Most NFL teams can say this. That includes the Seahawks:
If the quarterback didn’t fumble on his final plays of two one-score games, Seattle would be undefeated.
However, it is true.
As notable as Sam Darnold has been leading the league in passing yards per throw and tops in efficiency, he has turned the ball over under pressure at the end of his only two losses, games the Seahawks were in a position to win. He lost a fumble inside the 20-yard line with his team down 17-13 with 36 seconds left in the opener on September 7. San Francisco’s Nick Bosa pushed Seattle right tackle Abe Lucas into Darnold’s arm, dislodging the ball. Bosa recovered. Seattle lost.
Last weekend, Seattle and Tampa Bay were tied at 35 with 58 seconds left. Buccaneers safety Antoine Winfield Jr. fired freely down the left side of the Seahawks line. He hit Darnold as he attempted to throw, perhaps the ball away, toward wide receiver Cooper Kupp over the middle. Winfield’s hit caused the ball to hit a defensive lineman’s helmet and into the arms of linebacker Lavonte David for a crushing interception at the Seattle end of the field. The Bucs ran out the clock from there until the winning field goal as time expired.
Now Darnold and the Seahawks (3-2) are in Florida to face the surprising Jacksonville (4-1) on Sunday (10:00 a.m., Fox television, local channel 13). The Jaguars, coming off a win over defending AFC champion Kansas City on Monday night, have been creating and getting more turnovers than anyone in the NFL.
Jacksonville has 10 interceptions and four fumble recoveries in five games. The Jags’ plus-eight turnover margin is the best in the league.
Guess what Darnold and the Seahawks have been focused on this week, as the main key to Sunday’s game?
“We’re always focused on ball security, protecting the ball, whether it’s in the pocket, being smart outside of the pocket and just taking care of the ball, in general, for me, but also for everyone on the offense,” Darnold said. “Even on kick return, everyone strives to have very good ball security, not just this week, but every week.
“But they obviously do a great job of taking the ball away. And we know that.”
Darnold’s film study of the Jaguars, along with watching their win over the Chiefs on Monday night from his couch, showed him why Jacksonville gets so many takeaways.
“They do a great job when the ball carriers are in space to hit the ball, just attacking the ball,” Darnold said.
“You see them all over the tape linking their pressures to their coverages, understanding where the passes are, where they’re most vulnerable as a defense with their pressures. And I feel like their DBs and linebackers do a really good job of getting into those specific spaces.”
The Jaguars’ Devin Lloyd leads the NFL with four interceptions in five games. That’s unusual for a middle linebacker in a 4-3 scheme, which Jacksonville runs.
“He flies,” Darnold said of the Jags’ first-round pick out of Utah in 2022. “He’s a really good player. His two backs (including eighth-year veteran Foyesade Oluokun) are really good. We’ve got our hands full there.
“But again, they do a really good job of making everything look the same, especially in their third-down packages.”
That brings us to the second key to Sunday’s game…
Success on the first descents
Over the last two games, the Seahawks’ running game has started to gain some consistency. They accounted for 100 of their 122 yards on the ground against Tampa Bay last weekend in the second half. The previous game they had 155 rushing yards while winning at Arizona.
The better race has meant shorter third attempts. That has meant more conversions, more control in field position and 58 points scored in the last two games. The Seahawks are eighth in the NFL converting 43.6% of their third downs this season.
That’s much better than last season. Seattle converted just 37.6% of third downs in 2024, 21st in the NFL out of 32 teams. A big reason for that: The Seahawks’ average yards gained on third down was a ridiculous 8.9 yards. That was because they ranked 29th in the league in rushing offense. This season, 25 of Seattle’s 55 third downs have been 6 yards or less. The Seahawks are converting 20 of 25 (80%).
They are only 4 of 30 conversions at third and more than 7 yards.
If leadoff man Kenneth Walker and No. 2 Zach Charbonnet can run against the Jaguars, who rank 11th in rushing defense (97.8 yards per game), then nearly half of their third downs could be 6 yards or less again on Sunday. That would put the Seahawks in less risky situations where the Jaguars defense thrives on creating turnovers.
Attack someone. Any
Two games ago, the Seahawks were one of the NFL’s top two defenses. They were second in the league allowing 15.7 points per game. No enemy had scored more than 17 points against them.
But they have allowed 55 points in the last 66 minutes of play. Seattle led Arizona 20-6 with 6 minutes remaining, then allowed the Cardinals to score two late touchdowns to tie the game on September 25. The Seahawks escaped with a victory only after Arizona missed a kickoff for a 40-yard Seattle drive, until Jason Myers’ game-winning field goal on the final play.
Last weekend, allowing the Buccaneers 38 points in Seattle’s latest home loss, the Seahawks’ season-long problem with bad tackling became more acute.
In September, the problem was in the secondary, which has yet to play a full game with all its regular starters due to many injuries. Last week against Tampa Bay, the missed tackles spread throughout the defense, from front to back.
Linemen missed tackles. Linebackers missed tackles. Cornerbacks and safeties, starters and injured backups alike, missed tackles. Derion Kendrick, the nickel defensive back with Devon Witherspoon still out with a bruised knee ligament, stood in the middle of the field and watched two Buccaneers ball carriers run past him instead of even attempting to tackle them on consecutive plays near the goal line in the first half.
Even Pro Bowl wing Leonard Williams played what coach Mike Macdonald acknowledged Friday as one of his worst games.
“Look, we love Leo. We love him. He’s probably our best player. But he didn’t have his best game against Tampa Bay,” Macdonald said.
“We were able to complete the entire squad and no one played their best football. We didn’t call our best game. We didn’t prepare for our best game.
“And we all know it. We’re trying to grow from it.”
They have reviewed how they are teaching form tackling. They’ve looked at the drills they’re doing in practice (where, like the entire NFL, they do everything but take guys to the ground to preserve players from injuries between games). If things don’t improve on Sunday against the Jaguars, the Seahawks will likely suddenly be 3-3.
“I think the thing is just taking that extra step for guys to put their body into them, and it’s hard to do that when you’re not wearing pads (practicing),” said veteran defensive tackle Jarran Reed, who on Sunday in Jacksonville will deliver another of his fiery messages that he has each week on the field at the end of pregame warmups. “So, we have to put more emphasis on it when we’re in practice. What we’re doing now is making sure we take that extra step, making sure we make contact with the guy, not going to the ground, but putting a body on the body.
“I think we’ve done a good job addressing this season. Much better than some of the past seasons. And it’s a quick fix. That’s the NFL, right? Things happen in games, and you can go back and you have a chance to change those things.”
Says Reed: “Now that we’re in it, I think guys are taking the initiative within themselves to make sure each other takes the next step when they’re there to make those plays. And again, we have to hold each other accountable.
“So we all have to be prepared to receive constructive criticism, we have to accept it and we have to attack it head on.”