This was a peculiar game. The Seahawks handily out-yarded the Steelers and felt like they should be in a superior winning position earlier than they were. Yet ultimately they got there in the end, courtesy of a bizarre special teams touchdown.
It’s not easy to win by 14 points on the road, particularly against an AFC North opponent with expectations of being competitive. The Seahawks made Aaron Rodgers look well passed his sell-by-date. The defensive tackles both clogged lanes and pressured the quarterback. The passing game was a lot more varied, aggressive and balanced. Cooper Kupp had a good game to complement Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Tory Horton and the tight ends were more involved. Ken Walker had a much better game to the tune of 105 yards on 13 carries.
However, a series of errors made things close. Jason Myers’ missed field goal. Sam Darnold threw two interceptions, the second of which came on a bizarre play-calling decision belittling Seattle’s preference to be a physical running team (if it’s 4th and short, don’t overthink it). Meanwhile, as Walker excelled — Zach Charbonnet suddenly looked like he could barely gain a yard on any of his runs.
It was immensely frustrating that the Steelers had a seven-point lead at half-time despite losing the yardage battle 188-69. Yet the Seahawks, to their credit, made sure it wasn’t going to be one of ‘those’ days. They put 17-straight points on the board to secure the win.
The score that effectively broke it open will go down as one of the more bizarre you’ll ever see. The Steelers allowing a kick-off to enter the end zone, with the Seahawks eventually recovering it. A cheap, easy seven points gratefully received. A huge error. It was the bit of fortune the Seahawks arguably deserved and needed.
The offense still has to iron out the kinks. It’s clear this is going to be a process that takes time. There are still play-calling decisions that seem a little off. This was an improvement from last week though, so gradually getting things on track is plausible.
There were many individual positives though. The top-two receivers, Josh Jobe, all of the front-line defensive tackles, Walker. They needed to win this game to keep up with the rest of the NFC West and they delivered.
We experienced some technical issues during the post-game live stream. If you fast-forward to 18 minutes when the issues start, we seemed to have solved the problem. My apologies, I will try to make sure this is fixed:
