Russell Wilson is stellar in Seahawks overtime win over the Buccaneers

The Seahawks may have been looking past the Buccaneers to next week’s showdown versus the 49ers. Russell Wilson bailed out the defense again.

The Seahawks seem to have one of these games every year. By these games, I mean a game in which they play down to the level of a mediocre team, usually because Seattle will face a key rival the following week. Today’s matchup fit the profile perfectly. The Buccaneers were only 2-5 coming into CenturyLink, and the Hawks will travel to the 9-0 Niners next Monday. This game showed all the signs of a trap game and the Hawks nearly fell into it.

I may as well admit it right away: I picked Seattle to win this game twice, once in my preseason predictions and again this weekend. I clearly ignored all the signs, unlike everyone else here at 12thManRising. My compatriots all saw this as a one-score game and in one case an outright loss. This game was a wild one, much wilder than I expected, at least.

I’ll start with the bad news. The Seahawks defense was less than good. They gave up over 300 yards to Jameis Winston, only sacked him twice, and failed to pick him off even once. Winston had been sacked sixteen times in his last three games and had thrown seven interceptions. Needless to say, he was better than that today. I’ll give the defense this much: they did force a fumble on one of their sacks, which led to a critical fourth-quarter field goal. Still, if you played the “missed tackle” drinking game today, you probably died of alcohol poisoning in the third quarter.

Enough of the bad news. It’s time to talk about the sublime one, Russell Carrington Wilson. All he did was throw for five touchdowns and zero interceptions. In case you’ve missed it, he’s good. He had to be today, as the Bucs kept on coming back, even with less than a minute left in the game. Sorry, I was supposed to be down with the bad news. Let’s get back to Mr. Unlimited. With 46 seconds left on the clock, Wilson drove the Hawks to the Bucs 22 yard line. With three seconds left in the game, Jason Myers missed a field goal for the second time. And it headed to overtime.

Happily, the Seahawks got the ball first in the extra stanza. Again, Wilson drove his team down the field in a crisp drive. All the usual suspects for Seattle came up big on the drive. We’ll get to them in a moment. The key play, though – I think the winning touchdown is a key play, right? – was the ten-yard strike from Wilson to tight end Jacob Hollister. It was his fourth catch and second touchdown of the day. I told you he could have a a big impact on the season!

Okay, let’s talk about someone besides DangeRuss. Tyler Lockett had another monster game for the Seahawks. He wound up with 13 catches for 152 yards and two scores. DK Metcalf added six catches for 123 yards and a score of his own. While the Buccaneers did stuff him on a few key runs, it seemed that Chris Carson never got the memo about them being tough to run against. He had 16 carries for 105 yards. He caught both of his targets to add 28 yards as well. He did have the ball punched out twice, although it bounced harmlessly out of bounds once.

To continue the good news, the Hawks scored 40 for the first time this year. Yes, it took overtime to do it, but they did it, didn’t they? The defense had their worst showing so far, as they allowed 34 points. The Bucs are wildly inconsistent, but they did hang 55 on the Rams. I thought this game would be easier, but Bruce Arians nearly worked his deviltry after all. The best news? The Hawks go to 7-2 heading into their showdown next week.