Field Gulls
In a game that felt closer to a blowout snooze fest for the first three quarters, it turned into a wild walk off win for the Seattle Seahawks 23-20 over the Arizona Cardinals.
In classic Thursday Night Football fashion, this game was sloppy, choppy, and chaotic, as the Seahawks blew a 20-6 lead in the final minutes, just to capitalize on a Cardinals kickoff mistake that allowed Jason Myers to hit the 52-yard game winner. In what felt like a must-win game, considering Seattle was facing the possibility of falling to 0-2 in the division, the Seahawks found a way to get the massive road division win, and are now 3-1 on the year.
Let’s break it all down.
Through four games, I don’t know how you can be anything other than excited by what Sam Darnold has shown. The divisive free agent acquisition has continued his stellar play from last year’s regular season in Minnesota, and the league is starting to notice.
Thursday night’s game was a perfect encapsulation of his play through the first four games of the season. Darnold, back in the Kubiak/Shanahan scheme, has so far been asked to do slightly less than what was asked of him in Minnesota, but it has created a hyper efficient version of Sam that we’ve never seen.
Last night, Darnold looked like the best player on the field. He was accurate on all three levels, he used his athleticism to escape a collapsing pocket all night, and made multiple big time throws, including the game winning 22 yard pass to Smith-Njigba in the final seconds to set up the game-winning kick. This was his second game winning drive on the season, although this game should’ve been a blowout, if not for critical mistakes by his teammates around him, that stalled out drives.
Last night just backed up what we’ve seen from the former first-round pick. Darnold is completing 70% of his passes, nearly 4% higher than last season. His passer rating of 106.5 is seventh best in the NFL, and his 9.1 yards per completion is fourth best in the league. While only throwing 25 passes a game this year, compared to 32 last year, he’s still making the most of his throws.
If not for some brutal turnovers against San Francisco and some mental errors tonight, Darnold and Seattle should be 4-0 and averaging more than 27.8 ppg they’re already averaging. It’s only four games into a long season, but it’s hard not to see a Baker Mayfield-esque impact Sam has had on this offense and team.
I was pretty surprised after the game to hear many griping about Klint Kubiak’s play calling in last night’s game. I actually believe that was his best game as the Seahawks OC so far.
Kubiak came out aggressive with his heavy 12 personnel look, and got his two young talented tight ends involved early...
