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Brady Henderson, ESPNNov 24, 2024, 11:55 PM ET
- Brady Henderson is a reporter for NFL Nation at ESPN. Henderson covers the Seattle Seahawks. He joined ESPN in 2017 covering the team for Seattle Sports 710-AM. You can follow him via Twitter @BradyHenderson.
SEATTLE — The Seahawks lost five of six games after their 3-0 start. They lost several key defenders to injuries as well as their starting center to an abrupt retirement. They even lost power at team headquarters earlier this week after a major storm, the latest bit of adversity they’ve faced during Mike Macdonald’s debut season as head coach.
But the Seahawks overcame the outage then overwhelmed Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals‘ offense Sunday at Lumen Field on their way to a 16-6 win that gave Seattle a share of first place in the NFC West at 6-5.
“We didn’t blink,” Macdonald said of the focus his team showed under challenging circumstances. “It feels like something happens every week, so it’s kind of par for the course at this point, which is good. Onward we go.”
The Seahawks snapped Arizona’s four-game winning streak while securing a sixth consecutive victory over their division rivals.
Their surging defense led the way, holding Arizona out of the end zone, sacking Murray five times and outscoring the Cardinals’ offense thanks to a pick-six by safety Coby Bryant.
Seattle pressured Murray on 42% (18-of-23) of his dropbacks. Per ESPN Research, that was the highest pressure rate the quarterback has faced in a game he has started and finished since 2021. Murray went 4-of-12 for 54 yards and the interception when pressured Sunday.
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Cornerback Devon Witherspoon was closing in on Murray during a third-quarter rollout when the signal-caller overthrew wide receiver Michael Wilson. Bryant picked it off, raced 69 yards to the end zone and paid tribute to Marshawn Lynch while crossing the goal line, grabbing his crotch as Lynch did at the end of his famous tackle-breaking, 79-yard touchdown run against the Cardinals in 2014.
“I know they’re going to fine me,” Bryant said, “so hopefully, Marshawn, you see this.”
Bryant described the past week as “crazy,” with the Seahawks forced to make do with limited backup power for several days at team headquarters after severe winds from a storm Tuesday caused a mass outage that affected hundreds of thousands of people in western Washington.
“I’ve never been a part of anything like that,” Bryant said. “But that shows that we’re willing to work, and no matter the circumstances that we’re just going to continue to go and just control what we can control. Obviously, we can’t control power.”
The Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center had little to no lighting in some areas, forcing players to use the flashlights on their cellphones to see inside of their lockers Wednesday and Thursday. They didn’t have hot water, either.
“The guys didn’t complain; they just rolled with the punches,” general manager John Schneider said during a pregame interview on the team’s radio network. “To be able to get hot water on Thursday, you would have thought we struck gold. It was awesome. It was great to see everybody just kind of bonding together and working through that process because it was … highly unusual. I still don’t have power at my house. It was kind of a wild deal.”
Jaxon Smith-Njigba was the Seahawks’ offensive standout on a day when their run game struggled again, generating only 65 yards on 25 rushes. The second-year wideout caught six passes for 77 yards and a touchdown, continuing his recent tear.
Seattle quarterback Geno Smith entered Week 12 tied for the NFL lead with 11 interceptions, and he threw another one Sunday. He was picked off on the first play of the fourth quarter while throwing into the end zone through traffic, which he called a “terrible mistake.”
But Smith, who was 22-of-31 for 254 yards and a touchdown with the one interception, responded by leading a 13-play, 49-yard drive that ate up more than eight minutes of game clock. Jason Myers capped it with a 50-yard field goal to make it a two-score advantage for the Seahawks.
The day belonged to Seattle’s defense, which held Arizona to 3.5 yards per carry and has now put together three strong performances in a row.
“I feel that collectiveness and the cohesion growing more and more on this defense,” said defensive tackle Leonard Williams, who had 2.5 sacks and three tackles for loss in his most dominant game since Seattle acquired him via trade in October 2023. “You can tell when you look each other in the eyes that it’s, ‘OK, we got this.’ There were times in the beginning of the season when I didn’t feel that same thing when I would look a teammate in his eyes. There were times when we were in a game and we’re kind of down and I would look someone in the eyes and they didn’t have that same fight in them.
“And I feel like now we’re on that track and it means more.”
The Seahawks, who snapped a six-game losing streak to the San Francisco 49ers last week in California, will play at the New York Jets next week before their rematch with the Cardinals in Arizona. Macdonald laid out the stakes earlier this week, saying the Seahawks were approaching this pivotal stretch with a “playoff mindset.”
His team responded again Sunday.
“The whole week has been a little weird, as you know, with the power,” Smith-Njigba said. “I’m just proud of my guys coming in here prepared and ready for today. I thought we attacked today well. We got the win. It was a big win for us. Playoff game, like we’ve been saying.”
