Seahawks' Best Defensive Game of 2025 was ... A Loss?
Recapping the middle of Seattle's Super Bowl season, including a dominant defense week against the Rams
The last time the Seattle Seahawks lost a game, they rushed for more yards than their opponents, they threw for twice as many yards as their opponents, and they gained 14 more first downs than their opponents. One of the reasons that I find so much value in re-living last season is that our brains tend to remember history as it fits a greater narrative, and not as it was.
My lying brain remembered the Seahawks getting their asses kicked by the Rams in Week 11 and that Seattle was lucky just to get a last second field goal off that may have won it anyway. Watching the game again this week, I remembered that the Seahawks won all of these categories except for one:
4 interceptions. That’s it. The Seahawks won time of possession 37:49 to 22:11 and lost. That only happened four times last year and two of those teams did it against the Rams.
Coincidentally or maybe not, the Seahawks, Rams, and Ravens were all involved in two of these four games last season when a team lost despite dominating time of possession. Seattle and Baltimore both had dominant defensive performances against L.A., but lost because of turnovers.
Even with four interceptions by Sam Darnold, the Seahawks still could have beated the Rams in Week 11 if they had not squandered so much time off the clock in the fourth quarter. Seattle’s defense pitched a perfect game after the first quarter and yet this was probably the team’s low point in clock management.
It wasn’t just that Darnold threw too many picks and Jason Myers doesn’t quite have the leg from 61 yards in that situation, it was a team effort from coaching decisions to players not getting out of bounds that cooked the Seahawks by the end. And yet the defense is so good that Seattle still almost beat the Rams in their first meeting of the year.
As I wrote on Sunday, the Rams aren’t just a good team. They’re allegedly the “best team in the NFL”, both then and now, according to many.
That’s not quite how I see the Rams and that was even apparent when they beat the Seahawks last season. I’ll cover a few reasons why today.
First, a couple of obligatory mentions of games that were exciting but not necessarily that interesting or relevant beyond the obvious.
2025 season recaps so far:
Week 1 - 49ers
Week 2 - Steelers
Weeks 3/4 - Saints, Cardinals
Week 5 - Bucs
Weeks 6/7 - Jaguars, Texans
Week 16 - Rams
NFC Championship - Rams
Seahawks 38, Moons 14 (condensed game)
Seahawks 44, Cardinals 22 (condensed game)
I re-watched both of these games as well, as I am a completist with no skips. However, what’s there really to say other than I hope the Seahawks continue to play like this more consistently next season.
Seattle came back from their bye week to beat these teams by a combined score of 82-36. Take the two games before the bye week (20-12 Jaguars, 27-19 Texans) and the Seahawks have essentially suffocated four teams in a row and only allowed them breathing room because of turnovers by the offense.
The Seahawks got out to a 28-0 first half lead against the Moons (all four touchdowns were passes by Darnold), which was 38-7 by the end of the third quarter, and it’s still unfortunate that Dan Quinn didn’t pull Jayden Daniels from the game at the time.
Although I still don’t think Quinn did anything wrong, aside from not having his team ready to be competitive even when they were at home.
And unappreciated in the grand scheme of highlights, Ty Okada made one of the best catches of the year by any player, offense or defense.
Darnold went 21-of-24 for 330 yards, and he had this really awesome pitch to Zach Charbonnet as he was getting sacked that speaks to his underrated improvisation skills, which makes me wonder what the best case scenario for him would be if the Seahawks actually tailored their entire offense around padding his stats. But by the next week, it was DeMarcus Lawrence doing all the scoring.
A week after taking a 28-0 lead, the Seahawks topped themselves by getting out to a 35-0 lead against the Cardinals, in a game that saw Michael Dickson punt zero times. Seattle also became the first team since 1978 to score at least 44 points while only throwing 12 or fewer passes.
The bounces were so fortunate that the Seahawks could run the ball 46 times despite not running the ball that well, and turn it over three times, and still pull their starters in the fourth quarter. Darnold threw an interception five minutes into the third quarter so Seattle said “to hell with that” and 22 of their last 23 plays were runs.
The Seahawks had more kneeldowns in the second half of this game than they had passing plays.
I’d love to say that games like this are repeatable but this truth is closer to “sometimes it’s just your day”. A week later, it wasn’t.
Rams 21, Seahawks 19 (condensed game)
At one point in this game, commentator Kevin Burkhardt says that special teams is “the one advantage that Seattle has in this matchup”. I can’t recall what people thought of L.A.’s defense at the time, but that statement just seems ludicrous right now.
The number one defense isn’t an advantage?
Again, maybe I’m misremembering how people looked at these two defenses, but the Rams were starting players like Darious Williams, Emmanuel Forbes, Omar Speights (who is still starting by the way), and Cobie Durant at the time. L.A.’s entire offseason was built around replacing many of those players. The Seahawks will also be replacing defensive starters, but not for the same reasons.
The Rams have even looked at some of their good starters, like Jared Verse, and decided that they could and should do better, trading him for Myles Garrett. They will also have to bench a starter on the defensive line if they sign Aaron Donald.
Then the Seahawks force a turnover on downs on L.A.’s first possession, only surrendering points a few minutes later because Darnold threw an interception in Seattle territory.
While this goes down as a loss, it could also be Seattle’s most impressive defensive performance of the entire season. Going against the number one offense—on the road—the Seahawks completely locked the Rams down after their third possession:
Following a 74-yard touchdown drive (that needed a fourth down conversion), the Rams punted six times, lost a fumble, and scored a touchdown on a 25-yard drive that again followed an interception by Kam Kinchens. Were it not for those two picks in particular, Seattle would have held the Rams to seven points. They also held a 128-1 yards advantage in the second quarter; 128-1.
The Rams had four first downs after the first quarter. Four. They had 105 yards in the last three quarters and averaged 3.6 yards per play. After the game, Chris Simms called the Seahawks “the better team on the football field” in spite of Darnold’s interceptions.
We can’t say “if Darnold didn’t throw those picks” because those plays count too. But the Seahawks defense was so incredibly dominant that day that were it not for Darnold’s picks overshadowing everything else, people would have better understood just how big of a threat Seattle was—and continues to be—to win the Super Bowl.
This is also the game where Jaxon Smith-Njigba did this:
Foreshadowing the one-handed sideline catch that he’d later make against the Rams in the NFC Championship.
I will also point out that Tyrice Knight was impactful in all three of the games I mentioned today. Knight is a dark horse to be Seattle’s biggest redemption story of 2026.
And as we saw in Seahawks-Rams, it’s never too late for redemption.