for 17 yards.
Then: Smith to DK Metcalf on third and 6 for 16 yards, to the Detroit 38-yard line. Smith, again with Forsythe and Curhan providing all kinds of time to survey to Colby Parkinson for 21 more.
That set up the winning pass outside on third and 2, when wide-open Lockett’s route from inside to outside caused confusion between switching Lions defensive backs.
Smith scrambled on the final play, away from Hutchinson’s initial charge nearly past Curhan into the quarterback. Curhan reached an threw an upper cut up the defensive end’s chest. He didn’t let go until Smith ran around them.
Curhan turned back as Smith was throwing the winning pass — to see if officials were flagging him for holding.
“I looked,” Curhan said.
“Sometimes they throw that. It’s kind of hard. When you are on the edge, you don’t know where the quarterback is. If he rolls over the top...as soon as you feel that, you have to try to let go. Which is what I did.”
Smith completed 32 of 41 passes for 328 yards, two touchdowns to Lockett and a passer rating of 116.3.
“We know who we are as a team,” Smith said. “We were looking forward to this opportunity.
“We are a resilient bunch. We fought back on the road, in the noise, against a very good team. And we got the win.”
Lockett’s two scores, in the fourth quarter for a 24-21 lead and the one to win it, were part of his eight catches for 59 yards.
“I just hope he can keep playing forever,” Carroll said of the 30-year-old, ninth-year veteran.
And the Seahawks head into a home game with Carolina next weekend with their early season reversed.
“We did not want to go 0-2,” said outside linebacker Uchenna Nwosu, who forced a key fumble on the first play after halftime.
What does NFL history say about the potential importance of Sunday for Seattle?
There have been 404 teams since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger that have started a season 0-2. Only 39 (9.7%) have made the postseason.
Since the league expanded the regular season in 2021 by one game, to 17, and the playoffs by two teams, one in each conference, 11 teams started 0-2. Only one made the playoffs (9.1%). That was Cincinnati last season.
Tre Brown does it
Sent to the bench because prized rookie cornerback Devon Witherspoon was making his NFL debut coming off injury, Brown made two plays on two snaps that helped turn this Seahawks Mission: Impossible into Victory: Improbable.
Brown had Seattle’s first sack this season, in the fourth quarter. On the next play, he did something no one had done to Goff in almost 400 throws: He intercepted it.
Brown returned his pick 40 yards for a touchdown and a 31-21 lead for Seattle.
“Despite everything going on, we stuck together,” Brown said.
Brown’s interception ended the third-longest streak of pass attempts without an interception in NFL history.
See-saw second half
Leading 21-17 in the final minute of the third quarter, the Lions went for a fourth and 2 at their own 45. Seattle defensive end Dre’Mont Jones made his first affecting play of the season, breaking in on Goff up the middle and forcing him to move and throw hurriedly, so wide of his receiver that officials did not flag Seahawks debuting cornerback Devon Witherspoon for pass interference because of the uncatchable ball.
Seattle took its second turnover on downs of the game and marched into the red zone.
Smith and the Seahawks then shook off a heinously called intentional-grounding penalty on a simple miscommunication throw between quarterback and Lockett. They shook off an illegal-formation penalty when it appeared Smith had scrambled for a first down inside the 5 on third down.
Carroll was as irate as he’s been during a game in his 14 seasons as Seattle’s coach at that call. He was still shaking his head over it after the win.
On third and 10 after a timeout, with the sold-out crowd louder than it’d been all day, Smith calmly threw for 12 yards to Lockett on a out route the veteran receiver has run countless times in his nine-year career with Seattle.
Then on second and goal from the 5, Smith lofted a pass that dropped onto Lockett’s hands as he ran across the back of the end zone right to left, away from his quarterback. Lockett expertly maintained possession of the ball inside the back line of the end zone while Detroit’s Jerry Jacobs bear-hugged him and tried to rip it away.
The Seahawks’ sideline exploded in cheers. Seattle led for the first time since 7-0 early, 24-21, with 11 minutes remaining.
Asked how he’s so successful on plays running away from the quarterback’s rollout across the field, Lockett smiled.
“If I answered that, then the other teams would know what to look for,” Lockett said.
“So I think that’s something we can talk about outside of the cameras.”
This story was originally published September 17, 2023 at 1:16 PM.
