A few months after justifying calls from the peanut gallery to “Let Russ Cook,” Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks looked absolutely crazy on Saturday night.
In Seattle’s 30-20 wild card loss to division rival Los Angeles Rams, the Seahawks landed 11 first runs and a total of 278 yards against LA and converted only 2 of 14 attempts at a third down.
Seattle was still in the game in the second half, despite its negligible production. But after kicking a field goal and reducing LA’s lead to three in the first stroke of the third quarter, Seattle made four consecutive strokes, moving the ball just 21 yards in 17 moves, making only two first runs and never reaching the mid- field. Meanwhile, Los Angeles and an injured Jared Goff increased their three-point lead to 17. All of this, while Rams’ main defender Aaron Donald was sidelined with a rib injury.
Wilson and Co. failed to take advantage of Donald’s absence and wake up in the attack until it was too late in the fourth half.
“We needed to go there,” said Wilson, according to The Seattle Times. “The game seemed obsolete to us in a way – we kind of lost our balance. We needed to go ahead and make it happen. And the next thing you know, we didn’t.”
Except for a typically brilliant improvised touchdown pass to DK Metcalf in the first half, Wilson had a particularly bad day, watching Seahawks’ flat-line season under a crowd of Rams sackers. Wilson’s mistakes were plentiful: he played a pick-six on a WR screen intended for Metcalf, took five sacks and completed just 40.7 percent of his passes, a low point of the season. According to ESPN, Wilson had 17.6 CBR in the loss to Rams, the fifth worst performance of his career.
Much can be attributed to the Seattle offensive line, which allowed Wilson to be pressured in 43.8 percent of plays, the worst of the season. But for a QB who has handled pressure in his pocket and off the field well throughout his career, this is no excuse.
“I hate that feeling, obviously,” said Wilson. “We felt that we had a chance today … I hoped we could win everything, and that is not what we did.”
Wilson and the Seahawks seemed destined for glory earlier in the season. As Seattle started 5-0, requests for Wilson to be at the top of the MVP conversation increased, and with good reason; Wilson was completing 72.8 percent of his passes and reinforced a 19-3 TD to INT ratio in a team that leads the NFC classification.
But then the turn came in droves, defeats soon followed and Seattle’s attack never regained the promise of its success earlier in the season.
Instead of preparing for a race in the Super Bowl, the Seahawks are returning home in early January for the second time in three seasons and missing out on the NFC title game for the third consecutive postseason.
“We have to be better,” Wilson said. “We have to find ways to win this type of confrontation.”