Seahawks’ defensive meltdown spoils Sam Darnold’s near-perfect day vs. Bucs: ‘It hurts’

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SEATTLE — By the time the doors to the Seattle Seahawks’ locker room swung open to reporters on Sunday afternoon at Lumen Field, many of the defensive backs were fully clothed and prepared to exit.

Aside from a few brief side conversations, there wasn’t much to say after surrendering a season-high 379 passing yards to Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. All across the locker room, guys were eager to flush Seattle’s 38-35 loss to the Bucs and exit the venue.

Then there was Coby Bryant.

The veteran safety, one of only two first-string defensive backs to start and finish the game Sunday, sat alone in his locker still draped in nearly all his game attire, minus the jersey and shoulder pads. Bryant is the type of player whose expression can often tell the story of the day, both in times of joy and agony. This day was far more of the latter. And Bryant’s body language said it all.

His words did, too.

“Angry,” he said of his current feelings. “Mad. Unacceptable.”

Those sentiments likely described how everyone inside the locker room felt after the loss. But it was especially accurate for the defense, which had no answers for Mayfield, who led six scoring drives before Chase McLaughlin’s game-winning field goal as time expired. Mayfield routinely dodged Seattle’s pass rushers, recorded zero turnovers on 38 dropbacks and carved up the home team’s injury-riddled secondary.

“We just didn’t play to our standard today,” said outside linebacker Uchenna Nwosu, who split the Seahawks’ only sack of Mayfield with safety D’Anthony Bell in the fourth quarter. “We usually do a lot better than that.”

That’s an understatement.

In Weeks 1-4, quarterbacks averaged 0.03 EPA per dropback against Seattle (all stats provided by TruMedia). For reference, that’s Aaron Rodgers’ current average, which ranks 23rd out of 33 qualifying quarterbacks. On Sunday, Mayfield averaged 0.59 EPA per dropback, which would be around double the marks set by Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen in their MVP campaigns over the past two seasons.

This wasn’t just a case of Seattle (3-2) coming down to earth a bit after owning the league’s second-best scoring defense at 16.8 points per game through four weeks. This was a full-on meltdown. A thorough shellacking at the hands of a team dealing with injury issues of its own offensively, including the absence of star wideout Mike Evans, starting tailback Bucky Irving and two starting linemen.

“This game is my responsibility,” said Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, who calls the defense. “I have to do better with our defensive game plan, our execution and how we call it. When we (have) a performance like that, it means that I didn’t prepare them well enough. It hurts. It stings.”

Seattle entered without cornerback Devon Witherspoon (knee), safety Julian Love (hamstring) and outside linebacker DeMarcus Lawrence (quad). Then outside linebacker Derick Hall went down with an oblique injury in the first quarter (Hall will undergo testing to determine the severity). Cornerback Riq Woolen left in the third quarter with a concussion.

Seattle had a 14-13 lead when Woolen left. Two plays later, his replacement, Nehemiah Pritchett, gave up a 20-yard touchdown on third-and-15 while guarding rookie wide receiver Emeka Egbuka on a post route. Egbuka, who had seven catches for 163 yards, also converted a two-point conversion to put the Bucs ahead 21-14.

“I was playing outside leverage, and that’s vulnerable on the inside,” Pritchett said of the touchdown. “He just made a play on the ball.”

On the Bucs’ next offensive series, Mayfield hit Egbuka on a post for 57 yards on third-and-13 with cornerback Josh Jobe in coverage. The Bucs eventually took a 28-21 lead on Rachaad White’s 1-yard touchdown run. Mayfield also hit a pair of 25-yard completions to Egbuka and tight end Cade Otton on the Bucs’ second-to-last possession. The drive ended with Mayfield scrambling and finding receiver Sterling Shepard for an 11-yard score, again with Pritchett in coverage, tying the game at 35.

“He ran a fade ball; we’ve just got to plaster better and not let Baker be able to get out of the pocket and make those kind of throws,” Pritchett said.

To Pritchett’s point, he covered the initial route perfectly. In fact, everything was covered when Mayfield hit the top of his dropback. The problem on that play — and many others Sunday — was that the quarterback had time to get creative. Seattle had only three pass rushers, and none of them got close to disrupting the quarterback.

The Seahawks’ short-handed pass rush didn’t register any quarterback hits aside from Nwosu’s sack.

“The expectation is the same no matter who is out there, but again, we’ve got to design better things,” Macdonald said. “Our pressures have to be more locked in. We’ve got to call them at better times — all those things. Our pressure (and) coverage was very weak today. That’s something we need to look at.”

Seattle’s shockingly inept defense would have been a secondary storyline rather than the headline had quarterback Sam Darnold and the offense capped off their best performance of the year with a second consecutive game-winning drive. As good as Mayfield was, Darnold was arguably even better before his final snap. He threw for 341 yards and four scores, both season highs. Seattle was shut out for most of the first half, then Darnold led five straight touchdown drives from the end of the second quarter to late in the fourth.

“Sam played tremendous,” Macdonald said.

Sam Darnold went 15 of 17 for 211 yards and three touchdowns after halftime but threw an interception on his final pass.

Darnold, however, admittedly exhibited “bad quarterback play” on the most important snap of the day.

Facing second-and-1 on the 32-yard line with 58 seconds left and all three timeouts, Darnold lined up to pass against a defensive look that suggested the Bucs would send pressure. Tampa Bay did just that, sending two blitzers into the gap between left guard Grey Zabel and left tackle Charles Cross. Running back Zach Charbonnet could block only one, and safety Antoine Winfield Jr had a free shot at the quarterback.

Once Darnold saw Winfield coming free, he tried to throw the ball away, but it bounced off the helmet of a defensive lineman and was intercepted. Tampa Bay ran for a first down before kicking the game-winner.

Darnold said after the game that he had seen that pre-snap look a couple of times in practice this week. On Sunday, he had the opportunity to change the protection to account for pressure from his left. And if even he ended up being pressured from his right — which is what the pre-snap look telegraphed — Darnold said he could have thrown hot to receiver Tory Horton, who was open to that side of the field.

“I just gotta be a lot better there pre-snap,” Darnold said.

Darnold is correct to hold himself accountable for the parts of the game in his control.

It is also correct to say that Darnold shouldn’t have needed to lead a sixth consecutive scoring drive to win a home game.

Darnold had already led a 99-yard scoring drive on the previous possession to take a 35-28 lead with 3:18 remaining. His EPA per dropback (0.74) despite the late turnover is the type of MVP-level effort that rarely ends in a loss. He accounted for five explosive passes (16 or more yards), including a 21-yard touchdown toss to Horton on fourth-and-2 that required buying time and breaking two tackles in the pocket. Darnold wasn’t sacked, which is a credit to the quarterback and his offensive line.

“We have a very special quarterback here,” said tight end AJ Barner, the recipient of two touchdown tosses Sunday, “and I think people are starting to find that out.”

To this point, Seattle’s defensive depth had been one of its strengths. The secondary hasn’t been whole since the first quarter of Week 1, before rookie defensive back Nick Emmanwori’s ankle injury. Emmanwori missed the next three games. Witherspoon missed the next two. Love has missed two of the last three.

But those injuries just opened the door for guys like Jobe, Derion Kendrick, Ty Okada and Bell to make plays and attempt to uphold the standard. The same goes for the pass rush, which initially had to deal with Nwosu working his way back into shape coming off offseason knee surgery, then Lawrence’s injury in Week 4. The result: Mike Morris playing his best ball in an extended role.

But the “next man up” mantra meant very little on Sunday. Macdonald can take all the blame he wants, but there’s “no excuse” for that type of performance, regardless of the injury situation.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to go out there and play our ball, man,” Bryant said.

The offense played its best ball. The defense played its worst. There might be better days ahead for the latter unit, especially if the injury report starts to look cleaner before the Week 6 trip to Jacksonville. But until then, it’s hard for Seattle and its fans to do anything other than share Bryant’s anger after a truly unacceptable effort.

(Photo of Rachaad White, 1, and Coby Bryant, 8: Steven Bisig  / Imagn Images)

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