Two mistakes – one mental and another physical – were the difference between the Seattle Seahawks’ defense being the hero and the zero.
With a chance to pick up an important win that would massively boost their playoff chances, the Seattle Seahawks fell just short Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings 27-24 at Lumen Field.
The three-point difference in the score shows it was a tight game, but doesn’t quite fully sum up how excruciating close it was for the Seahawks. More specifically, how two defensive penalties on Seattle ended up being incredibly costly in the end.
The first came midway through the second quarter with the game tied at 7. Seahawks edge rusher Derick Hall got in the backfield for a sack of Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold on third down inside the red zone. However, cornerback Tre Brown was flagged for a neutral zone infraction to give Minnesota another shot at third down. Brown then got beat on the outside on a well-placed throw from Darnold to star wide receiver Justin Jefferson for a 14-yard touchdown on the next play.
“Against a team like this, the unforced errors have to get cleaned up,” head coach Mike Macdonald said. “Starts with me, so we’ll look at that just like we do every week. We’ll look at it, make adjustments and move forward. We have to clean up the procedural stuff.”
The next costly penalty came much later with the Seahawks clinging to a lead in the final minutes.
After a go-ahead, 68-yard TD march by Seattle, Minnesota faced second-and-10 near midfield trailing 24-20. Edge rusher Dre’Mont Jones and rookie defensive tackle Byron Murphy II got to Darnold for an 8-yard sack to force the Vikings into a third-and-18 from near their own 40-yard-line. But Murphy got a piece of Darnold’s facemask on the play and was flagged for a costly 15-yard penalty.
“Yeah, it’s tough when you make a good play and you get negated by a penalty,” linebacker Ernest Jones IV said. “We got to be smarter, we got to play cleaner football in those situations.”
Darnold and Jefferson made the Seahawks pay again on the next play with the game-winning 39-yard TD strike on another impressive throw by Minnesota’s resurgent quarterback.
“The guy’s fighting his tail off to get the quarterback. You got to be careful where your hands are,” Macdonald said of the penalty. “There’s a lot of stuff going on at that moment, too. So those are the instances we’re talking about. We could have a third-and-18 with two downs to go to try to seal it, and all of a sudden (on the next play) now we’re down three.
“… That’s how close we are, but we’re not there yet, obviously. But that’s an example of the fight in the guys in how they’re playing.”
In total, the two flags helped the Vikings score at least four more points – and potentially 11 – in a three-point game.
The mistakes overshadowed what was otherwise a good day for the Seahawks against Minnesota’s talent-laden offense. They held the Vikings to 298 total yards (over 50 yards below their season average) and 81 rushing yards on 3.4 yards per carry. Minnesota also converted just 3 of 12 third-down attempts, but those numbers will be remembered quite a bit less than the two penalties and the final score.
“It should hurt,” Macdonald said. “We’ve worked incredibly hard. We’ve gone through a ton of adversity as a team and we’re going to stick together and going to go back to work.”
