Offense bears some blame for Seahawks’ inability to finish against Carolina

For the second week in a row, the Seahawks held a lead late in the fourth-quarter. And for the second week in a row, Seattle's offense stalled with the game on the line.

BY BRADY HENDERSON

Oct 18, 2015, 8:13 PM Updated: Oct 19, 2015, 12:35 pm

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Seattle gained 20 yards on seven plays in the two possessions that preceded Carolina's go-ahead score. (AP)

(AP)

For the second week in a row, the Seahawks held a lead late in the fourth-quarter, needing only a few more first downs to wind down the clock. For the second week in a row, Seattle’s offense stalled with the game on the line. The result was the same Sunday against Carolina as it was seven days earlier in Cincinnati as Seattle’s offense couldn’t find the finishing touch it needed to secure a victory.

“We need one more play, we need one more first down,” coach Pete Carroll said after Seattle’s 27-23 loss, “and it’s across the board.”

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That includes not just a defense that keeps losing late leads but also an offense that can’t seem to extend them. Actually, the Seahawks didn’t need to score any more points after taking a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter. Seattle just needed to control the ball long enough on its remaining possessions to not leave Carolina with enough time to put together back-to-back touchdown drives, which the Seahawks failed to do.

The Seahawks took a 23-14 lead on Steven Hauschka’s 43-yard field goal with just under 12 minutes remaining. Their next two possessions spanned just seven plays, gained only 20 yards and took all of 3 minutes and 33 seconds off the clock. Carolina then marched 80 yards for touchdowns on consecutive possessions, the second of which produced the winning score. That Cam Newton’s 26-yard touchdown pass to tight end Greg Olsen came with 32 seconds left on the clock showed how perhaps one more first down on the other side of the ball could have been the difference.

“We’ve just got to find a way to keep the drive going and end with the ball,” said Patrick Lewis, who started at center.

Finishing was a problem for Seattle’s offense in last week’s overtime loss to Cincinnati, when the Seahawks gained only three first downs and didn’t cross midfield once on any of their final six possessions after taking a 17-point third-quarter lead. That was again the case on Sunday, only this time it came down to a pair of drives that went nowhere.

Seattle took over with a nine-point lead and just over 10 minutes left but went three-and-out after two runs from Marshawn Lynch and a completion to Jimmy Graham that was short of the first-down marker. After a Carolina touchdown and a missed extra point cut the lead to three points, Seattle got the ball back with a chance to put the game away.

It’s called the 4-minute offense, where the goal isn’t so much to go for the opponent’s throat by scoring more points but instead to maintain possession of the ball, wind down the clock and salt away a victory. Three minutes and 55 seconds remained when Seattle took over. Four plays and one penalty later, the Seahawks punted back to Carolina.

For all the problems with that possession, an overly-conservative approach wasn’t one of them. It’s not as though the Seahawks ran stubbornly into a loaded box, doing exactly what Carolina expected them to. In fact, all four of Seattle’s plays were designed passes, as was another that was negated by a holding penalty on Lynch that pushed the Seahawks back 10 yards. Carroll explained that Seattle threw the ball on first-and-20 after that penalty figuring that Carolina would have used its first timeout had the pass been completed or if the Seahawks had run the ball, meaning the clock would have stopped one way or another.

“We were trying to stay in attack mode,” said quarterback Russell Wilson.

But for the second week in a row, Seattle’s offense came to a screeching halt when all it really had to do was coast to a victory.

“You try to get as many first downs as you can,” Wilson said. “We weren’t able to do that when we needed to.”