Seahawks seek answers after flopping vs. Giants: ‘We kind of underestimated them’

SEATTLE — Geno Smith’s final pass hung in the air for several seconds, but the Seattle Seahawks quarterback didn’t bother to see where it landed.

Technically, this throw won’t show up in the box score, but the moment captured what went wrong for the Seahawks in a disastrous 29-20 loss to the New York Giants on Sunday at Lumen Field.

Smith angrily paced toward the sideline with nine seconds remaining after being sacked for the seventh and final time on fourth down to end the game. Just before exiting the field, he frustratedly hurled the ball toward the south end zone. As the ball ricocheted off the turf, defensive tackle Jarran Reed was on the opposite end barking at his teammates to come off the sideline and onto the field for the kneeldown that cemented Seattle’s second straight loss.

It was that type of day for the Seahawks.

Instead of executing, they were emotional. Rather than bounce back from a humbling Week 4 loss in Detroit, the Seahawks were stunned by a short-handed Giants team on their home field. Seattle expected to handle business and right the ship against a 1-3 New York squad — which was missing its starting running back and star receiver — and enter Thursday’s game against San Francisco on a high note.

But perhaps those expectations were part of the problem.

“Today there was too many guys holding their heads down, a little bit of bickering and stuff like that happening on the sideline,” said defensive tackle Leonard Williams, who was traded from the Giants to the Seahawks ahead of last year’s deadline. “I feel like we need to remember to stay close, stay family, have each other’s back and remember that it’s a four-quarter game.

“A lot of times in the NFL, it comes down to the last two minutes, which happened today. I’m tired of seeing the guys lose confidence throughout the game. We just need to keep our heads up high and remember it’s going to all come down to the end.”

Williams, who returned to the lineup after missing Week 4 with a rib injury, said that lack of confidence had “a little bit” of an impact on how Seattle’s defense played Sunday.

“I think we expected to come out here and beat this team, and I think, in a way, we kind of underestimated them and we didn’t throw the first punch,” Williams said. “When we took the first punch, it made us be like, ‘Woah,’ as a team. You could kind of see it on peoples’ faces and stuff like that. We need to come out with a better mindset (against the 49ers).”

Seattle (3-2) technically threw the first punch. At the end of a 16-play, 79-yard opening drive, Giants running back Eric Gray fumbled into the end zone on fourth-and-goal from the 1, and safety Rayshawn Jenkins returned it 102 yards for a touchdown.

99 yards and a skip into the endzone…

TOUCHDOWN RAYSHAWN JENKINS! pic.twitter.com/XY4wpFXLwI

— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) October 6, 2024

But the way New York moved the ball on that drive was a sign of more to come. New York’s offense responded with an eight-play, 81-yard touchdown drive, ending with a 7-yard play-action pass from Daniel Jones to receiver Wan’Dale Robinson on a shallow crossing route. Robinson’s touchdown tied the game, but it was clear the Giants were in control. And they stayed in the driver’s seat for the rest of the game.

Despite missing leading receiver Malik Nabers (concussion) and running back Devin Singletary (groin), the Giants had no problem marching up and down the field on coach Mike Macdonald’s defense. Jones completed 23 of 34 passes for 257 yards and two touchdowns.

He was sacked three times across 39 dropbacks, but on one of those sacks, he tripped over a teammate, fell and was touched down by outside linebacker Derick Hall; another sack was a scramble back to the line of scrimmage where he was pushed out of bounds by linebacker Jerome Baker. Only linebacker Tyrel Dodson’s sack was an instance of getting the quarterback down in the pocket. Outside of those three sacks, Jones was hit just three times.

“Whatever they were doing was working today, and we couldn’t get a stop,” Williams said. “It’s hard to get pressure when they have the whole playbook open.”

Jones was hardly in obvious passing situations because of how well New York ran the ball. Tyrone Tracy Jr. rushed for 129 yards on 18 attempts. Jones added 34 yards on seven designed runs (excluding kneeldowns and scrambles). Only four of New York’s 16 third-down attempts required gaining at least 7 yards. The Giants had 420 yards of offense and were able to throw it deep, execute screen passes and successfully run pretty much everything on head coach Brian Daboll’s call sheet.

“We got outplayed and outexecuted today,” Macdonald said. “All three phases, all three levels of the defense, myself included. We got outplayed today on defense.”

Smith finished 28 of 40 for 284 yards and a touchdown, but he had 51 dropbacks on Sunday, six days after dropping back over 60 times against the Lions. Playing from behind dictated those numbers in Detroit, but the score never got out of hand Sunday, and yet Ken Walker III and Zach Charbonnet combined for just 30 yards on seven carries. Walker didn’t register his third carry until midway through the third quarter. He finished with five carries for only 19 yards.

In response to a postgame inquiry about Walker’s usage, Macdonald said, “That’s a fair question.”

“You’re right, we need to get the run game going,” he added. “We need to get Ken the ball more.”

As has been the case with Smith as the starting quarterback over the last few years, a one-dimensional offense is frustrating but occasionally enough for Seattle to stay competitive. Seattle got the ball at its own 5-yard line with 5:53 remaining, trailing 23-13. Smith led Seattle down the field in 14 plays — all passes — and capped the drive with a 5-yard touchdown toss to receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba with 2:09 remaining.

The defense forced a three-and-out, giving the ball back to Smith at the 34-yard line with 1:40 remaining and two timeouts. Smith scrambled for 32 yards, then threw a 6-yard pass to tight end Noah Fant before consecutive incompletions to receiver Tyler Lockett and Smith-Njigba, who had the ball bounce off his hands on third-and-4.

Those two desperation drives gave Seattle a chance. A successful 46-yard field goal from Jason Myers would have tied the game with one minute to play.

“We just gotta learn how not to wait for things to happen in order to start moving the ball and making plays,” Lockett said. “When we’re down, we’re able to see what we can do, but what can we do when it’s tied up? What can we do when we’re winning? Not what we can do when we need to play catch up. We gotta make sure we’re doing our part on offense because we’re doing a lot of great things and it’s fun to see, but there’s a lot of things we still need to get fixed.”

Giants linebacker Isaiah Simmons leaped over the line of scrimmage and blocked Myers’ kick, and Bryce Ford-Wheaton returned it 60 yards for a touchdown with 55 seconds left. Simmons’ block was aided by teammates Dexter Lawrence and Rakeem Nunez-Roches. Lawrence held down right guard Laken Tomlinson, and Nunez-Roches pushed down on the back of long snapper Chris Stoll. They essentially cleared a path for Simmons to jump the line without contacting Seattle’s blockers, which is a legal move.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

📺: CBS pic.twitter.com/LXWINjf0oB

— New York Giants (@Giants) October 6, 2024

“There’s a guy in the A-gap, we need to block him,” Macdonald said. “That’s pretty much that simple.” Macdonald added that Lawrence was “allowed to push down” on Tomlinson.

As for the contact on Stoll, NFL officiating rules analyst Walt Anderson said through a team spokesperson that “pushing down alone is not a foul and there was no forcible contact to the head and neck.”

There were other problems that sank the Seahawks on Sunday. Cornerback Tre Brown entered Week 4 having allowed only 69 yards as the nearest defender in coverage. By my count, he allowed six catches for 100 yards on Sunday, including a 30-yard touchdown on a deep crossing route against Darius Slayton in the third quarter to give New York a 17-10 lead. That was New York’s only offensive touchdown of the second half. Brown was also flagged twice for defensive holding, granting New York two first downs.

Slayton’s touchdown came after DK Metcalf’s second fumble in as many games. Seattle’s offense was in position to take the lead early in the third quarter, but Metcalf caught a short pass at the Giants’ 21-yard line and lost the ball while sandwiched between two defenders.

Down 20-13 to begin the fourth quarter, Smith scrambled and slid short of the line to gain on third-and-12, setting up a fourth-and-1 attempt from the 35-yard line. Instead of punting with just over 14 minutes remaining, Seattle went for it — and then went backward. A play-action pass was blown up in the backfield by defensive end Brian Burns, who sacked Smith for a loss of 7 yards. The Giants kicked a field goal to go up two scores.

“I was confident in the situation, and we felt good about it,” Macdonald said of the fourth-down decision. “They didn’t play it the way we expected them to. And Burns made a great play.”

The Seahawks sit atop the NFC West with the 49ers in town Thursday, but they haven’t beaten their division rival since 2021 and aren’t playing very well on either side of the ball. Macdonald and his staff have a long list of issues to fix, including their in-game response to adversity. And if those problems aren’t solved during this short week, there might be more moments of frustration Thursday night.

“Tough opponent Thursday night. Divisional opponent. It means everything to us,” Smith said. “This is a big game. It’s about as big of a game we’ve had this season. We better be ready.”

(Photo of Geno Smith: Rio Giancarlo / Getty Images)