The Seahawks spent much of the week without electricity at their practice facility, but it was the Arizona Cardinals who seemed powerless on Sunday at Lumen Field.
Mike Macdonald’s defense turned the juice on all the way in the Seattle Seahawks’ 16-6 victory over the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday.
“The Twelves were rockin’, the place was bouncing,” said Macdonald, whose team improved 6-5 in his first season as head coach. “… Now we go stack it on the road. Then when we get a chance to come back home in a few weeks, and then let’s do it again.”
The Seahawks will head into a Dec. 1 road game against the New York Jets sitting atop the NFC West.
The offense isn’t quite there yet, but it showed up enough during a 13-play, 49-yard drive that took 8 minutes, 12 seconds off the fourth-quarter clock to essentially salt the game away.
“I thought we were efficient, for the most part on offense,” said Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith, who completed 22 of 31 passes for 254 yards and a touchdown but threw his league-leading 12th interception. “Obviously had some mistakes that we need to clean up, but whenever you win the game, it’s a good thing.”
A few mistakes proved permissible on a day when the defense dominated.
Seattle defensive end Leonard Williams spent much of the game in Arizona’s backfield. He sacked Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray 2 1/2 times and hit the speedster four times.
Seahawks weakside linebacker Tyrice Knight recorded his first NFL sack and finished with nine tackles. Middle linebacker Ernest Jones IV’s 10 tackles led the team once again. The defensive players stayed in their gaps, trusted each other and make tackles.
“I think that was definitely my most dominant game since being a part of the Seahawks,” Williams said. “It was interesting — I woke up this morning with a great feeling. Pretty much everyone I approached before the game I was just like ‘I got a good feeling about this game, I got a good feeling about this game.’ It wasn’t directed toward my personal success — it was directed toward the team success. … I had great energy out there today, and it showed.”
Kyler Murray escaped just enough to complete 24 of 37 passes for 285 yards but was often under pressure. Cardinals running back James Conner entered the game with 689 rushing yards. He managed a total of eight yards on seven carries against the Seahawks.
“It’s not really a one-man thing, we all come together as a collective,” said Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon, who harrassed Murray into a pass that Seahawks safety Coby Bryant intercepted and returned 69 yards for a touchdown for a 13-3, third-quarter lead. “Once one person makes a play, it spreads throughout the whole defense.”
Bryant, who was struggling to find playing time last year and early this season, hit his stride on that return, but also as a Seahawk in the past few games. When safety Rayshawn Jenkins went to the injured reserve list and missed four games, Bryant moved into the starting lineup. He played well enough to keep it when Jenkins returned.
Bryant’s best play as a Seahawk nearly never happened.
Leading 7-3 with 8 minutes remaining in the third quarter, the Seahawks seemed to have stopped Arizona on third down. Most of the 68,649 in attendance groaned, however, when they learned that Macdonald had called a timeout just before the ball was snapped.
Bryant made the most of Arizona’s second chance when he picked off Murray’s pass on the third-down do-over. Witherspoon got up from his near sack of Murray, then ran down to block Conner. That’s when Bryant pulled out a TD celebration previously used by Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch.
“I saw that (Conner) was about to tackle me, and I saw ‘Spoon come out of nowhere and block him, and the rest of the guys blocking and building a wall for me,” Bryant said. “… And I said ‘Here’s my chance to do the Marshawn Lynch.”
Though the postgame locker room mood overall was happy, the Seahawks know there’s still work to do.
Seattle running back Kenneth Walker III, often met by a host of white Cardinals jerseys at or before the line of scrimmage, managed just 41 yards on 16 carries — an average of 2.6 yards per attempt. The Seahawks team total was 65 yards.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba led the team with 77 receiving yards on six catches, giving him 367 yards in the past three games. DK Metcalf caught four passes for 59 yards, and Walker contributed four receptions for 52. Points proved hard to come by, however.
The Seahawks moved the ball enough to keep the ball away from Arizona but managed just one touchdown drive prior to the final long drive that ate over half of the fourth quarter and resulted in Jason Myers’ 50-yard field goal.
Playing with two offensive linemen starting for just the second time this season — right tackle Abraham Lucas and center Olu Oluwatimi — the Seahawks added a third new wrinkle to the line when Christian Haynes took over for injured right guard Anthony Bradford.
Smith was sacked five times and threw an interception into the end zone on the first play of the fourth quarter as the Seahawks attempted to build on a 13-3 advantage.
“We need to clean some things up operationally,” Macdonald said. “I thought some penalties kind of threw us back. I was just talking to Geno about continuing to make better decisions in the red zone — take care of the ball. We are improving and making strides in that area as well.”
This story originally appeared in seattlesportsnow.com, of which Aaron Coe is a co-founder. Follow Seattle Sports Now on X.
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