On November 2, 2014, the 4-4 Texans hosted the 5-2 Eagles and welcomed back DeMeco Ryans, who had been traded to Philadelphia two years earlier after an historic career in Houston that had been derailed by an Achilles injury. Early in the fourth quarter, as the Eagles led 24-14, Ryans intercepted Texans quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick on what should have been a game-sealing moment, but then he fumbled the ball and it was recovered by former teammate DeAndre Hopkins.
Two plays later, Fitzpatrick threw a touchdown pass to Hopkins that cut the lead to 24-21, keeping Houston’s hopes alive in a game in which they had caused four turnovers but never led. Starting to sound familiar yet? It gets weirder.
The Eagles were the superior team at the time and they were beating the pants off of Houston, outgaining them by almost 200 yards and achieving twice as many first downs, 30-15. But mistake after mistake kept the Texans in the game, as Eagles quarterback Mark Sanchez was picked off twice and left with an injury (little did he know this would be far from the worst night of his life) and then replacement Nick Foles was also intercepted. Philadelphia lost a fumble and ended up losing the turnover battle 4:1 but winning the game 31-21.
It would be 11 years — including playoffs — until another team turned it over at least 4 times and only had 0-1 takeaways but still win the game by at least 8 points.
That happened tonight. Against DeMeco Ryans. Against the Texans.
The Seahawks beat the Texans 27-19 and improved to 5-2 despite losing the turnover battle 4-1; those mistakes turned a “shoulda-been-30”-point win into a one-score game, but I’ll take any ugly win over all and every kind of loss.
The Seahawks brought the Texans back to a time when they were one of the worst teams in the NFL, at certain points looking like they could win the game by 40, but mistakes were nearly their undoing (again). To look at the box score after the fact doesn’t do it justice because although Seattle only had one more first down and 62 more yards, they were suffocating C.J. Stroud for most of the night, shutting down Houston’s run game, and overpowering an already-weak offensive line.
Just like Ryans 11 years earlier, a turnover-on-a-turnover* changed a celebratory moment into an unfathomable momentum shift: Instead of going up 21-0 on a Drake Thomas fumble recovery for a touchdown, his fumble inside of the 1 gave the ball back to Houston with a fresh set of downs.
(*Seattle can be thankful that it wasn’t an exact recreation of that moment: Ryans tore his Achilles for a second time on that play, essentially ending his career in that very same game.)
Instead of being up 21-0 early in the second quarter, potentially salting the game away at that point, the score would soon be 14-3. Then 14-6. Then 17-12. None of these scores adequately reflect how much better the Seahawks were than the Texans on Monday night and that sounds like a Seahawks fan trying to make excuses for the team but what would be the point as long as Seattle still won?
They did win and Sam Darnold was great, except for a couple of times when he wasn’t.
Klint Kubiak was great, except for the time he called a passing play for Cooper Kupp that didn’t feel necessary given the situation.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba was great. He was just great. (Maybe except for that time he got a 15-yard celebration penalty, but that didn’t impact anything.)
The Seattle Seahawks won and that’s what really matters here. They won and they proved that they have the talent to beat any team in the playoffs, which is equally important as making the playoffs. However, they won’t last very long in the playoffs if they continue to shoot themselves in the foot in January against much better teams than the Texans, the Jaguars, the Cardinals, and the Steelers.
It’s rare to comfortably beat a team when you turn it over 4 times and lose the turnover battle by 3: It hasn’t happened for 11 years. Just ask the head coach of the losing team.
And this was anything but comfortable.
What are your immediate takeaways from Seahawks-Texans, the latest NFL game I think I’ve ever watched? Share them in the comments and I’ll share your comments in the next Seaside Joe!
Sam Darnold’s very good but probably worst game of the year?
Darnold finished 17-of-31 for 213 yards with one touchdown, one interception, and a fumble lost in the end zone for a Texans touchdown. By that measure, Darnold’s total net points was something like +7 and -6 (HOU went for 2 and didn’t get it and his INT didn’t lead to points).
But aside from his bad plays, Darnold still looked like the MVP candidate he nearly was when the game was almost 21-0. If Kubiak doesn’t call that passing play for Kupp, what are the odds that Darnold ends up getting his second touchdown pass of the first half? Pretty good, I’d say.
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Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s latest news
Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught 8 passes for 123 yards and a touchdown. This is his fifth game of the season with 100 yards and fifth game with at least 8 catches. I wrote last week that JSN had already tied the franchise record for most 8-catch, 100-yard game in a single season at 4.
Well, this is his fifth, so that’s a new Seahawks record!
JSN is the first player since 2023 to have at least 5 100-yard games in his team’s first 7 games of a season. The only players to do that since 2009 are Adam Thielen (7), Brandon Marshall (5), Stefon Diggs (5), A.J. Brown (5), and Diggs again (5).
JSN has tied Andre Johnson (2008) and Thielen (2018) as the only players in NFL history to have 5 games with 8+ catches and 100+ yards in the first 7 games.
Smith-Njigba’s new season totals:
50 catches
819 yards
4 TD
His 819 yards is tied as the 16th-most in NFL history through seven games (Deebo Samuel, 2021). The only players with 50+ catches and 800+ yards through 7 games are JSN, Tyreek Hill, Wes Welker, Thielen, Julio Jones, A.J. Brown, and Cooper Kupp. If JSN returns from the bye week and has some absurd career game against the Moons in two weeks, he’s tracking to be the first 2,000-yard receiver in NFL history.
If there’s a receiver who can do it, it’s the guy who set so many records at a Texas high school and Ohio State.
Defensive Dominance
ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky called Leonard Williams a “Defensive Player of the Year frontrunner” at one point and while I don’t want to disagree with that, I find it very hard to believe that voters are aligned with it. Williams impacted the Texans offense play after play after play — it didn’t seem to ever stop — but voters don’t look past stats.
Williams created a lot for his teammates but ended with 3 tackles and 0 sacks.
Again, I’m not saying that matters, I’m just saying that this “team effort” defense that Mike Macdonald runs will be great for the Seahawks and maybe a little bad for individual awards. That works.
NFL.com credited Williams with 2 QB pressures out of 7 total (it seems like it will end up being a lot more than that) and 1 tackle for a loss out of a total of 10; Drake Thomas and Demarcus Lawrence had 2 each. Thomas also had 3 passes defensed — including a touchdown-saver — and that fumble recovery-turned fumble.
If Thomas had just scored that touchdown he would probably have won NFC Defensive Player of the Week. I can’t really fault him, he’s not a running back. If we’re going purely off of stats, Thomas is one of the top-3 defensive players on the Seahawks since he became a starter in Week 4:
25 tackles, 2 sacks, 5 TFL, 3 QB hits, 5 passes defensed, 1 FR.
Tariq Woolen had his best game of the season, breaking up at least 2-3 passes and not drawing any penalties. He sure does like to draw that imaginary sword for some reason though.
The Seahawks held Stroud to 23-of-49 passes and 229 yards, an average of 4.67 yards per attempt, and sacked him 3 times with another 31 yards lost. Seattle entered the game ranked 9th in net yards per attempt allowed and I imagine that they will be ranked higher on Tuesday morning.
Houston running backs Nick Chubb and Woody Marks combined for 31 yards on 15 runs. Seattle entered the game ranked 2nd in YPC allowed.
A dominant WR1, a dominant defense, and a QB who is dominant aside from a couple of mistakes. No matter how historically frustrating this win ranks among Seahawks wins, it is still a win and Seattle is talented enough to beat any team in the league. Not bad — or surprising — for a team that was the 4th-youngest entering 2025.
The coulda-shoulda-woulda been up by 25
Now that we’ve gotten a lot of compliments out of the way, I would be remiss to ignore the mistakes that nearly cost the Seahawks a game against a team they are much better than. Seattle may have had a 23-point swing in the first half — they were good enough to be up by at least 3 touchdowns and instead they were only up by 8.
This is only one half’s worth:
It should have been 2-0, but the refs ruled that because Stroud was contacted before the goal line that it was a sack at the 1 instead
It should have been 21-0, but Thomas fumbled a fumble recovery at the goal line and no Seahawks could recover the loose ball
It seemed like it was at least going to be 16-0, but the refs called off the safety and ruled that it was a touchback
If Thomas or any player had merely fallen on the loose ball, it seemed like the worst case scenario was 17-0 and the probable outcome was 21-0
It should have been 21-0 again, or worst case 17-0, when a red hot Seahawks offense had 1st-and-10 at the HOU21, but Kubiak called a trick play pass for Cooper Kupp and he threw it right to the defense for an interception
Instead of being 21-0, it was 14-3 on the ensuing drive, a swing of 10 points or at worst 6 points if Jason Myers makes a FG
It should have been 17-3, but Myers had his FG attempt blocked
It should have been 14-3 at halftime when the Texans got the ball back with only :13 seconds left, but the Seahawks allowed Stroud to complete a 29-yard pass and instead it was 14-6.
The game was an inch away from the Seahawks being up by 21 points early in the second quarter and yet somehow they were only up by 8 points going into halftime without even allowing a touchdown. The refs could be questioned on 2 points, but overall Seattle left something like 17 points on the field in the first half. 17 points! And all 6 points they allowed were points they should have not allowed. That’s a 23-point swing in one half!
It ends up not mattering, it’s just these are the things that will haunt a team all season when you’re physically dominating in the trenches and still find a way to lose. Since the Seahawks didn’t lose though, it shouldn’t haunt them.
I just thought that based on how the first quarter went, the Seahawks might actually be playing Drew Lock in the second half. It didn’t work out that way.
Darnold locks on JSN
It would have been a bad idea to not go to JSN in this game, but he ended the game with 14 targets, the second-most of his career. Kupp had just one target, a 32-yard catch. A.J. Barner finished with one catch for 7 yards on three targets. Elijah Arroyo had 42 yards on four catches and five targets, plus a fumble. Tory Horton caught 0-of-3 targets.
For those of us curious to see what records JSN can break in 2025, this was a great game. (The NFL record for 8-catch, 100-yard games is 10, which Michael Thomas did in 2019.)
But is it sustainable to target him 14 times and target Kupp only once?
11 years later
Here we are 11 years later from that Texans-Eagles game that I would have never guessed I could reference as it relates to the 2025 Seahawks, but DeMeco Ryans went from a player creating turnovers (give and take) against Houston to being the head coach of his former team where he once won Rookie of the Year.
Ryan Fitzpatrick is now a broadcaster. Mark Sanchez is a former broadcaster. Andre Johnson, who was playing his last season in Houston that year, is now seeing a young Seattle receiver come after some of his records. Zach Ertz is playing for Washington and will face the Seahawks in two weeks. Jason Kelce is working at ESPN covering tonight’s game. Lane Johnson is still the Eagles right tackle. Chip Kelly is probably soon-to-be the Raiders ex-offensive coordinator.
Names change. The NFL will always be unpredictable.
Seaside Joe 2422
Also want to comment on the sloppiness.
This team has now played 7 straight games where they were either debatably or unequivocally the best team on the field. At this point we can maybe claim our biggest enemy is ourselves — playing clean, this team can DOMINATE.
But 4 turnovers, 12 accepted penalties and then needing to overcome some pretty bad officiating (which is always a crapshoot, as Forrest says “you never know what you’re gonna get”) kept this game close and if I’m honest, seeing that 27-19 score with 4 mins to go had me anxious in a game we should have been up by 30
OK it’s a very young team, but we have veteran leaders like Demarcus (helluva game!), Big Cat, Kupp and Darnold (who’s had like 4 careers in his 28-yr life) to show the way. Coach Mac needs to find a way for those guys to set the tone on focus, keeping your head down and eyes on the prize.
While we didn’t seem to be establishing much of a running game, we did break 100 yds on the ground; we did make them defend against the run; and we did get two scores on the ground.
Meanwhile they got less than 40 yards on the ground and were having to do roll-outs from the 2 or even the 1-yd line.
Folks, this is what it looks like to win the line of scrimmage. Our DL simply destroyed the Houston offense — the announcers used the word “elite”. Echo everyone who is calling out Big Cat for DPOY, stats be damned — they’ll be looking over their shoulders for Williams for a month. And the OL more than held its own against the other DL (along with Eagles and Rams) in the conversation for best in the NFL. Yes Bradford is still Tony Turnstile and Sundell still lost several plays notably to Autry, but I can’t remember the last time I watched Seattle field a good OL like this. And I’m thinking they’ll continue to jell during the season.
I’ve been bitching for a decade about the desperate need for winning in the trenches as I watched Ken Norton Jr and Tom Gable and Luke Joekle and Laken Tomlinson and LJ Collier and the like flounder about, and now that I’m seeing this Seattle team, I’m feeling like a genius. If you win in the trenches you can fucking suck the life out of the other guy.
All hail John Schneider in the post-Carroll era. What a turnaround and what a philosophical master class.