If Week 1 was made for overreactions, then the Seattle Seahawks opener was made for Week 1.
Mike Macdonald trusts his defense too much. Kyle Shanahan is cooked after the opening script. Sam Darnold won’t lose you games, nor will he win you any. Brock Purdy got paid and promptly turned back into a pumpkin. Despite all the talent, Riq Woolen is a space cadet. The OL still can’t do its job, not when it matters. Niners remain snakebit for health. Will Seattle ever be able to run the ball in the red zone?
Should’ve paid Geno. Maybe DK too. Home-field advantage, schmadvantage. Fire John Schneider.
I’m joking, or mostly joking; okay it’s right-down-the-middle joking now that I reread the paragraph. Still, always good to chuckle a little because as far as defense mechanisms go, humor remains undefeated.
Another defense mechanism? The scheme Macdonald unleashed on a hamstrung 49ers offense. Well, at least after the opening drive ended, a merciless 95-yard affair that culminated in a too-too-easy George Kittle quick-out TD at the goal line that felt as fated as any score ever. I s’pose that in one sense, the Seahawks defense delivered on its promise of 2024, by turning in an three-hour microcosm of last season. Started it off with significant trouble on third downs (check), committed costly penalties (check again), failed to produce turnovers in bunches or at all (triple check) — then mostly solved every problem of their own creation the rest of the way.
Bottom line, the defense did enough to win Week 1. They held the 49ers in neutral at 10 points for 40 consecutive minutes of game play. They picked the formerly charmed QB twice. They even ran Purdy from hash to hash on the eventual game-winning touchdown, which was entirely preventable and probably falls incomplete four out of five times. They put themselves and their teammates in a position to win. They were 2011 Felix Hernandez, roughed up for two unlucky runs in the first, then dominant until a late solo shot, putting in seven strong innings but saddled with the ugly 3-1 loss.
Drives two through eight for the Niners went: punt, punt, missed FG, pick, blocked FG, FG, pick. That’s called handing the ball (hint hint, Klint) to your offense with instructions to put the game away. Instead, the Seahawks turned those six opportunities to run all of 33 plays, score all of three points, and give the ball away once themselves.
It was, to apply all the bluntness deserved, quite the stretch of unwatchable football.
However, at halftime, not all was bleak: Seattle’s pass rushers were winning at the line of scrimmage, and winning big. Per the broadcast, the Seahawks pressured Purdy on 13 of 18 dropbacks in the first half, the highest rate of Brocky’s career. And while the harassment didn’t result immediately in a turnover, it felt like only a matter of time. Or times.
Yes, times. Maybe “unwatchable” is unfair after all, because Julian Love, Ernest Jones, and Josh Jobe made it real watchable on three occasions.
Playmakers make plays. Jobe is only 10 starts into his pro career after minimal playing time with the Eagles. But that’s two interceptions now in Seattle for a dude with surprisingly reliable hands. Love is Love, always around the ball, swooping in with a virtuosic violence that his smoothness and grace mask. Jones is the fulcrum, the no-longer-missing piece of the defensive puzzle. He’s become as irreplaceable a Seahawk as Spoon or JSN.
Anyway, moribund offense and opportunistic defense set the stage for a 10-10 standoff late. Seattle ended up with possession after Jobe’s leaping snag at 7:06 of the fourth and commenced what teased everyone to believe in a game-clinching drive. Kenneth Walker for eight yards right away, Darnold to the sideline for five more, new set of downs. Walker eats up five, Charbonnet powers for seven, new set of downs. Walker stymied in the backfield, short gain, Cooper Kupp (remember him?) for six, NOT new set of downs. Fourth and one at the SF 19. Sure didn’t take the new season very long to hand MM a decision that would engender and nourish an entire week of debate.
I liked the kick decision well enough. But when a rival gives you a chance to essentially put the game away by converting fourth and 1 in the red zone, you should do that thing. I would’ve gone for it myself but it’s not my job on the line. And there are as many reasons in favor of kicking as in opposition.
- The defense was eating (remember, 40 minutes scoreless! and 3 points allowed since the opening drive)
- Niners kicker Jake Moody was writing a new chapter for his future bestseller ‘Adventures in Kicking’
- Jason Myers wasn’t gonna miss from there
- You just had to protect the end zone against a QB you’d picked twice already, who was working without his two favorite targets, behind an offensive line you were dominating.
It didn’t work out that way.
Woolen slowed up covering Ricky Pearsall two plays later for reasons unknown, and the Niners had their biggest explosive of the afternoon at the worst possible time. Improbably, on the next third down, third-string tight end Jake Tonges slipped across the entire defense and happened to be in ball’s way in the corner of the end zone.
A loss is never a single player’s fault. That’s not how football works and I don’t want to hear anyone blaming Woolen for an 0-1 start. You can say it, but doesn’t mean I have to listen. It’s more like this: when a team opens the door and basically dares you to do what you do best, you should do that thing. Yet at the moments of highest leverage in this game, one of the most gifted Seahawks on defense did not do what he does best, and the play callers on offense went to a well that was dry from the start.
The hope we all felt blossom with Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s 40-yard haul at 1:13 was extinguished all of two plays later. First it was Walker up the middle for an uninspiring/unsurprising zero yards considering his body of work to that point. And then, the foreseeable disaster from putting the game in Darnold’s hands put in harm’s way on a medium-slow developing pass play. Nick Bosa managed to out-leverage Abe Lucas right into the ball, which once it found the ground, had eyes only for the wrong guy at the wrongest time. And that’s game.
You tell me the Hawks are gonna come up with two interceptions, the second of which sets up a drive to the opponent’s 20, where in a tie game, with three minutes to play, they get a fourth and one decision? I think Seattle’s winning that game more often than not.
And I think they’re winning it most days regardless of Macdonald’s decision to kick.
They’re also winning it one a day when not all three of the fumbles end up in 49ers hands. Fumbles aren’t all luck, you need to hang on to the rock, period, but if you can stomach to watch the Bosa recovery, it’s worth noting he was surrounded by four guys in blue.
As will no doubt often be the case, the Seahawks needed one more fortuitous bounce, one more well-timed play call, or one more ounce of boldness on fourth down to be rewarded. But they came up on the short end of all three of those outcomes, and lost an extremely winnable contest to an extremely defeatable opponent.
PREY/PREDATOR
New column, new feature. Every game I’ll pick one way to fill each category, more if I’m feeling frisky. Like birds, it’s an evolving idea, so feedback is welcome.
Prey
Cooper Kupp: three targets, two catches, 15 yards. Yes he was there for a crucial final-drive reception. But that third-down drop. And was pretty dang invisible overall. It’s one game. It also begins to confirm more than a few priors.
Lumen Field crowd: we got sandbagged, again, by a fourth quarter that looked set up for victory, again, plus for believing the preseason tight end hype, a-GAIN. Two catches for seven yards.
The Seahawks are 3-7 in their last ten home games, but the crowd can’t make Woolen stay in stride or make Bosa lose leverage against Lucas. The crowd can’t make Macdonald and Kubiak draw up better plays on first and second down after SF braindeadedly gifted Seattle with a full third of the yards needed to win outright at the end.
Prey and predator both
Riq Woolen. Man, he was right there. To break up the pass to Pearsall and again moments later to Tonges. A play on the ball directly, either time, and the game is altered in a very beneficial fashion. He was preyed on in the final two minutes, but only because he was his own worst predator. Maybe don’t eat your own tail in Week 2.
Predator
Julian Love, on this sack. That play was a couch-leaver.
Jake Tonges, I guess, for doing his best impersonation of that spider species that builds a trap door and when nobody is looking, in the dead of night, scurries out to snatch its unsuspecting dinner and feast on it underground, never to be seen again.
Today Tonges made the first three catches of a career than began in 2022.
Future Prey?
This was fun. A little light trolling by the team account, and a little willingness to experiment on the first drive. Please, sirs, can we have some more.
Anyway, now that the season is officially over, should be easier to relax and enjoy football the rest of the way. Mock draft anyone?
Sorry, kidding, I have a real sign-off. Wherever they take us, if the Seahawks must go, let us go with them.
