The 3 things the Seahawks must change after getting steamrolled at Baltimore 37-3
Bobby Wagner was pleading at the Seahawks’ sideline to his coaches. The captain held his hands out during a timeout. It looked like a sign for help.
Baltimore scored again after that time out.
Geno Smith dropped back to pass. He held the ball, longer than his mix-and-match offensive line could block. The Ravens hit him from behind and caused the unsuspecting quarterback to drop the ball. It was his eighth turnover in 3 1/2 games.
Jamal Adams made a tackle outside, near the line of scrimmage. He then stomped and preened in front of the Ravens massed on their sideline. Adams did that with his team down 20-3. On the next play, third and long, Baltimore tight end Mark Andrews caught a pass free in the middle of the field. Adams ran up for a tackle that would have made it fourth down and long.
Adams whiffed. He grabbed nothing but air. Andrews made it to just short of the line to gain. Baltimore converted on the fourth and 1 — because Seattle’s Dre’Mont Jones jumped offside. The Ravens got a field goal to take a 23-3 lead.
Those three scenes of Seahawks futility were the essence of NFC West-leading Seattle’s 37-3 loss to the AFC North-leading Ravens. And the game really wasn’t that close.
“They came out, and they hit us in the mouth,” Adams said. “It’s as simple as that.”
If the Ravens hadn’t taken knees on the Seattle 6-yard line to end the game to mercifully not score yet again, this would have been largest margin of defeat since Pete Carroll became Seattle’s football chief in January 2010.
The only one worse than this one Sunday: an infamous 42-7 loss to the Rams that eliminated Seattle from the postseason in December 2017. The Giants beat Carroll’s first Seahawks team 41-7 in November 2010.
“Do you feel odd? It feels weird to us,” Seattle wide receiver Tyler Lockett said.
Asked by The News Tribune in a silent Seahawks locker room following Sunday’s shellacking what the team’s mood was for the long flight home, DK Metcalf glared and said: “Nobody’s happy after a loss, brother.
“So ‘not happy’ is the mood.”
He had one catch, on four targets. He took it for 50 yards late in the second quarter. It was the only time Seattle got inside Baltimore’s 20-yard line.
But then Smith short-hopped a throw to open Metcalf in the back of the end zone, who was behind an even-more open Lockett at the goal line. The Seahawks settled for a field goal when they needed a touchdown to halve Baltimore’s 14-0 lead.
“They did a really good job,” Smith said of the 7-2 Ravens.
“I think we made it easy on them, especially with the mistakes that we made.”
Playing behind the seventh combination of starting offensive linemen in eight games, Smith looked bewildered, befuddled, almost be-witched by Baltimore. He shook his head. He snapped off his chin strap.
He couldn’t do anything to change. Smith was Seattle’s Pro Bowl and playoff revelation protecting the ball so well last season replacing traded Russell Wilson.. Sunday, Smith completed 13 of 28 passes for 157 yards. He had an interception when he and Lockett had a “miscommunication,” Lockett said. Smith said it was “a bad pass. It was on me.”
Smith also lost that fumble on one of his four sacks. He’s on the worst stretch of turnovers since his rookie year of 2013 with the New York Jets. He led the NFL with 21 interceptions that season.
Seattle was 1 for 12 on third downs. This was the fifth time in eight games the Seahawks were 25% or below converting third downs. Sunday was a season-low 8%.
“Obviously, we made a ton of mistakes and there are a lot of things we need to correct. But you know, as I always say, I put those things right at my own feet,” Smith said. “And I look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘What can I do better to help my guys?’
“I’m never going to shy away from it. And I’m going to keep on working.”
Coach Pete Carroll didn’t want to blame the offense’s failures on Smith.
“I don’t think this is about Geno, at all. I think this is about our football team, not answering the bell here. We couldn’t get it done,” Carroll said. “We came in here to slug it out, and they did a better job than we did with all of this.
“When they’re rushing the passer, that’s not Geno. This is not on one guy.”
Veteran Jason Peters, who alternated with fill-in starter Stone Forsythe at right tackle for the second consecutive game, said the Ravens used many stunts and looping, switches rushes. Peters, 41, also said the Seahawks’ line needs to be better picking those up.
Asked how he can help Smith avoid all these turnovers, Carroll said: “We have to convert on third downs — which is everybody. We got rushed today pretty good. They rushed us and mixed their stuff really well. It was hard, like they’ve been on everybody.
“We just have to find out ways to make first downs. I think we were 1-for-12 on third down. You can’t play offense like that and expect anything.
“It’s as hard as it gets.”
It was so bad, Leonard Williams was a non-factor in his Seattle debut. Days after the Seahawks traded a second- and a fifth-round pick to the Giants to add Williams onto their defensive line, the 6-foot-5 tackle started then yielded when the Seahawks went to nickel defense to play the pass.
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson and rookie running back Keaton Mitchell ran for 198 yards combined no matter whether Williams was on the field or off. Baltimore romped for 298 yards in all, on 41 carries, no matter what defense Seattle was in.
The only good news of this day for the Seahawks (5-3): They are still in first place, sort of. The 49ers (5-3) were on their bye.
San Francisco is technically atop the division because of a tiebreaker of records inside the NFC West. The Seahawks and 49ers play each other twice in 16 days beginning Thanksgiving night at Lumen Field.
Wagner acknowledged that, yeah, the Seahawks are in a “decent place.
“But,” Wagner said in the locker room that didn’t have bass boomin’ this time, “that doesn’t mean anything if we don’t make the changes that we need to make.”
What do they need to change?
1. For the love of Curt Warner, Ricky Watters — heck, Dan Doornink — run the ball.
Sunday, Smith and thus Seattle’s entire offense were overwhelmed by Baltimore’s top-ranked pass rush and its pass defense. The Ravens sacked him four times in the first half and batted down three of his passes at the line. Smith began the game 3 for 9 passing with an interception.
The Ravens’ rushers knew by the second quarter they could disregard playing the run. That’s because Seattle, play caller Shane Waldron didn’t run the ball.
Again.
Last week after their running backs carried it just 13 times in their comeback win over Cleveland, Carroll said they needed to run more. Sunday, Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet carried it just 13 times again. Seahawks gave it to Walker, their 1,000-yard back as a rookie last season, just six times among 29 plays in the first half. That was when the game was still close then semi-close.
Walker finished with 19 yards on six rushes.
The Seahawks’ 28 rushing yards Sunday were their second-fewest of the Carroll era. Seattle gained just 20 against Kansas City in November 2010, Carroll’s first months of overhauling the franchise.
“We wanted to (run). We wanted to,” Carroll said. “You guys know this line of thinking: If you don’t convert (on third downs), you don’t get the chances (to run the ball), and you’re off the field. No matter how much you want to do something, it doesn’t matter when you have to sit down. You can’t call your plays sitting on the bench.
“We have to get off some winning third-down plays. We’ve got to do better than that.”
2. Tackle better. Far better.
Wagner. Adams. Jordyn Brooks. Devon Witherspoon, days after he was named NFL defensive rookie of the year.
All of them, Seattle’s best defenders and tacklers, missed tackles. It got to where the Ravens knew if they could get off the edge on runs, or if they threw short passes in front of defenders, they would be able to literally run through the Seahawks.
Baltimore ran for 298 yards. It would have been 300, but backup quarterback Tyler Huntley took those two kneeldowns for losses of 2 yards to end the game.
The Seahawks’ defense could not stop Jackson. Baltimore’s recent NFL MVP completed 21 of 26 passes for 187 yards and ran past Seattle 10 times for another 60 yards.
Once, Boye Mafe had Jackson at his finger tips running free from behind the quarterback trying to pass. Jackson felt Mafe coming and simply took off, outrunning the linebacker for a 22-yard gain instead of a 10-yard loss.
When the Seahawks chased Jackson, they ran out of their assigned run gaps. He ran through those open spaces. Simple run fits on zone-read handoffs, Seahawks were out of their assigned gaps.
“We just weren’t clickin’ today, man, myself included. A couple times I wasn’t in my gap,” Brooks said. “A lot of missed tackles. Miscommunication.
“Everything you need to get your head beat in today, you know what I mean?
We do.
“We didn’t tackle that well. We didn’t stop the run,” Wagner said.
Once upon a time — last month — these Seahawks had rapidly improved their run defense from 30th in the NFL last season to first this season yards allowed per carry.
But in the last three games, Arizona has rushed for 127, Cleveland for 155 and Baltimore for, gulp, 298. That’s a bad trend with the smashmouth 49ers looming on the schedule with the division title at stake.
3. Take advantage of opportunities.
Boye Mafe continued his strong season with a sack and strip of Jackson early in the second quarter. Mafe tied Michael Sinclair in 1997-98 for a Seahawks record with a sack in his sixth consecutive game.
Also in the first half, Seahawks cornerback Tre Brown gave his offense the ball back in Baltimore territory with the Seahawks down 14-3. Brown, playing left cornerback when Seattle went to nickel and moved rookie Devon Witherspoon inside as a slot cornerback, forced a fumble by Odell Beckham Jr. on a brilliant tackle following his catch. Brown grabbed Beckham as he attempted to cut sharply past him, and knocked the ball out while doing it.
“I knew I made the tackle. As I was rolling, I felt my left arm was loose and my arm was about where the ball was,” Brown said. “I just took a shot to push my arm through.”
Yet Smith and Seattle’s offense wasted both of those golden chances to re-enter the game.
After the Mafe strip sack and fumble, Walker ran for 2 yards, Smith got sacked to lose 6. Then Waldron called what appeared to be a play to avoid another sack: a one-step-and-throw bubble screen to Jaxon Smith-Njigba on third and 14 at the Seattle 33. The rookie got tackled 9 yards short of the line to gain. Michael Dickson punted, as he did seven times Sunday.
Baltimore’s offense used Jackson’s speed and rookie Keaton Mitchell’s down-hill running to pummel the Seahawks’ defensive front.
Gus Edwards ran 3 yards past Seahawks nose tackle Jarran Reed slanting away from him and Dre’Mont Jones getting blocked. Seattle trailed 14-0.
Baltimore’s two touchdown drives of the half went for 12 plays and 12 plays, steamrolls of the Seahawks’ defense.
Brown’s forced fumble gave Seattle the ball at the Baltimore 43 with 49 seconds remaining in the half. The Seahawks were in position to trail either 14-10 or 14-6. going into the second half.
Smith then threw incomplete to Lockett. Baltimore linebacker Kyle Van Noy they blitzed on each of the next two plays and sacked Smith on both of them. On the second sack, Van Noy knocked the ball free. The Ravens recovered the fumble at the Seattle 36.
Baltimore got a field goal out of that. Instead of 14-6 or 14-10, it was 17-3.
Game over.
“We didn’t handle what happened right before the half very well,” Carroll said. “We didn’t take advantage of the turnover that we had. Instead of 14-6 or 14-10, they get the ball back, and they get points back. It just wasn’t the right way to finish the half for us.
“And then they just went to work, and we didn’t stop them.”
On the first play scrimmage play of the second half, Edwards romped 42 yards through missed tackles off Witherspoon, Quandre Diggs and Riq Woolen. Edwards dragged Mafe the final 5-plus yards. Jason Tucker kicked his second field goal after that. Baltimore’s lead was 20-3.
“We’ve just got to leave it here in Baltimore,” Peters said, with the experience of playing in his 20th NFL season. “It only counts as one loss.
“We just have to get back to work.”
This story was originally published November 5, 2023 at 1:03 PM.
