Seahawks snap wild week with win, share of first in NFC West

SEATTLE – The Seahawks have lost five of six games after their 3-0 start. They lost several key defensemen 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 in Mike Macdonald’s debut season as head coach.

But the Seahawks overcame the setback and then overwhelmed Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals offense Sunday at Lumen Field en route to a 16-6 victory 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 in challenging circumstances. “It feels like something is happening every week, so it’s kind of par for the course at this point, which is good. We’re moving forward.”

The Seahawks snapped Arizona’s four-game winning streak while securing a sixth straight victory over their division rivals.

Their surging defense led the way, kept Arizona out of the end zone, sacked Murray five times and outpaced the Cardinals’ offense thanks to a pick-six by safety Coby Bryant.

Seattle pressured Murray on 42% (18-of-43) of his dropbacks. According to ESPN Research, it was the most pressure the quarterback has faced in a game he’s started and finished since 2021. Murray went 4-of-12 for 54 yards and the interception when pressured Sunday.

Cornerback Devon Witherspoon was close to Murray during a rollout in the third quarter when the signal caller overthrew wide receiver Michael Wilson. Bryant knocked it off, raced 69 yards to the end zone and hailed Marshawn Lynch as he crossed the goal line, grabbing his stride 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 high 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 this,” Bryant said. “But it shows that we’re willing to work and whatever the circumstances, we’re just going to keep going and just control what we can control. Obviously, we can’t control the power.”

The Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center had little or no lighting in some areas, forcing players to use the flashlights on their cell phones to look inside their lockers Wednesday and Thursday. They also had no hot water.

“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 amazing. It was great to see everybody just kind of bond and work through that process because it was … very unusual . I still don’t have power in my house. It was a wild deal.”

Jaxon Smith-Njigba was the Seahawks’ offensive standout on a day where their running game struggled again, generating just 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 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 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 off 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. carry and has allowed just 42 combined points over the past three games.

“I feel like the collectiveness and cohesion is 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 eye that it’s, ‘OK, we’ve got this.’ There were times at the beginning of the season when I didn’t feel the same, when I saw a teammate in his eyes and they didn’t have the 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 approached this crucial stretch with a “playoff mindset.”

His team responded again on Sunday.

“The whole week has been a bit strange, 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 well today. We got the win. It was a big win for us. Playoff game like we’ve said .”