Seahawks continue to live a charmed life when it comes to opponent field goals

As former Wings front man Paul McCartney once said, “With a little luck, we can help it out. We can make this whole damn thing work out.”

(Wings, by the way, were the band The Beatles could’ve been.)

The Seattle Seahawks could be 6-4 right now if not for missed game-winning field goals by the normally reliable Greg Zuerlein and rookie San Francisco 49ers kicker Chase McLaughlin. Neither one of them had missed a kick against the Seahawks until it came down to the last one they took. Zuerlein’s narrowly went wide right, while McLaughlin’s overtime attempt skidded into oncoming traffic on the US-101 freeway.

Instead, we’re enjoying an 8-2 mark entering the bye week, within touching distance of a playoff spot. When you win as many close games as the Seahawks have this season, you do need a little bit of good fortune along the way, and I’d say the continued struggles of the opposition kickers qualifies as such.

Seahawks opponents are just 18/26 on field goal attempts this year, which rounds down to a nice and tidy 69%. That ranks 28th among all NFL teams in opponent field goal percentage, with the Los Angeles Chargers opponents hitting at a staggering 54.5% (12/22). Seattle’s opposing kickers have missed either a field goal or an extra point in eight games this season. Zane Gonzalez and Matt Bryant missed multiple field goals versus the Seahawks, and if not for a very bad penalty on Al Woods, Wil Lutz would’ve had a missed field goal and missed extra point on his record.

What’s crazy about this season is that it’s a continuation of what happened in 2018. You may recall I wrote about this exact subject after the Carolina Panthers drove into field goal range, Graham Gano missed wide right, and Sebastian Janikowski came back and hit the game-winner with no time left. That win over Carolina was nearly identical to the first one at the Arizona Cardinals, with Phil Dawson missing a would-be go-ahead kick, only for Seabass to redeem his otherwise awful day with a win at the buzzer. The 2018 team saw opponents only connect on 26/33 FGs in the regular season, which ranked 26th.

Yeah, we’re in the middle of yet another year of instability from our own kicker — Jason Myers’ heroics on Monday do not magically erase the inconsistency of his overall season — but we’re also in the middle of an extended run of kicker failures on the other side of the field. It’s turned potential Ls into Ws and I’m not going to apologize for it whatsoever.