3 quick takeaways from Seahawks loss to Raiders Week 12

Week 12 started promising for the Seahawks but by the end had become a nightmare and Seattle lost in overtime 40-34. Seattle is now 6-5 with diminishing playoff hopes. And to be honest, the team should have diminished hopes.

Seattle made a suffering Raiders team look a lot better than they were. Coming into the game, Las Vegas had not beaten a team with a winning record. The way Seattle is playing defensively, they might finish with a losing record.

Seattle allowed the Raiders, the worst in the league coming into Week 12, to get 3 sacks. Las Vegas also got 10 quarterback hits. Now Seattle needs to fix lots of things with just six games remaining.

Seahawks fall to 6-5 with a loss to the Raiders in Week 12

Takeaway 1: The defense has let the team down in two straight games

I was hoping that the Seahawks’ loss in Week 10 was due to two things. One, they faced a calm and efficient Tom Brady and keyed on him but let the Buccaneers running game go wild. It was an accident maybe. Two, Seattle was playing six time zones away. But neither of these are really what happened.

The truth is the Seattle defense lied to us after Week 5. They were good for a few weeks and the case is that this defense isn’t good. In fact, it’s bad. The Raiders finished with 576 total yards, held the ball for 9 more minutes than Seattle and picked up 8 of 14 third down attempts. Finally, Seattle gave up an 86-yard touchdown run to Josh Jacobs for the Raiders win. Jacobs ran for 229 yards in the game and also had 74 yards receiving.

Takeaway 2: The refs made two atrocious calls late in the fourth quarter

I don’t like to blame referees. Are the refs the reason the Seahawks allowed Jacobs to run for that 86-yard scamper? No. But the referees might have allowed Las Vegas to be in a position to win the game. The first bad non-call came on a Raiders fumble around their own 10-yard line where Jacobs’ knee never touched and he fumbled. The refs said he didn’t.

The second was when Seattle was trying to drive the field for a potential game-winning field goal on the following drive. DK Metcalf caught a pass that was reviewed for lots of minutes (and I mean lots) and then called incomplete. “Indisputable visual evidence” to overturn the call? Nope. Or it wouldn’t have taken so long. Plus, Metcalf caught the ball – his hands were underneath the ball and landed inbounds. The officiating in the NFL is a joke to rest of the world and the league wonders why it trails soccer so much.

Takeaway 3: Third down is an issue for the Seahawks offense and defense

In Week 10, Seattle allowed the Buccaneers to keep multiple drives alive by picking up third downs. Las Vegas did the same thing in Week 12. 8 of 14 on third down for an offense means the defense is not good. The problem is the entire defense is to blame, not one or three players.

But on offense, Seattle was just 3 of 9 on third downs. It felt like if Seattle didn’t pick up first downs early in a new set of downs, they weren’t going to. Worse, it meant Geno Smith was going to have to drop back to pass and be immediately under heat. This is a bad trend for a 6-5 team that wants to have any chance of sniffing the playoffs.