The Seahawks ended their two-game skid, matched last year’s win total, and put themselves back in reach of the postseason. These three players powered the critical win over the Rams.
The Seahawks headed into Sunday’s divisional tilt vs the Ram facing soooo many questions. Thankfully, most of the answers they gave were correct. Could they stay in the playoff hunt? Yes. Could Geno Smith win in a two-minute drill? Yes. Could the defense rebound from their debacle of the previous two weeks? Well… the jury’s still out on that one, and I’ll get to exactly why that’s the case in a bit. For now, I want to focus on the positives. And believe me, there were plenty.
Now, none of these first guys were the sole reason Seattle brought home the win from Los Angeles. Those big three are coming up, don’t worry. Speaking of three, the Hawks tight ends again played a sizeable role in the victory. Colby Parkinson caught one ball for a first down, while Will Dissly had two catches with one moving the chains.
Three Seahawks balled out in Week 13 victory
Noah Fant caught four of his five targets and totaled 42 yards. Fant’s touchdown catch in the second quarter put the Hawks ahead 14-10, and he picked up two critical first downs on Seattle’s game-winning drive. Overall, the tight ends caught seven of eight targets for 74 yards, four first downs, and a score. Without their key contributions, the Seahawks don’t win this game.
As I mentioned at the start, we did see better numbers from our defensive unit. But I’m not about to say the Seahawks defense had a big game. After the Hawks gave up a staggering 283 yards rushing to the Raiders, they held the Rams to 171 yards on the ground. Yes, that’s called sarcasm.
Los Angeles was missing its starting quarterback and its top two wide receivers, so no, the Hawks D isn’t back. But Tariq Woolen picked off his sixth pass of the season, and Uchenna Nwosu recorded two more sacks to push his season total to nine. So at least the defensive stars made big plays. But the real big plays are coming up.
Tyler Lockett continues to shine for the Seahawks
As he has so often in his stellar Seahawks career, Tyler Lockett was the first man to put points on the board for Seattle. His nine catches matched the season’s best mark while his 128 yards are his most this year. As we’ve seen number 16 do so often, when the Hawks needed him, Lockett came up big. Five of his catches went for first downs, while two more set up Seattle for second and one or two. And of course, there’s that first big 36-yard touchdown catch that evened the score early. Sounds like a solid game to me.
I can’t let it slip by without reiterating how quietly Lockett has climbed the Seahawks list of all-time greats. He’s already moved past Doug Baldwin this season in catches, yards, and scoring. With just five games left in the season, hs not going to catch Brian Blades for second place in receptions or yards, but he’s already second in touchdown catches.
While we don’t have catch rate data for players before 1994, Lockett does lead all Seahawks wide receivers with at least 50 career targets, at 72.0 percent. Yes, 12s, I am well aware that if the data was available, Steve Largent would probably be at 103 percent, or something similarly impossible. But in today’s league, nobody is as reliable as Tyler Lockett.
Seahawks star DK Metcalf was nearly flawless
Unless of course, you’re talking about DK Metcalf in this game. In what has to be an absolute rarity, Metcalf caught a higher percentage of his targets than Lockett. As in, he caught all eight of the balls that came his way. No, I’m not going to look at every box score for each player to see if this has ever happened be- wait… what? Ah, I have been informed by my editor that I will, in fact, rifle the records to deliver said information to the delight of the 12s.
Let the record show that Metcalf has, in fact, bettered Lockett in catch percentage in no less than 15 contests, with two ties. Yeah, I’m as surprised as you are. I bet Tyler Lockett is, too, except he’d never say that because he’s far too good a teammate and person to ever be such a jerk. Nevertheless, Metcalf has never been considered a possession receiver; in fact, Sunday’s game was only the fifth of his career that saw him catch every target. In that same time frame, Lockett has 11 such games.
But Metcalf can do things that Lockett can’t even dream of in Madden. As I said earlier, DK had a nearly flawless game. Once again, he was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct, and once again the Seahawks were pushed back 15 yards on a field goal attempt. And as he has on virtually every kick, Jason Mers calmly drilled the ball through the uprights. I’m beginning to think that Myers is simply bored and paying off number 14 to draw penalties to up his degree of difficulty.
Still, when your team targets you for the game-winning touchdown with just 36 seconds to play, you’re doing something right. And as he has so often for the Seahawks in his career, DK Metcalf did virtually everything right in this game.
Geno Smith authors his signature Seahawks game
So, we’ve talked about tight ends performing nearly flawlessly, Tyler Lockett adding to his Hall of Fame resume, and DK Metcalf turning in another great performance. You know, all of a sudden it occurred to me that – hey! – somebody must have been getting the ball out there to all those guys! And whaddya know, it was that Geno Smith guy again.
Geno Smith is no stranger to success. Well, not this season, he isn’t. Am I surprised at how successful he’s been? Listen, if we’re being honest, everyone outside of the Seahawks organization is surprised. That’s what makes his story all the sweeter. That, and his absolutely perfect attitude about it all. He continued to write back to the doubters with a signature performance vs the Rams.
Was Smith perfect? As much as I’d like to say that’s true, no, he wasn’t. He fumbled on one of the four sacks and eight QB hits the Rams laid on him. He was also intercepted by Bobby Wagner on a play that should have been ruled an incompletion. It was still a brilliant play by Wagner, but at best he broke up a pass, at worst (for the Hawks) he forced and recovered a fumble. But since it was BWagz and Seattle won, I can’t get too crazy about it.
But other than that Smith was brilliant, again. The few remaining critics of his game would trot out that Geno can’t get it done in crunch time. Ahem: 10 plays, 75 yards, 2:20 for the win with 36 seconds to spare sounds like a winner to me. As he has all season long, when things go south for him or the team, Geno Smith picks himself off the turf and goes back to work. His 367 yards passing was a new personal record, while his three touchdown passes matched his career high.
Since we’re tossing numbers around, this was Smith’s sixth straight game with a passer rating over 100 and his ninth of the season. Remember, he did that with current fourth-string RB Tony Jones in the game for 23 snaps. No knock on Jones, but there’s a reason Penny, Walker, Dallas, and Homer were ahead of him on the depth chart.
Sometimes in life, you get happy little surprises, like an extra chicken nugget in your lunch. You shouldn’t be eating those, by the way; all those nasty transfats and hydrogenated oils. Sometimes you get those surprises in football, like a fifth-round draft pick setting a Hawks rookie record for interceptions with five games to go. We see you, Tariq, even if opposing quarterbacks don’t. But in this game, the stars were exactly who we expected. Lockett, Metcalf, and Smith won the game for the Seahawks. What more could you want, for Pete’s sake?