Seattle Seahawks Week 11: Good news and bad news from the collapse versus the Rams

It isn't easy to find good news after the Seattle Seahawks play a game like this. We'll try to find a few positives in their second loss to the Rams. Surprisingly, it's easier than you might think.

The Seattle Seahawks have now played the Los Angeles Rams twice, and fallen apart in the fourth quarter twice. Yes, I promised there would be good news, and we'll get to it. Eventually. First, we need to conduct the postmortem on this game. The best we can hope for is that it isn't a sneak peek at a postmortem on the Hawks season. While we saw a lot of good in this game, there was far too much bad and more than enough ugly for two games.

The loss to the Rams could be very costly indeed. A win would have kept the Hawks tied with the 49ers at the top of the NFC West with a chance to secure sole possession of first place. Now they have to win just to keep pace. Considering how they played on Sunday, it seems less likely that Seattle will pull off a win over a San Francisco team that's rebounded from an earlier three-game slide. That's really just the start of the bad news.

The Seattle Seahawks looked good early on offense and defense

Seattle started off strong in this game, just as they did in week one. The Hawks scored on their first three drives, beginning with a 14-play drive that effectively mixed the run with the pass. Geno Smith hit five different receivers en route to the end zone. Meanwhile, Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet balanced the air attack with 23 yards on the ground.

Seattle faced third down three times and converted all three. Smith was 6-7 on the drive, only missing on a catch by Jaxon Smith-Njigba ruled out of bounds, Another completion was wiped off the slate as the Seahawks picked up more yardage on an unnecessary roughness call on the Rams. Even on that play, Seattle would have picked up the third down without the penalty.

This was all after the Rams exited their first drive after just three plays, plays that were exclusively shut down by Seattle's cornerbacks. Los Angeles did manage a solid drive on their second possession, but the Seahawks defense shut down the Rams despite being set up with a first and goal at the Seattle five. I say "set up", as the Hawks were penalized four times on that dive alone, twice for pass interference. Those penalties lean heavily toward the bad news, but for now, a goal-line stand of four downs from the five wasn't just good news. It was great news indeed.