Seahawks 40 Buccaneers 34: Winners and losers from a wild overtime victory

A +18 point differential shouldn’t net you a 7-2 record, but the 2019 Seattle Seahawks are a team that lives on the edge, and they had to dig deep to vanquish Bruce Arians and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. From 21-7 down, Seattle’s offense was able to produce the goods in a 40-34 overtime shootout that will go down as one of the most entertaining games of the entire NFL season.

Now that my heart rate has lowered to normal levels, let’s get to winners and losers.

Winners

Russell Wilson

When the scoreline was 27-27, Russell Wilson had just 181 net yards passing on 20/30. By the time his work was done, he had 347 net yards on 29/43, plus a career-high tying five touchdown passes and NO TURNOVERS. Yeah, he’s the MVP frontrunner, certainly more so than Dalvin f—king Cook. Debate over.

Tyler Lockett

A career-best 13 catches for 152 yards and his third multi-touchdown game of his career. There is a good chance that Lockett, in his first year as the clear WR1, will have the all-time single-season franchise record for receptions. Bobby Engram has the record at 94, and Lockett sits at 59 with seven games to go.

DK Metcalf

Hey naysayers: take your three-cone time concerns and shove them up your collective ass. Six catches for 123 yards and a touchdown don’t do Metcalf’s day justice. He had a two-point conversion that tied the game at 21-21, he was brilliant in the two-minute drill in the 4th quarter, he had a phenomenal back-shoulder grab in overtime to give Seattle only its second third-down conversion all day. The rookie has arrived and the league is on notice.

Jacob Hollister

Hollister was on the practice squad a month ago. He had his first career touchdowns to start November, including the game-winner in overtime. Hollister is not known for his blocking, but he could mold himself into being a viable receiving threat for Russ in the home stretch. Big game for the former New England Patriot.

Brian Schottenheimer

Brilliant gameplan. I cannot praise Schotty enough for playing to Seattle’s strengths (Russell Wilson and his top two receivers) and exploiting Tampa Bay’s weakness (pass defense). The Buccaneers run defense was fairly stout except for one run, and we saw a called pass-run ratio of 47-21. Did it help that Seattle trailed almost the whole game? Perhaps, but the opening drive was five passes to a single run, so the intent was clear and they stuck to it. I feel like Schotty would not have done this last year. Maybe an old dog can also learn new tricks.

Rasheem Green

A heads up play to scoop and (nearly) score on Jameis Winston’s self-forced fumble. Mike Evans, who played his ass off, eventually ran him down but not before he set up the Seahawks in scoring position. That’s one of the biggest impact plays Green has made to date.

Yours truly

My birthday is on Tuesday and I didn’t want to see Seattle lose a home game on my birthday/birthday weekend for a third straight year. Yay me.

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Losers

Jason Myers

He needs to be cut. Myers is sitting at 11/16 for the year on field goals and a ridiculous 3/8 from 40+ yards. This should’ve never gone to overtime. He missed a PAT and barely made a couple of other kicks, including a 22-yard field goal. I’m done. I’ll take the $2.5 million cap hit in dead money for 2019 and $5.5 million overall.

Chris Carson

Carson did not have a bad game, but he had two fumbles to bring his total to five for the season, and he had a potentially costly one that fortunately was answered by Jameis Winston’s blunder. That’s way too many fumbles in a season and Carson not even being in the doghouse for that is really an indictment of how this team views Rashaad Penny.

Base defense pass rush

It was still very bad and I am fairly convinced it won’t get better. Jadeveon Clowney is not meant to be a leading edge rusher. Ezekiel Ansah was non-existent. Jameis Winston had far too much time on an overwhelming majority of his dropbacks. One of the two sacks was Mychal Kendricks getting credited with Winston’s fumble even though he never touched him.

Ken Norton Jr and essentially the entire defense

At the very least, take his playcalling duties away, seeing as Carroll is unlikely to fire him. He is the worst defensive coordinator the Seahawks have employed since John Marshall. This defense is rotten and he’s a major reason for it. The miscommunications, ease of which the zones get exploited, the lack of a push on the defensive line, the lack of a pass rush, this is collectively a horrendous unit. There were struggles in every level of the defense yet again, and this is happening too often.

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Pete Carroll’s use of challenges

What in the hell is this line of thinking?

Final Notes

• Marquise Blair was unlucky on the interception that fluked its way into being a touchdown, but overall I don’t think he had a bad game. He certainly is not one to shy away from flying to the ball, which is a major improvement from Tedric Thompson.
• The overall lack of targets for Jaron Brown, David Moore, and Malik Turner really sums up why the Seahawks got Josh Gordon. I suspect that it’s not easy for any of these three to regularly beat man coverage. Gordon fixes some of those problems, and one of those three (Most likely Brown or Turner) is probably getting cut next week.
• The offensive line fared well in pass blocking, although I suspect a lot of it was extra protection in the form of George Fant. Eventually, they will throw a go-route to Fant and you will all bow down to his greatness.
• Ugo Amadi is the only consistently good special teams contributor.
• I am shocked that Bruce Arians didn’t go for two on the game-tying touchdown. I’ll take it.
• Seattle is 7-2, which matters greatly for playoff positioning. They are not playing like a 7-2 team, which is going to be a serious issue now that they have literally only one team left on the schedule currently below .500, and the Cardinals came close to beating the San Francisco 49ers on Thursday. The Seahawks need to be better on defense, better on special teams, and better prepared from a coaching standpoint or else they will find themselves drifting out of the NFC West race and hoping just to get in through a wild card. No one here will mind if they narrowly beat good teams, but it’s hard not to be concerned about their prospects against the top sides when they’ve spent this entire year squeaking past the bottom-rung of the NFL.
• Bring on the 49ers.