After meltdown at L.A., the Seahawks now have to do the toughest thing in the NFL
Bobby Wagner dropped his head. His voice dropped, too.
His mood was trending the same way.
“We definitely didn’t help ourselves in some of these cases,” the Seahawks’ captain said in a quiet visitors’ locker room on the team’s way out of SoFi Stadium and Los Angeles Sunday evening.
“We’ve got to find a way to win these games.”
They’ve got to find that way, pronto. The mighty San Francisco 49ers are coming to Seattle Thursday with a chance to put the Seahawks in a bigger mess than they got themselves into blowing a winnable game late in a 17-16 loss at the Rams Sunday.
“It’s really important that we turn it around and bounce back,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said.
“We come back Thursday and we got a big game coming up.”
The 72-year-old coach singles out a specific game as more important than others about as often as Wagner is on the winning side of a Seahawks-Rams game.
Wagner has lost seven of those since January 2021, while playing for Seattle and, last year, Los Angeles.
Yet Carroll spoke on his team’s way out of L.A. about the obvious inflection point in this Seahawks’ season.
Because of their 12 penalties for 130 yards (the most in the league by a team this season), because Wagner’s defense failed in the fourth quarter gifting the Rams 10 points, because Carroll’s offense failed to bury L.A. (4-6) as it should have earlier then blew the late-game sequence, the Seahawks (6-4) must beat the 7-3 Niners Thursday to stay within striking distance of the NFC West lead.
And that’s with another Thursday game at Dallas (7-3), a road game at San Francisco then a mammoth test against defending NFC champion Philadelphia (8-1) as Seattle’s next three games.
A loss at home on Thanksgiving night to the 49ers, who dominated them in three games last season, and the Seahawks will be two games plus a tie-breaker behind San Francisco with six games left in the regular season. A bottom playoff seed and a first-round game at either Dallas, Philadelphia or San Francisco (gulp) would become the likeliest way into the postseason for Seattle.
Oh, and the Seahawks have to beat the Niners while trying to pull off the toughest feat in this brutal sport: a Thursday game after a Sunday game. With their starting quarterback’s throwing arm hurting. Geno Smith was still in pain as he and the team flew home Sunday night. He and Carroll said they don’t know if he can play Thursday.
“We’ll have to really handle this well and get our act together, make sure that we can play a great football game, because we’re in control of what we do,” Carroll said.
“We have to win the next week’s game to put us in a good position. And that wouldn’t have changed it either way.
“It just makes it a little more pressing this time.”
The Seahawks have meetings and physical rehabilitation Monday, a full practice Tuesday (which is usually the players’ lone day off of the week) and another one Wednesday before they play the 49ers in the first home Thanksgiving NFL game in Seattle’s history.
The Seahawks are 1-3 in Thanksgiving games. They lost at Dallas in 1980, ‘86 and 2008. They won at San Francisco in a Thanksgiving night game in 2014, the night Richard Sherman and Russell Wilson gnawed on turkey bones at midfield of the 49ers’ stadium after the game in a stunt for the game’s broadcaster, NBC.
Defense fails to adjust
Even with Smith’s elbow injury he got from Aaron Donald smashing into him on a throw early in the fourth quarter, even with Drew Lock’s interception subbing for Smith and the offense’s issues, even with all the Seahawks’ penalties, Seattle’s defense had control of the Rams game.
Seattle allowed fewer total yards by Los Angeles (94) than the penalty yards the Seahawks gave the Rams (96) in the first half.
But then the Seahawks’ previously better, recently porous run defense failed again.
Up 13-0, the Seahawks couldn’t tackle journeyman Rams running back Royce Freeman. He had runs of 6 then 15 yards to get L.A. on Seattle’s side of the field late in the first half. Then the Seahawks cornerback Tre Brown, who had earlier batted away a fourth-and-goal pass in the end zone, allowed rookie wide receiver Puka Nucua to get inside him at the goal line on third down for a touchdown with 6 seconds left in the half.
A seeminly lopsided game was 13-7.
After a field goal by Jason Myers made it 16-7 Seattle midway through the third quarter, Rams coach Sean McVay changed his offense. He ran more screen passes, more running plays and more misdirection. Quarterback Matthew Stafford began running bootlegs and other fake hand-offs on which the Seahawks often over-pursued and misread.
L.A.’s offense that went next to nowhere for all but one drive of the first three quarters suddenly marched 143 yards in the fourth quarter Sunday.
“I think they adjusted well to what we were doing. They started running more uphills, more boots, more screens. We would boot one way, and they would throw a screen back the other way.
“You get like that, you’ve got to adjust as players and as a defense.”
Wagner agreed Freeman running and Stafford rolling outside to throw changed the Rams, and how effective the Seahawks were defending them.
Think Kyle Shanahan might run a few bootleg passes, and more than a few, creative running plays, at Seattle Thursday night?
“They started doing more boots. They started to run the ball a little bit more,” Wagner said of the Rams Sunday. “I think that’s what opened up (our) defense a little bit.
“First half, I felt like we did a good job taking away the middle. We know that’s where they wanted to go.
“Yeah, we’ve got to do better.”
Yet there was one, unmistakable feeling the Seahawks had leaving L.A.
It’s one they have choice but to get over. Immediately.
“I tell ya, we feel like we beat ourselves,” Reed said.
“We’re going to sit on this for probably about 24 hours, maybe (just) the play ride. Then we are going to move on to Thursday.
“It’s tough. But it’s what we’ve got to do. We don’t have time to think about it.”
This story was originally published November 20, 2023 at 7:47 AM.
