SEATTLE SEAHAWKS

How Seahawks aim to rebound from ‘sobering’ step back

Oct 28, 2024, 1:52 PM | Updated: Oct 29, 2024, 1:48 pm

Seattle Seahawks Geno Smith frustrated New York Giants 2024...

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith reacts after being sacked by the Bills on Sunday. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

(Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

SEATTLE – Midway through the fourth quarter of the Buffalo Bills’ 31-10 beatdown of the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, Lenny Kravitz’s hit song “Fly Away” rang through the speakers of a half-empty Lumen Field.

“I want to get away, I want to fly away…”

Rost: The winners and losers after Seahawks’ defeat to Buffalo

The lyrics were appropriate given the tens of thousands of typically raucous Seahawks fans who’d already exited the stadium, wanting to escape from the wet and cold of a rain-soaked afternoon that featured one of the more miserable home losses in recent franchise history.

It was just the fifth time in the past two decades that Seattle has lost a home game by 20-plus points – and the first time since a 42-7 debacle against the Rams in 2017.

But even the final score didn’t indicate just how lopsided this game was.

By the time Buffalo running back James Cook bulldozed into the end zone for a 31-3 lead early in the fourth quarter, the Bills had a jarring 416-141 advantage in total yardage – including a whopping 143-18 advantage on the ground.

It was an utterly one-sided affair, made even worse by a carnival of errors and miscues by the Seahawks.

“That’s the result of a good football team that outplayed us in (all) three phases,” Seattle head coach Mike Macdonald said. “And then it gets out of hand when you’re doing the things that we did today where we didn’t help ourselves ourselves as well.

“It’s a laundry list of things. … But the long and short of it is we got outplayed, we got outcoached and we’ve gotta go make it right.”

The laundry list was long and ugly.

Defensively, Seattle allowed the Bills to move up and down the field with ease. The Seahawks allowed 445 total yards, including marathon touchdown drives of 93 and 90 yards. They were gashed for 164 rushing yards, marking the fifth time in eight games they have given up 150-plus yards on the ground. And they weren’t much better in coverage, offering little resistance as Josh Allen went 24-of-34 passing for 283 yards.

Offensively, Seattle finished with a season-low 233 total yards and didn’t reach the end zone until nearly midway through the fourth quarter. The rushing attack was virtually nonexistent once again, with Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet totaling just 12 carries for 16 yards. And without injured star wide receiver DK Metcalf and another rough performance from the offensive line, Geno Smith and the pass game were out of sync all afternoon.

Then there were the disastrous mistakes.

On a second-and-goal from the 3-yard line in the first half, center Connor Williams snapped the ball way over Smith’s head, resulting in a 19-yard loss that forced Seattle to settle for a field goal. Then on the Seahawks’ next possession, Williams appeared to step on Smith’s foot after snapping the ball on a fourth-and-goal play from the 1-yard line, which sent Smith stumbling to the ground for a turnover on downs.

And in the final minute of the first half, edge rusher Derick Hall committed a costly roughing-the-passer penalty that extended a TD drive.

“When you talk about all the things that we want to do well, I don’t think we did any of those today,” Smith said. “And so we’ve gotta look at ourselves, look in the mirror and take it from there.”

‘It just needs to be more consistent’

Seattle’s blowout loss to Buffalo was the latest setback in an up-and-down start to Macdonald’s head-coaching tenure.

The Seahawks got off to a promising 3-0 start and then hung with NFC juggernaut Detroit in a Week 4 road loss, despite missing half of their starting defense. At that point, they looked like a legitimate playoff-caliber team when healthy.

But it quickly went downhill from there. In a five-day span, the Seahawks were outplayed in back-to-back home losses to the struggling Giants and the NFC West rival 49ers – the latter of which seemed to illustrate a definite talent gap between Seattle and San Francisco.

Yet after a mini-bye, the Seahawks rebounded with a decisive 34-14 road victory last week over an Atlanta team that had won three straight. It offered some hope that Seattle was turning a corner after its three-game losing skid.

But once again, any positive momentum was extinguished by Sunday’s dismal performance.

“We talk about stacking wins around here, and when you’re going on and off (and) back and forth, it’s frustrating,” Macdonald said. “You want to be able to build on the good things that we’re doing so we can get our program to where we want it to go. And then when you take steps back like today, it’s very sobering. It’s frustrating. But this is the NFL and if you don’t bring it and have your best against good teams, you’re not gonna win those games.”

During his weekly Monday appearance on Seattle Sports, Macdonald emphasized the need to channel the same resilience the Seahawks showed following their three-game losing streak.

“It’s humbling,” Macdonald said. “It’s a taste of reality right in your face and you’ve gotta take it on the chin. But we have to grow from this. The same mentality we had on the three-game skid, that’s who we are. We’re a resilient crew and we need to grow. We need to kind of look at everything, especially in the run game on both sides of the ball and grow from it.

“But again, that’s the mentality we’re gonna have, that we’re gonna get to the point we’re gonna get to and we’re gonna chase it like heck until we get there. And it just needs to be more consistent from week to week.”

Smith had a similar perspective during his postgame press conference.

“You’ve gotta own it and you’ve gotta learn from it,” Smith said. “Each one of these games, whether you win or you lose, it’s a lesson to be learned, and that’s the main thing is that we learn these lessons. You never want to go from a game and say we just put it behind us. I think that’s the wrong way to look at it.

“You’ve gotta learn from your mistakes and you’ve gotta own it. And so those are things that I’m gonna do personally and I know our team is going to do as well. And we’re gonna take it from there, one day at a time.”

More on the Seattle Seahawks

• Huard: A troubling Seahawks stat sticks out after loss to Bills
• Disastrous goal-line gaffes doom Seahawks in ugly loss
• Tempers flare between Seahawks’ Derick Hall, Jarran Reed
• Instant Reaction: A rough day for Seahawks in loss to Bills
• Observations from Seattle Seahawks’ forgettable loss vs Bills

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