Seahawks fall to Giants in week 13 due to bad offense

The Seahawks fell to 8-4 in week 13 with a winnable game against the New York Giants.

Well, so much for that four relatively easy game stretch for the Seahawks. Seattle lost to the Giants 17-12 in week 13 when the offense never found a rhythm and Russell Wilson continued to not look anything like he did in the first five weeks of the season.

It should be written that the offensive badness wasn’t completely on Wilson as he had several players drop passes, like Chris Carson and D.K. Metcalf (Metcalf needs to stop dropping so many passes if he wants to truly be considered a top-three in the NFL receiver). Carson dropped two passes that may have resulted in a sustained drive where maybe Seattle scores points.

But this team isn’t good enough to go deep in the playoffs. The defense isn’t great but did play mostly well enough to win on Sunday. Still, when Seattle knew that the Giants would run the ball in the third quarter the defense failed to stop it and gave up two touchdowns which were enough for New York to win the game.

The Giants played with backup quarterback Colt McCoy and honestly, I am not sure Giants starter Daniel Jones would have been much better. McCoy was 13 of 22 for just 105 yards and a touchdown and an interception. But he wasn’t awful and he was hit just four times. But New York ran for 190 yards with an average of 6.1 yards a carry. This is unacceptable.

For a Seattle defensive coach as Ken Norton, Jr., to know that the Giants needed to run and not pre-plan for this (which Seattle seemed to do) but then not adjust to the Giants rushing design (which Norton, Jr. did not do) is bad. Seattle’s defense still isn’t good enough to win meaningful games and the coaching is the issue. Sure, the Giants gained just 291 total yards but nearly 200 of these were after halftime when the game was decided. That’s awful.

Seahawks offense lost the game

But this game overall was lost by the offense. Offensive coordinator failed to get Chris Carson involved early in the game and Seattle ended up passing 43 times compared to running 22 times. A more conservative gameplan might have actually worked instead of a pass-heavy one.

But it didn’t help that Wilson continues to hold on to the ball for far too long which resulted in him getting sacked 5 times and hit 10 times. He needs to start getting rid of the ball sooner and the game plan needs to be designed for him to do the same.

Now Seattle is 8-4 and the Rams won too which means now Seattle is second in the NFC West again. The Seahawks might beat the Jets next week (though with this team nothing is a given) but could easily lose to a good defense in the Washington Football Team in week 15. Seattle will make the playoffs, but once there, unless something changes, the Seahawks will be an early out.