SEATTLE — Mike Macdonald was being sarcastic when he said it, but the Seattle Seahawks coach actually came up with an appropriate way to explain the disaster that unfolded Sunday afternoon at Lumen Field.
“It’s a laundry list of things,” Macdonald said after his team’s 31-10 defeat at the hands of the Buffalo Bills. “We can go line item by line item if you want.”
Let’s do that. For the sake of brevity, we’ll cap the list at five items.
1) Ken Walker III and Zach Charbonnet combined for 16 rushing yards on 12 carries. Charbonnet scored on a 1-yard run in the fourth quarter while Seattle was down four touchdowns. Geno Smith led Seattle in rushing with 16 yards on five attempts thanks primarily to a meaningless 13-yard scramble on Seattle’s final possession.
2) Buffalo running backs James Cook and Ray Davis combined for 140 yards on 23 attempts. Cook scored twice in the second half. Bills quarterback Josh Allen had 29 rushing yards and converted more third downs on the ground (two) than Seattle did in the entire game (one).
3) Seattle committed 11 penalties — six on offense, four on defense and one on special teams. The Bills committed 13, but none of their penalties was the result of the quarterback throwing the ball at a defensive lineman’s head after a play, like Smith did in the third quarter. Nor did any of Buffalo’s flags lead to two teammates attempting to fight each other on the sideline, which was the case after outside linebacker Derick Hall’s roughing the passer penalty in the second quarter.
4) Both quarterbacks threw interceptions, but the difference in responses from the other side of the ball encapsulated the gap between the two teams. After Allen was picked off by cornerback Josh Jobe in the second quarter, Seattle netted 0 yards on four goal-to-go plays and turned the ball over on downs. Following Smith’s interception in the third quarter on a batted ball intended to be a screen pass, Buffalo went 51 yards in seven plays and scored a touchdown.
5) The Seahawks completed three explosive passes, and two of them came when they trailed 31-3 early in the fourth quarter. The other was a 17-yard reception by Walker. The Bills, on the other hand, had six explosive plays through the air and three on the ground.
“It’s just an overall crappy performance,” Hall said. “It stings. It hurts.”
The loss, which was the third straight at home, dropped the Seahawks to 4-4 and out of the NFC West lead. Seattle trailed the entire game and suffered the worst loss of Macdonald’s young tenure, both because of the score and how it looked. The Seahawks were outmatched, outcoached and undisciplined the entire game. Their rain-soaked fans booed nearly as often as they cheered.
Meanwhile, Buffalo’s fans lined most of the lower bowl behind the visiting bench and were roaring at the end of the game when a few Mitch Trubisky kneeldowns put the game on ice.
“Hats off to Buffalo,” Smith said. “They came in and beat us at home. Their fans travel well. It was really loud in there, and kind of felt like we were on the road at times.
It’s a familiar feeling, too. This is the first loss of the year in which Seattle never had the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead in the fourth quarter, but the problems that led to the blowout are things Macdonald has been trying to correct for most of the season. The laundry list alone isn’t why Seattle is on pace for a third consecutive season of mediocrity. It’s the fact that everything on the list is a reoccurring issue.
“Coming into this game, we had some things that we wanted to focus on, and we didn’t go out and get the job done today,” Hall said. “It’s that simple.”
The Seahawks have been one of the worst teams in the league at defending the run. They’ve allowed running backs to combine for at least 118 yards in six of their eight games. They’ve made two separate trades for front-seven players to address that deficiency. Sunday was more of the same. Despite upgrading the defensive line depth by acquiring Roy Robertson-Harris and swapping inside linebacker Jerome Baker for Ernest Jones IV this week, the Seahawks still missed tackles, couldn’t get off blocks and took bad angles when trying to bring down Cook and Davis.
Seattle has also been one of the worst teams in the league at defending play-action passes. Allen completed 7 of 9 play-action passes for 104 yards and a 12-yard touchdown to tight end Dalton Kincaid in the second quarter. Kincaid’s touchdown occurred while Hall and Reed were on the sideline arguing after the former’s penalty extended Buffalo’s drive on third-and-7 from the 24-yard line with 38 seconds remaining. Robertson-Harris had to get between them after Hall and Reed grabbed each other on the sideline.
Six for DK before the half!
📺: @NFLonFOX#NationalTightEndsDay | #BillsMafia pic.twitter.com/4nlK2PQyYO
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) October 27, 2024
Hall said he thought his hit on Allen was legal. “Felt like I led with my hands,” he said. Macdonald saw it differently.
“It wasn’t a smart penalty,” Macdonald said. “That’s not how we train our guys to attack quarterbacks.”
Hall said Reed’s point during their argument was to “be smart.” Hall described Reed as a leader of their defense and acknowledged both players could have “done some things a little bit better.” The two made peace and continued the game without issue.
“He just came up to me talking about, ‘I love you,’ and I told him, ‘I love you’ back,” Hall said. “In the heat of the moment, things happen, but we both love the game, we both love each other. … There’s no bad blood. We play together, we love each other (and) we’ll be back at it next Sunday.”
Seattle was without star receiver DK Metcalf (knee) against a Buffalo defense that entered Week 7 ranked eighth in scoring and 12th in EPA per play. Metcalf was missed on Sunday. But his absence isn’t why Seattle scored only three points on its two goal-line trips in the first half.
The first drive was torpedoed by a snap from center Connor Williams that sailed over Smith’s head on second-and-goal from the 3. Seattle eventually faced third-and-goal from the 27-yard line and settled for a field goal. After Jobe intercepted Allen — the quarterback’s first of the year, and the first of Jobe’s career — Seattle took over at Buffalo’s 7. That drive ended with no points after Williams inadvertently stepped on Smith’s foot on fourth-and-goal from 1. Smith fell and lost 6 yards.
HUGE defensive response from the @BuffaloBills after the INT and they’ll get the ball back after a stop on 4th and goal!
📺: #BUFvsSEA on FOX
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/q9O1GlvZ1t— NFL (@NFL) October 27, 2024
“My role is to be reliable and consistent, and I wasn’t that today,” Williams said. “It starts with me. I’ve got to fix it.”
Williams said the rainy conditions don’t excuse his bad snap.
“It’s got to get to Geno, and it’s got to get to him in the right place,” he said. “That’s completely on me.”
Macdonald described Seattle’s run game as a “major concern,” and yet that’s putting it lightly. Seattle’s running backs have combined to go over 100 yards in only two games this season. There have been times when the offense can function without getting much from the ground, but the more that continues, the more likely outcomes like this one become. When the Seahawks can’t dictate terms on offense like they did against Atlanta last week, games can quickly get away from them, as this one did.
Seattle knew this and still couldn’t block well enough for its running backs to do much of anything. Walker had only two runs that gained more than 2 yards.
“(It’s) frustrating not being able to do what we said we were going to do,” said Seattle receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who led the team with 69 yards on six catches. “Got us on our heels and felt like we weren’t able to catch up when we were down. Bad feeling.”
Said Smith, who completed 21 of 29 passes for 212 yards: “When you talk about all the things we want to do well, I don’t think we did any of those today. We’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror and take it from there.”
The Seahawks will enter their Week 9 matchup against the Rams (3-4) equal with the Cardinals (4-4) and perhaps the 49ers (pending Sunday night’s game against the Cowboys) in the division.
But a team that can’t run the ball, play clean, stop the run or contain play-action passes is almost guaranteed to be playing meaningless football in December and January. The Seahawks knew that coming into this season. They knew it after their three-game losing streak. And they certainly knew it coming off the field Sunday.
“We’ve got to make it right” has become Macdonald’s go-to line after these familiar-looking losses. But at some point, it’s worth asking whether this group is capable of righting its laundry list of wrongs before its too late.
(Photo of Geno Smith: Joe Nicholson / Imagn Images)
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