Instant Reaction: Seahawks lose at home 33-27 to New Orleans Saints
Sep 22, 2019, 4:58 PM | Updated: 7:22 pm
Alvin Kamara gave the Seahawks trouble in Sunday's 33-27 loss to the Saints. (AP)
(AP)
The Seahawks lost for the first time in the 2019 season on Sunday, falling 33-27 at CenturyLink Field to the New Orleans Saints.
Saints 33, Seahawks 27: O’Neil’s column | Rost’s notebook | Recap
As we do after every Seahawks game, we have collected the instant reactions of the voices of 710 ESPN Seattle to give you a preview of what you’ll be hearing on the air Monday.
Brock Huard
This one was pretty simple in Seattle today. One team was focused on the details. One team was prepared to win in all three phases. And one team was incredibly more violent and passionate than the other.
That team in Seattle today was the New Orleans Saints.
This will force a coaching staff and an entire locker room to tell the truth on Monday that they were not ready to play. We’ve rarely seen a Seattle team so physically out-played for 60 minutes (and never in September at home). And I’ve never seen the amount of missed tackles I saw today. Terribly disappointing.
Jessamyn McIntyre
It was just not the Seahawks’ day. NFL teams can’t win in this league while committing multiple mistakes and that’s just what the Seahawks did today. Tough to watch Chris Carson fumble for the third time in three games when he’d previously only had three in his entire career. Whatever’s going on there, be it physical, mental or both, the Seahawks are gonna need him to fix it and fix it fast, especially with Pete Carroll’s emphasis on involving him in the passing game.
The Saints, as expected, played Teddy Bridgewater pretty conservatively, but HELLO Alvin Kamara. He had a heck of a game and looked nearly impossible to tackle. Some of that was, unfortunately, due to the Seahawks.
Bad games happen, but today’s leaves much room for concern. If the Seahawks want to push for the NFC West, they’re going to have a lot to figure out in a short amount of time.
Tom Wassell
The Saints have been up here a number of times over the last decade or so with Drew Brees and haven’t won a game. Without him, they win – go figure.
Let’s not pin the whole thing on Chris Carson. His slipping and fumbling were a major factor in this loss, but there were mistakes all over the place. Tackling was a problem all day long and with a runner like Kamara, who’s difficult to bring down anyway, you gotta wrap up, baby! They practically GAVE away that TD to him when it appeared the Saints were about to settle for a field goal. Was that just confusion on the defense or lack of execution? Maybe both. The rain probably didn’t help either.
What’s up with this secondary? I’m ready to say that they’re just not all that great and probably never will be. Sure, they make plays from time to time and Shaquill Griffin appears to be improved, but they just don’t scare anybody. Up front, there was little to no pressure on Teddy Bridgewater all day long (no sacks) – and at home, no less! You have to at least make him uncomfortable. That didn’t happen.
Offensively, Russell Wilson’s stats will make him look like he’s blameless, but there were a couple of key throws that weren’t there. That one ball to Malik Turner that Pete tried to challenge on fourth down in the fourth quarter was badly overthrown. The last two TD drives, making it 33-27, were too little, too late. In addition to everything else that went wrong for Carson, he didn’t help himself or the team by failing to convert on fourth down AND third down, for that matter. He’s supposed to be the bruiser and was nowhere close to it today. Prosise looked like he was about to bust out and have a huge impact on the game a few different times, but that never materialized.
How about the penalties? Was it Tedric Thompson or a coach that ran on the field to celebrate the fumble recovery and got hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty? I know football is an emotional game, but I hate when people use that as an excuse for carelessness.
They’re a good – not great – team. When you’re not supremely talented, you can’t expect to win with that many self-inflicted wounds. Onward.
Bob Stelton
Outside of the poor tackling, special teams gaffes, poor tackling, no pass rush to speak of, poor tackling, Carson slipping repeatedly and fumbling (again) and poor tackling, the Seahawks were pretty below average in this one. This may be one of the worst collective efforts from the Hawks that I can remember under Pete Carroll.
Oh yeah, let us not forget the coaching staff in this one. Some remarkably conservative playcalling while trailing big and a head-scratching day of clock management (see the end of the first half, letting the clock run out with two timeouts remaining after completing a pass into the red zone) and it was a perfect display of discombobulated football.
Russell Wilson and Tyler Lockett were the only real positives from this game. Wilson had very little help from his O-line or his running game. He finished the day throwing for over 400 yards and two TDs. He also had two rushing TDs on seven carries. Lockett had 11 catches on 14 targets for 154 yards and a TD.
I’m guessing the takeaway from this one for the Hawks will be we need to work on everything!
The Groz
There is a scene in the movie Apollo 13 when the spaceship is careening out of control with multiple failures and the flight commander, Gene Krantz, famously deadpans, “What have we got on the spacecraft that’s good?” Lets apply that to today’s Seahawks game.
Sloppy play, dumb penalties, a special team breakdown, terrible clock management, poor tackling, bad blocking – the list goes on. What do you do with today? Chalk it up to a bad afternoon? Concede that the Saints are at a different level.? At least Russell Wilson was OK, but it’s hard to walk away not feeling like you have serious problems in the secondary, and your offensive line struggled when the game mattered.
Chris Carson’s fumbling is also concerning. It was a very un-Seahawk type of performance against a backup quarterback who you held in check. The seeming lack of focus should keep them busy all week and I expect a bounce back, but this was highly disappointing.
