Sam Darnold brilliant again, defense responds, Seahawks win 20-12 at Jaguars
Those doubts about Sam Darnold as the Seahawks’ new quarterback?
That’s SO April. The problems with coach Mike Macdonald’s Seattle defense?
That’s SO last week.
On Sunday in sunny Jacksonville, Darnold was the best he’s been in an impressive, top-of-the-NFL start to his Seahawks tenure. His majestic, 61-yard touchdown pass to league-leading receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba highlighted Darnold’s 16-of-26, 295-yard day with two scoring throws.
Darnold was so good, he had two completions of 61 yards. “He knows all the looks. He knows all the plays. He’s not going to force anything,” Smith-Njigba said of Darnold afterward.
“He’s just going to take what the defense gives him. And once there’s an opportunity to hit a big one, you know he’s going to be ready for it.
“(He’s) all the things you’d want to believe in your quarterback.”
Smith-Njigba caught eight passes for 162 more yards receiving. Macdonald’s defense that barely touched Baker Mayfield while allowing 38 points by Tampa Bay in a shootout home loss the previous week ransacked the Jaguars’ offensive line and QB Trevor Lawrence. They sacked him a Seattle season-high seven times, and hit him 16 times.
That’s how the Seahawks got back to looking like they had in September with a 20-12 victory over the previously AFC South-leading Jaguars, who had just beaten defending AFC champion Kansas City. “We go back to process all the time. And I think we learned our process this week,” coach Mike Macdonald said. “The challenge is to keep rollin’.
“I thought the defense played a tremendous game. Played complimentary. Played together.
“Excited. Excited for this (six-hour) flight home.”
Darnold, the league leader in yards per pass attempt coming in, had a third game in six starts with at least 295 yards passing.
The Seahawks (4-2) extended their franchise record for consecutive road wins to nine.
Macdonald is now the fourth man in NFL history to win 10 of his first 11 road games as a head coach. He joins the Rams’ Sean McVay (2017-18), George Seifert with the 49ers (1989-90) and Paul Brown with the 1946 and ‘47 Cleveland Browns.
He wasn’t talking history after this one. He was talking Darnold, his and general manager John Schneider’s choice in March to replace traded Geno Smith.
“We have 100% confidence in Sam. He played great football, made great decisions,” Macdonald said. “He’s done that since he showed up (on a three-year, $100 million contract).
“He’s playing great football.”
Sam Darnold’s perfect pass for lead
The Seahawks took the lead for the first time in the second quarter. It came thanks to Darnold’s finest throw as a Seahawks quarterback. That includes OTAs, minicamp and all training-camp practices.
He saw the safety out of the middle of the field and alerted Smith-Njigba at the line to run a deep post pattern inside the cornerback — yet another of the quarterback’s elite decisions lately. Darnold then lofted a strike perfectly onto Smith-Njigba’s hands on that deep post.
The NFL’s leading receiver (in yards) ran past Greg Newsome on the Jacksonville cornerback’s first snap after he got traded this past week from Cleveland, for a beautiful, 61-yard touchdown. “Man, it’s pretty,” Smith-Njigba said of Darnold’s deep ball. “It’s up in the air, in the perfect spot. It allows me to adjust and make a play on the ball. We keep connecting.” Oh, yes, Smith-Njigba was aware that was Newsome’s first play.
“I don’t know if we knew. I knew,” he said, wearing shades and a gold chain over a snazzy, green-and-brown shirt that was as cool as his game. “Yeah, it was good to take advantage of that look, and execute.”
Smith-Njigba pranced through the end zone preening in front of booing Jags fans. Despite a shaky first half on defense, Seattle led 10-6.
“Was able to just throw it up, and ‘Jax’ made a great play tracking it,” Darnold said. “That was something we worked on OTAs, training camp, even throughout this week in practice. And we made it come to life in the game.”
Five of Darnold’s first six completions were to Smith-Njigba, who passed the Rams’ Puka Nacua for the NFL lead in yards receiving Sunday.
“People are going to focus on him, but when you play complementary ball on one side of the ball — if you’re able to run, throw it, action, do the whole thing — it’s very hard to take one player out of the game when the ball can go anywhere,” Macdonald said. “He’s taking advantage of his opportunities. We’re doing a great job of getting him open, and Sam’s got a lot of confidence in him, too."
Two of the highest-yardage games of Smith-Njigba’s career since Seattle drafted him in the first round in 2023 have come in the last two games. He had 132 yards in the team’s 38-35 home loss to Tampa Bay last week.
The talk in the Seahawks’ locker room after this win in Jacksonville was that Smith-Njigba is now not among the best but THE best wide receiver in the league.
“It feels good that my teammates have confidence in me,” Smith-Njigba said.
“I definitely have it in myself, to go out there — and to dominate.”
Cooper Kupp’s 1st Seattle TD
Darnold was exquisite again before the snap to get Cooper Kupp his first Seahawks touchdown.
The quarterback was a perfect 3 for 3 on the first drive after halftime, 3 yards to Kenneth Walker, 13 yards to Smith-Njigba, 29 yards to Kupp. On third and 3 from the Jaguars 11, Darnold saw the Jaguars in press coverage, all up at the line of scrimmage. He’d studied film of this Jags look in the red zone all week.
He changed the call to Kupp beating his man to the goal-line pylon with a sharp, 12-yard out route. His throw was as good as his audible.
Touchdown. The Seahawks took a 20-6 lead.
“Shoot, that was a long time before getting in the end zone. So I’ll take it,” Kupp said.
He added he doesn’t think he’s ever gone six games to start a season before scoring. Not as a Super Bowl MVP and NFL offensive player of the year with the Rams. Not at Eastern Washington. Not at Davis High School in Yakima.
“Sam did a good job recognizing the defense, got us into the right stuff,” Kupp said. “That’s what he’s done over and over again. Procedurally, he runs our offense very well. He’s making sure we’re ID-ing things the right way, that we are seeing things that we are supposed to see, getting us in the right play.
“He’s done a fantastic job of it. That was just on him. And, obviously, just executing at a high level right now. That was a perfect throw to the front pylon.”
Defense gets better pressure
Last week in their shootout loss to the Buccaneers, the Seahawks didn’t get a hit on the quarterback until 8 minutes left in the game. That left Seattle’s patchwork secondary with injury fill-ins exposed to deep passes.
Sunday was mostly the opposite of that.
With Pro Bowl defensive backs Devon Witherspoon and Julian Love out injured, and Shaquill Griffin up from the practice squad to replace concussed Riq Woolen as starting cornerback, Macdonald blitzed more early in this game. That included rookie safety Nick Emmanwori and cornerback Josh Jobe multiple times in the first half.
Meanwhile, the Seahawks’ front-four pass rushers got back to what they were doing the first four games of the season. They won their one-on-one battles with offensive linemen.
Tackle Byron Murphy had a sack on the game’s first play. He, Leonard Williams, DeMarcus Lawrence and Uchenna Nwosu each had two hits on Trevor Lawrence in the first half. Seattle sacked the Jaguars QB three times in the half. Nwosu and Williams shared a sack. “We learned from our mistakes. We went into this week with a chip on our shoulders,” Murphy said.
“We rushed as one.”
DeMarcus Lawrence had his first sack as a Seahawk, after 11 years with the Dallas Cowboys. That sack pushed Jacksonville back into a 50-yard field-goal try with 1 minute left in the half. Cam Little kicked that well wide right to keep Seattle’s lead at 10-6. Lawrence finished with two sacks Sunday, coming off a quadriceps injury. “We feel like we are (among the) top three best fronts in the league,” Lawrence said. “When our team is down, they need help, we are the ones that need to come through for the whole team.
“Yes, we do it put it on our backs to come through.”
Macdonald used two of his three timeouts of the half on defense against that Jacksonville drive to the missed field goal. That gave his offense time for Zach Charbonnet to run for 8 yards, then catch Darnold’s short pass and run for a 14-yard gain.
Those plays set up a 53-yard field goal by Jason Myers in the final seconds of the half. The Seahawks led 13-6 into the third quarter.
Jacksonville got its only score of the first three quarters on another mistake in Seattle’s mixed-up secondary. Griffin and Emmanwori both covered a receiver at the line of scrimmage awaiting a fake bubble screen. Trevor Lawrence faked that throw. No Seahawks went with Brian Thomas as the Jaguars receiver ran alone down the sideline behind Griffin. Lawrence’s easy pass became a 21-yard touchdown and a 6-0 lead for Jacksonville.
Griffin had both hands wide with palms to the blue sky after the play.
Macdonald had a brief, pointed talk with his 30-year-old cornerback about it at the edge of the sideline.
“I thought Shaq played a great game,” the coach said. “He’s been practicing really well. So smart, man. Just so smart. Competes. Had a great week at practice. That’s why we decided to go with him.”
That, and yet another injury in the secondary, to reserve cornerback Nehemiah Pritchett.
“Nehemiah’s been playing great....played great on special teams,” Macdonald said. “He’s got a hamstring right now.”
The difference on defense for the Seahawks against the Jaguars (4-2) Sunday, compared to what Tampa Bay did to them?
Macdonald said it was success on early downs. That put the Jags in these situations: third and 25, third and 11, third and 11, third and 16, third and 15, third and 9, third and 18, third and 15, third and 11.
Five of Seattle’s seven sacks came with Jacksonville having 9 or more yards to gain for a first down. A big part of that was because the Seahawks held the Jaguars to 59 yards rushing on 19 carries. Jacksonville was fifth in the NFL in rushing offense at 137 yards per game coming into Sunday.
“(It’s) how we played the run on early downs,” Macdonald said. “Works together, you buy an extra second, rush can come alive. We didn’t do that last week. We did it this week.
“That’s how we’ve got to play moving forward. I thought the guys played great (up front)."
This story was originally published October 12, 2025 at 1:08 PM.
