Seahawks-Moons: ENDGAME 📰

What happened on Sunday night and what do Seahawks fans have to say about it?

Could the Seahawks be the first team in NFL history that doesn’t want the number one seed?

I wrote about Seattle’s strange head-to-head history against the team in Washington, D.C. on Saturday — the Seahawks have dominated them in the playoffs but had a .350 winning percentage against them in the regular season — and this game qualifies as another oddity in the series: The Seahawks beat the Moons 38-14, the biggest rout that Seattle has ever had over Washington.

It also moves Seattle to 4-0 on the road this season, Mike Macdonald’s 10th straight win away from Seattle.

The Seahawks had never scored 30 points against Washington in the regular season (they beat them 35-14 in the 2007 wild card) and they had only beat them by more than 10 points one other time in franchise history. They just beat the Moons by 24 points, Seattle’s second win of the season by more than 3 touchdowns; the Seahawks had not won a game by that many points since 2021 and it’s the first time they have two in the same season since 2018.

Teams that rout leave no doubt.

The Seahawks team that showed up on Sunday night was so good that head coach Dan Quinn has to show up in the facility tomorrow wearing a “2024 NFC Championship Game Appearance” t-shirt just to remind management that he was a hero less than a year ago. Especially after Quinn kept Jayden Daniels in the game when the Moons were down 38-7, leaving his star quarterback vulnerable to a freak accident on his left arm that will surely (and sadly) end his season.

Now 6-2, the Seahawks are back in first place in the NFC West, albeit a competition that is far from decided:

• Seahawks, 6-2 (3-2 in the NFC)

• Rams, 6-2 (1-2 in the NFC)

• 49ers, 6-3 (6-1 in the NFC)

• Cardinals, 2-5 (2-3 in the NFC)

Although San Francisco has the most losses of the three competitive teams, they have the most dominant record in the division (3-0) and have already won twice as many conference games as Seattle and six times as many as L.A.. And Mac Jones, once the fill-in, could be Brock Purdy’s indefinite replacement.

With teams like the Cardinals, Browns, and Titans left on the 49ers schedule, San Francisco would have to struggle far more than expected to fall shy of 10 wins.

The Rams beat the Saints 34-10 on Sunday; the 49ers host the Rams next week.

If the 49ers beat the Rams and the Seahawks beat the Cardinals, Seattle will be alone in first place with nine games to go. But this time the Seahawks will need to win…at home.

What are your thoughts on the Seahawks tonight? Share them in the comments and I’ll repost some of your reactions in the newsletter tomorrow!

Sam Darnold’s “MVP” night

Aside from one errant throw that was intercepted, Darnold was nearly perfect.

By adding four touchdowns to his season total (all in the first half), Darnold has 16 touchdowns in Seattle’s first eight games. He joins Russell Wilson (4 times, including 28 in 2020) and Dave Krieg as the only quarterbacks to have more than 13 touchdowns in the Seahawks first eight games of a season.

Darnold probably is not the NFL’s MVP frontrunner at the midpoint of the season but he also doesn’t seem to care. Seattle’s quarterback seems to remain chill after every play, touchdown or interception, and hesitant to buy the hype about “Sam Darnold” even as he’s completing his first 17 passes of the game. That’s a Seahawks franchise record.

Speaking of…

Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s historic season continues

JSN had eight catches for 129 yards. Smith-Njigba has 948 yards, which is 160 more yards than any other player in Seahawks history through the team’s first eight games of the season. DK Metcalf (2020) is the only other player to even have over 700 yards in that time frame.

JSN is also the first player in NFL history to have six games with 8+ catches and 100+ yards through his team’s first eight games of a season.

If JSN does become the first player to hit 2,000 receiving yards in one season, I hope he does it in 16 games and leaves no doubt about breaking a record with an extra contest. But I’ll settle for it any way that he can get it. If the Seahawks continue to play at the level they did on Sunday night, Macdonald might need to rest his starters in Week 18 anyway.

That’s what you would do if you locked down the number one seed. With how the Seahawks are playing on the road, do they even want that?

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