There’s a dark cloud looming over Seahawks’ win against Patriots and it will cost them games if they don’t get it fixed soon
The Seattle Seahawks are 1-0 after a tough win over the Patriots, but there’s an issue that must be fixed if they want to stack victories.
It’s the first game of the season and the Seattle Seahawks are 1-0, but they committed several key penalties that really held them back in the win over the New England Patriots.
And they are the kind of penalties that can cost the Seahawks games in the future if they aren’t fixed.
“We had some penalties that we had to overcome today, but that’s like it’s a play-by-play mindset, you know,” Mike Macdonald told reporters after the game. “And our guys, we’re tired at the end, you know. They’re playing really hard and to find the energy to go get one more play … is just tremendous.”
While Macdonald’s overall optimism is warranted, it’s easy to see why the Seahawks can’t continue to commit the types of penalties they made against the Patriots.
It started with Josh Jobe’s defensive pass interference call on A.J. Brown in the second quarter. The Patriots ran a flea flicker and Drake Maye tried to hit Brown down the field for a deep shot, but it was under thrown. Jobe didn’t have the awareness to avoid running into Brown and the end result was the DPI that gave the Patriots the ball at the Seahawks’ two-yard line.
Maye then connected with rookie tight end Eli Raridon on the very next play for a touchdown to make it 7-0 Patriots.
The very next drive saw Seahawks tight end A.J. Barner commit a false start on a 4th and 1 conversion at midfield. Instead of getting a fresh set of downs, Seattle had to punt and give the ball back to New England.
Next up was Chazz Surratt’s roughing the kicker call on Patriots punter Mitch Wishnowsky that gave New England new life on a 4th and 4. That led to a field goal to make it a 10-0 game.
Just a little into the third quarter, the Seahawks were in a 10-0 hole because of three big mistakes that could’ve been prevented with better discipline.
Four points were taken off the board for Seattle after an illegal shift negated a seven-yard touchdown pass to Cooper Kupp, as well. The Seahawks had to settle for a field goal, which then made it a 14-point deduction from penalties as they trailed the Patriots, 10-3.
Lastly, it was a false start on Anthony Bradford and a delay of game penalty in a three-play span that forced the Seahawks to settle for yet another field goal instead of a touchdown, now bumping the point differential to 18 after all the penalties.
The aforementioned field goal eventually gave the Seahawks the lead to seal the deal, but the point remains in the fact that these mistakes weren’t the result of controversial calls or anything of that matter. It was all based around discipline and fundamentals and that has to change. Even if it was just the first game of the season.
There is definitely a thing such as bad penalty luck, but that wasn’t the case on Wednesday night.
An 18-point swing, including 11 points off the board on the Seahawks’ side of things, simply can’t happen if this team wants to win games at a high level. Especially if Sam Darnold misses some time. Sure, Drew Lock played well, but you can’t expect him to consistently play like that simply due to what we’ve seen over the course of his eight-year career.
Don’t get it twisted: This was a big win for the Seahawks. They persevered and kept pushing without Darnold and ultimately stepped up to win the game.
However, a lot of the obstacles they had to overcome were self-inflicted and it has to get cleaned up moving forward.
