Takeaways from Seattle Seahawks 29-20 loss to Giants
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - OCTOBER 06: DK Metcalf #14 of the Seattle Seahawks runs with the ball after a catch during the fourth quarter against the New York Giants at Lumen Field on October 06, 2024 in Seattle, Washington. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
SEATTLE - If Monday night's loss to the Detroit Lions was hitting a speed bump, Sunday's performance against the New York Giants was the equivalent of putting the car into a ditch for the Seattle Seahawks.
A Giants team that was down its top two playmakers in Malik Nabers and Devin Singletary still managed to carve up a Seattle defense that had most of its lineup intact. Just about every meaningful statistic favored the Giants at the end of the day in a 29-20 defeat at home.
If not for a fluky 102-yard fumble return touchdown early for Seattle, this game probably would have (and should have) been a blowout in New York's favor.
Against the odds, the Seahawks still gave themselves a chance in the final two minutes to steal a win or send the game to overtime. Instead, Isaiah Simmons split the offensive line for a field goal block that turned into a Giants' touchdown to seal the victory for New York.
"Talking about not doing the things in all three phases to win a football game, got to give the Giants credit. They outplayed us today," head coach Mike Macdonald said. With that said, we gave ourselves a chance to tie the game and even win it at the end of the fourth, and we came up short."
Sunday's performance was pretty poor across the board for Seattle. Geno Smith was sacked a season-high seven times as the Seahawks had 51 drop backs on 58 offensive snaps. The defense allowed a season-high 420 yards, and Tyrone Tracy had 129 yards on the ground as part of 175 rushing yards overall as well.
Throw in the blocked field goal and just about every aspect of the team struggled in some fashion on Sunday.
"We played bad. That's the reality. Played bad," Smith said. "I don't think we executed well. I thought we came out slow. (We) Talk about starting fast. That's not how we want to start. Turned the ball over, not finishing drives. I mean, all the above. That will get you beat in the NFL on any given Sunday."
Now the Seahawks have a quick turnaround to face a San Francisco 49ers team on Thursday night in a pivotal NFC West matchup.
Seattle doesn't have much time to get things fixed before their biggest game of the year so far.
Here are the takeaways from the loss to the Giants:
– More concerning defensive performance than loss to Lions.
When the Seahawks lost to the Lions on Monday night, there were many reasons to excuse aspects of that performance. Seattle was down six key defenders by the end of the game, and the strength of the Detroit offense made a big night somewhat understandable.
That was not the case here on Sunday.
The Giants rushing attack ranked 30th in the league entering the game and was without Devin Singletary due to injury. While the passing game was middle of the pack in the NFL, the absence of leading receiver Malik Nabers due to injury made New York's targets seem fairly benign as well.
And yet, the Giants had their best offensive showing of the season, particularly on the ground.
"We have to execute better and tackle and leverage the ball better. I mean, it's fundamental football that we're coming up short," Macdonald said.
Even the one shining defensive play of the game for the Seahawks has its drawbacks as well. Rayshawn Jenkins' 102-yard fumble return score gave Seattle the early lead. However, it came on the 16th play of a 79-yard drive that saw the Giants march straight down the field even after taking a sack on the first scrimmage play of the game. Two big screen passes to Eric Gray helped New York push out of their own end of the field, and a couple third down conversions eventually put the Giants on the goal line.
Jerome Baker forced the ball free of Gray's fourth down plunge for the goal line with Jenkins flipping the script for a touchdown that stunningly gave Seattle the lead instead.
"Even if you look at that drive, they drove the whole field," Baker said. "So, yeah, we were happy we got the turnover and the points, but we also didn’t stop them. I think we always got to look each other in the eye and just get better, and get ready for Thursday."
Shortly after, the Giants marched again for the tying score on a Wan'Dale Robinson 7-yard reception from Jones. That drive covered 81 yards on eight plays.
It was a rough day for Tre Brown in coverage as well. On a third quarter drive by the Giants, Darius Slayton caught a 41-yard pass up the right sideline over Brown on a really well thrown ball by Daniel Jones. However, Brown was then called for defensive holding on the next play against Jalin Hyatt, and then was beaten on a deep over route in man coverage by Slayton for a 30-yard touchdown back in front.
"It's kind of all the way around -- all three phases, all three levels of the defense, myself included. We got outplayed today on defense," Macdonald said.
– Pass-heavy game plan did not pay off for Seahawks.
The Giants defensive front is the strength of their team and Seattle's game plan on Sunday was effectively to try and avoid challenging it directly as much as possible.
As noted above, the Seahawks dropped back to pass on 51 of the 58 offensive plays they ran in the game. Ken Walker III and Zach Charbonnet combined for just seven carries in the game, gaining a combined 30 yards.
Geno Smith had 40 passing attempts, four rushes for 72 yards on scrambles, and was sacked seven times on the 51 drop backs.
That's a vastly skewed run-pass ratio despite the game being within one score for most of the afternoon.
"We definitely need to get the run game going," Macdonald said. "The way the game started, we were thinking about trying to get Geno going early. And I'm not sure how many plays we had (in) the first half, but it wasn't many (17). The game started to kind of get out of hand there. We had to get going. You're right, we need to get the run game going, we need to get Ken the ball more."
Throwing the ball that much also led to the sack total climbing for Smith. Dexter Lawrence had three of the seven by himself.
"They played harder. They wanted it more. They fought harder. They came out, executed better," Smith said.
Seattle's rushing numbers in total don't look that poor on the surface because of Smith's efforts on his four scrambles. The Seahawks had 102 rushing yards overall – which isn't a horrendous total for a game, but it misses the context of how they got there.
There's no guarantee that leaning more on the rushing attack would have led to a different result in the game. But with the way the game was called on Sunday, the ground game didn't even have a chance to get going to balance out the attack.
Smith had a solid, if unspectacular, game against the Giants. He completed 28-of-40 passes for 284 yards along with a touchdown to Jaxon Smith-Njigba and his 72 rushing yards on the ground.
DK Metcalf lost a fumble for the second straight week that proved costly and thwarted a prime scoring chance on the opening drive of the third quarter, and a failed fourth down attempt in the fourth quarter also gave the Giants an easy three points on a short field.
"We can't wait until the end of the game to try and save it," Smith said. "We've got to go out there and execute for 60 minutes, however long the game is. Today we didn't get that done, but we'll get back to it.
– Jerome Baker had a strong showing in his return to the lineup.
One Seahawks defender that did seem to show up positively more often than not was linebacker Jerome Baker, who made his return to the lineup after a two-week absence due to a hamstring injury.
Baker made the stop on third down at the goal line that kept running back Eric Gray out of the end zone, and then forced the fumble on fourth down that was returned for the opening score by Rayshawn Jenkins.
Then, after the Seahawks failed to convert a fourth down in their own half of the field in the fourth quarter, Baker had the coverage on a pass for Gray that fell incomplete to hold New York to a field goal instead of a touchdown.
"Felt Jerome in those critical situations, I thought he had some really smart plays," Macdonald said.
Baker said it took him until the second half to fully get his wind back under him after two weeks away.
"Other than that, I just started going. It’s just a shout-out to our defense and our team. They had my back this whole time I was gone, so shout out to them," Baker said.
Baker led the team with 14 tackles in the game.
– NFL says no penalties occurred on Giants blocked field goal.
After Isaiah Simmons leaped over the line of scrimmage and blocked the tying field goal try of Jason Myers late in the fourth quarter, there were immediate questions about whether a penalty should have been called on the play against New York.
Here is the play in question:
Dexter Lawrence and Rakeem Nuñez-Roches pushed down on the backs of guard Laken Tomlinson and long snapper Chris Stoll as Simmons jumped through the gap in the line of scrimmage for the free run at the kick.
There are many things on a play like this that could be penalties, but the Giants exectued the play well and avoided the potential flags.
"There's a guy in the A gap. We need to block him," Macdonald said. "So, it's pretty much that simple. But you're allowed to push down, they pushed down on our right guard. He wasn't able to get to Simmons."
Simmons was aligned on the line of scrimmage at the snap, which gives him the ability to leap over the line since he's not doing it with a running start from distance. In jumping over the line, he can't make contact with the players he's jumping over or that's a foul. He also can't use his own teammates to help vault him over the line of scrimmage either. Simmons did none of those potential fouls.
Additionally, head-and-neck protections apply to the long snapper on field goals, but Nuñez-Roches did not impact that area of Stoll and simply pushed down on his back instead.
"Pushing down alone is not a foul and there was no forcible contact to the head and neck," senior VP of officiating Walt Anderson confirmed to an NFL spokesperson via a pool reporter.
These aspects of the play are also not reviewable, though the scoring play itself on Bryce Ford-Wheaton's return is automatically reviewed.
If there was a foul potentially missed on the play, linebacker Patrick Johnson may have had illegal hands to the face on guard Christian Haynes. However, that also seemingly had little affect on any aspect of the play itself.