Takeaways from Seattle Seahawks 36-24 loss to 49ers

SEATTLE – It’s been a brutal 11 days for the Seattle Seahawks.

A 34-26 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Thursday night serves as the third straight loss for Seattle as they’ve fallen out of first place in the NFC West after a 3-0 start to the year. Brock Purdy threw for 255 yards and three touchdowns, and the 49ers rushed for 228 yards as a team as Seattle’s struggles continued.

“It stings to have lost three in a row, to lose it against your division rival at home, primetime, such a great environment. Guys fought their tails off down to the last minute. But we’re not playing well enough to beat the team we needed to beat,” head coach Mike Macdondald said. “Message to the team is we have the people in the building. Our players, our coaches, to become a really good football team. Right now, we’re just coming up short. That’s obvious based the off tape and what’s going on.

The Seahawks turned the ball over three times with Geno Smith throwing two interceptions that proved costly on the night.

It was another defeat at the hands of the 49ers where they clearly looked like the lesser team. Maybe not as decisive as some of the other recent meetings between the two teams, but the result never truly felt in doubt.

“I think it’s just playing clean ball,” safety Julian Love said of the struggles to beat the 49ers. “You’re not going to beat them going minus-3 in the turnover battle. I don’t know what the penalty numbers were, but they couldn’t have been good for us. That’s what it takes.”

Seattle’s defense allowed two plays of 76 yards alone, and five plays of at least 20 yards to San Francisco. Meanwhile, the Seahawks missed chances for their own big blows. Smith underthrew DK Metcalf on a deep ball in the first half that was broken up by George Odum, and a 52-yard touchdown strike to Metcalf with just under five minutes left to play was negated due to an illegal shift penalty.

“We did a lot of things that you don’t want to do when you talk about winning football games,” Smith said. “We didn’t control the ball, didn’t control the clock, turned the ball over, have penalties, you know, all the things that we talk about every week.”

The Seahawks will now get the weekend fully off to reset and recover as they try to get back on track with a road trip to Atlanta next week.

Here are the takeaways from the loss to the 49ers:

– Seahawks lose the turnover battle again.

After losing the turnover battle by a 3-0 margin on Thursday night, the Seahawks are now minus-6 in turnover differential for the season.

The Seahawks have forced just one turnover in their last five games combined. Rayshawn Jenkins’ 102-yard touchdown off Jerome Baker forced fumble against the New York Giants is their only forced turnover since the season-opening victory over the Denver Broncos.

 “It’s probably the single handedly, biggest thing that hurt our football team. We have to take care of the ball better. Practice it better. You get what you emphasize and apparently we’re not emphasizing that enough. Shoot, that’s my responsibility,” Macdonald said.

The only season of Pete Carroll’s tenure as head coach where they didn’t finish with a positive turnover differential was his first in Seattle in 2010. That team was minus-9 in the turnover battle, but won the division with a 7-9 record before beating the New Orleans Saints in the Divisional Round.

While creating more turnovers defensively and cutting down on them offensively won’t fix the issues the team is facing by itself, it would go a long way to making sure the team isn’t constantly playing from behind.

– Defensive issues continue to show as losses pile up.

In addition to the inability to force turnovers, the Seahawks are just purely struggling to stop their opponents from moving the football as well.

Just as had happened last week against the New York Giants, the 49ers marched straight down the field on their opening possession against Seattle despite being backed up. A 13-play, 90-yard drive ended with only a field goal, but it was another instance of the Seahawks’ defense getting knocked around.

San Francisco had five drives in the game that covered at least 70 yards. Despite Christian McCaffrey being out of the lineup and Jordan Mason being sidelined by halftime with injuries, the 49ers still managed to gash Seattle for 228 yards on the ground. Isaac Guerendo followed in the footsteps of Tyrone Tracy last week as a third-string back that had a big day against the Seahawks. He finished with 99 yards on 10 carries, though his essentially game-clinching 76-yard romp late in the fourth quarter accounted for much of that total.

“We’re either stopping them right now at the line of scrimmage or the ball is spitting and it’s explosive,” Macdonald said of the defense issues. “When that happens on the frontline, it’s guys getting out of their gaps, second level not fitting correctly, and not getting it on the ground in the third level. That’s what’s going on.”

The Seahawks didn’t sack Purdy a single time and managed just four quarterback hits as the 49ers quarterback had plenty of time to get the ball out. The few times he was under duress, he was able to either scramble or create time to get the ball away.

And then Deebo Samuel’s 76-yard touchdown catch early in the second quarter really put Seattle in a hole. The Seahawks made a coverage bust that put Samuel in space, and Julian Love whiffed on a tackle attempt as Samuel sprinted away for a score and a 10-0 lead.

“I was breaking like it was a good thrown ball, but it was underthrown,” Love said. “So, I rounded my break, and Deebo was able to get in front of me, and I didn’t have the right angle. Tough, but that’s my job.”

An educated guess is that Tre Brown should have stayed in zone coverage to the space Samuel made the catch instead of running with Brandon Aiyuk across the field. That left Love to try and cover the error.

“It was a coverage breakdown on our end, and we had an opportunity to make it right with Julian on the overlap. If that happens, we’ve just got to get him on the ground. We missed the tackle and off he went,” Macdonald said.

The bottom line is that Seattle is just not making things difficult enough on their opponents to move the football.

“These drives get strung out together because we just aren’t disciplined enough consistently,” Love said. “Again, we have the players, we have the scheme, we have the right mindset. It’s just cleaning it up. We have to attack this week. It’s a long season ahead of us.”

– Not the sharpest performance for Geno Smith, who got little help.

The loss to the 49ers was pretty clearly the worst game of the season for Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith, but he didn’t get much help either.

Ken Walker III and Zach Charbonnet combined for just 52 yards on 19 carries on the ground. Despite being sacked just once, the 49ers pressured Smith constantly as Nick Bosa alone had 14 pressures of Smith on the night, per Tony Holzman-Escareno of NFL Research. In fact, only twice this season has a player managed double-digit pressures in a game and both have come against Seattle. Aiden Hutchinson had 10 for the Detroit Lions two weeks ago.

Smith had his mistakes, too. The first interception of the night came on an overthrow of Tyler Lockett on Seattle’s opening drive. He missed Jaxon Smith-Njigba with another high ball on a third down in the second quarter, and underthrew DK Metcalf late in the second quarter, which allowed George Odum to break up the throw.

“Not starting fast. Not executing. That’s the main thing, not executing. Lack of execution,” Smith said. “This is a game of inches as they say. The margins are small, especially up here at the big boy league. You got to do all the right things all the time. We failed to do that today.”

But as mentioned above, not everything was on Smith either. He finished with 312 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions on 52 attempts. The Seahawks were playing from behind all night and had to put the ball in Smith’s hands.

“This is the third game in a row you’re behind so you’ve got to chuck it in the second half,” Macdonald said. “Defensively and as a team we have to be in these games within a score in the second half so we’re not having to drop back that much.”

After Seattle did climb back within reach, Metcalf seemingly ran a bad route that allowed for Smith’s second interception of the night. Metcalf took his break too vertical upfield, which allowed Renardo Green to jump the throw.

It wasn’t Smith’s best night, but the rest of the team isn’t helping much either.

“At the end of the day, we put ourselves in position after being in a massive hole if we got a stop to go down and score,” Macdonald said. “Geno is playing really good football for us. I know he threw the two picks, but we’ve got faith in Geno. He’s going to bounce back, thought he played a good football game.”

– Special teams giveth and taketh.

The third turnover of the night came on special teams for Seattle.

Right after Samuel’s touchdown gave the 49ers a 10-0 lead, Laviska Shenault Jr. fumbled the ensuing kickoff to give the 49ers a short field chance to go up three scores. Seattle’s defense came up with a stop after the turnover to limit the damage to just a field goal and a 13-0 hole, but it was a big mistake.

Shenault then made up for it in the second half, returning a kickoff 97 yards for a touchdown right after the 49ers had taken a 23-3 lead. It’s just the second kickoff return touchdown under the new rules in the NFL, joining former Seahawks running back DeeJay Dallas for the Arizona Cardinals. It’s the first return touchdown for Seattle since Travis Homer in 2021 against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

“It’s really like our football team right now,” Macdonald said. “Doing a lot of good things that put us in chances and we’re really hurting ourselves in certain phases. It’s like I’m living in two extremes. We’ve got to balance it out and be a more consistent football team.”

The Seahasks got a bit lucky as well. On the first play of the fourth quarter, a 49ers punt was initially flagged for kick catch interference on punt returner Dee Williams. However, the flag was picked up when it was ruled that Devon Witherspoon pushed the 49ers defender into Williams.

Because of the flag, no one from Seattle seemingly thought to retrieve the ball as the 49ers picked it up. That led to a challenge from San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan as he believed Williams touched the ball making it a live ball recovery and should be 49ers football.

The call stood upon review, but it turns out Shanahan was correct. A camera angle officials did not have for their review of the play showed the ball hit Williams’ finger, which sould have given possession to San Francisco.

“After looking at all available angles, we made the determination that we were going to stand on the call because there was not clear and obvious video evidence,” NFL vice president of instant replay Mark Butterworth said via a pool report. “Once (referee) Craig [Wrolstad] made his announcement and they came back from TV, the network had an enhanced shot that they did not send at all until after they played his announcement.

“(At that point) it was too late to change that.”

So that could have been another special teams turnover for Seattle. The 49ers also downed two punts inside the Seattle 10-yard, Williams and Shenault had a miscommunication on a kickoff return that led to only getting out to the 10-yard line as well.

Williams did make a good tackle on a punt himself, too.

But add in the blocked field goal last week against the Giants, and Williams’ muffed punt in the opener against Denver and it’s been a shaky first six weeks of the season on special teams as well for Seattle.

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