“Oh man, what a weird game,” Darnold said. “Obviously I think the first half was really solid for us as an offense, then the second half, it was just a different story. I think we just got to hold onto the football. We can’t turn the ball over like that. I can’t turn the ball over like that. Again, our defense and special teams stepping up tonight was huge. So when you come out of here having a game like that offensively, and you still win the ballgame, can’t ask for more than that. We’re just going to continue to learn from our
mistakes and get better.”
Darnold had two of Seattle’s four turnovers, fumbling on a sack in the end zone, with the Texans recovering for their first touchdown, and later throwing an interception, just his second in the last five games. But he also made a ton of standout plays, as he has done so often this season, perhaps the most impressive being the throw he made to Smith-Njigba while getting hit for a first-quarter touchdown.
But after that Smith-Njigba touchdown, which gave the Seahawks a 14-0 lead, they missed out on several chances to put the game away.
The defense got in on the day’s weirdness in the second quarter when Ernest Jones IV had a sack and forced fumble, which Drake Thomas recovered, only to have the ball stripped as he tried to score. The Texans recovered in the end zone for what would have been a touchback and a new set of downs, essentially turning a sack fumble into a positive, but keeping with the day’s theme of weirdness, Houston also had a penalty on the play, which Seattle accepted, wiping the play off the books entirely.
After the Texans punted, the Seahawks offense had another chance to add to the lead, but after driving to Houston’s 21-yard line, Seattle tried a trick play, which ended up backfiring. After taking a pitch from Darnold, receiver Cooper Kupp rolled to his right before pulling up to throw, but his pass attempt to Smith-Njigba was intercepted, giving the Texans a possession they would turn into a field goal.
The Seahawks would go on to add onto the lead, but would also struggle to put he ball away as they committed two more turnovers in the second half, an Elijah Arroyo fumble after a catch, and a Darnold interception.
“Just losing football offensively for the second half there,” Kupp said. “I think Jax did a good job making some plays for us. We were just losing football. A lot of that, when we came out the first few drives, did a great job moving the ball down the field, finishing in the red zone. Then from then on it was pretty poor. You love coming out of these hard games with the W as we did. Do everything you could offensively to lose it. Defense just played great. There were guys throughout the course of the game stepping up offensively. As a collective unit, that was just losing football. We’ll make some corrections and be ready to come out and respond to that.”
But despite all that went wrong for Seattle’s offense, Kupp also sees a ton of potential in the Seahawks offense if it can get out of its own way. That much was evident in the way the Seahawks moved the ball against one of the NFL’s best defenses, just as it was when the Seahawks traded scores with the Buccaneers in a high-scoring loss in Week 5.
“There is (potential), we know that,” Kupp said. “We know our standard is much higher. Shoot, when we can put together all three phases, complementary football, I think we can be a really, really dangerous football team. Then, offensively still being able to come up with points and things like that here and there, I think the defense put us in some good spots. There’s good stuff today. I’m not saying it’s all bad. There’s good stuff on tape. It’s just being able to do that consistently, just play our brand of football play in, play out. Yeah, we’ll be better.”
Added Darnold, “When we execute, when we do our job every single play, the results kind of speak for themselves. We just can’t keep shooting ourselves in the foot the way we have. I think Tampa, in that loss, was a pretty consistent performance from us. Still had some minor detail things that happened there. We just got to clean up the details. We will. We’ll watch this tape, get better from it, enjoy this bye week. It’s going to be huge for us to get some guys back and get healthy. We’re going to enjoy the bye week and come back swinging in a couple weeks.”
