Seahawks resiliency pays dividends in 20-17 win over Niners

Although the Seahawks did not play their best game on Sunday, their 20-17 win over the San Francisco 49ers showed that the team has the resolve and resiliency to win when it is not at its best.

The Seahawks played their best defensive half of the season, holding the San Francisco Forty Niners to just seven first-half points.   The Hawks’s defense was physical up front, forcing  Niners quarterback Brock Purdy out of the pocket and into uncomfortable positions. Purdy finished the half, completing  11 of 15 passes for 83 yards and, more importantly, one interception.   Jonathan  Hankins snagged  Devon Witherspoon’s battered pass.  Witherspoon swatted Purdy’s pass intended for McCaffrey, and in addition to the interception, Derick Hall and Dre’ Mont Jones recorded a sack.

OFFENSE HOLDS SERVE

After the defense forced the Niners to punt on the game’s first offensive series, the Seahawk’s offense looked like they were up for the task when they took the lead on their opening series with Jason Myers‘s 52-yard field. The Niners took the lead with their only points of the half on their next series with a  Brock Purdy 10-yard run.

 The offense converted Hankins’s interception with another Myers field goal from 57 yards out, which saw the Seahawks narrow the deficit to just one point at 7-6.

 A golden opportunity was wasted on the Seahawk’s next offensive possession when a promising drive that started at the nine-yard line with 1:41 left in the half stalled at the Hawks’ 49-yard line. The Seahawks were unable to convert on 3^rd and 12 after.   Geno Smith’s pass to AJ Burner made 4^th and three after offsetting penalties on both teams.  The Seahawks put on  4-8 after taking a delay of game penalty.

ROLLER COASTER SECOND HALF

The momentum built up in the first half came to a crashing halt when Niners cornerback Isaac Yiadom intercepted  Geno Smith’s third-down pass intended for Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The Niners cashed the turnover into a 33-yard field goal by  Jake Mood and extended their take to a 10-6 lead.  The Seahawk’s offense shook off the turnover and overcame a  Nick Bosa sack of Smith on the drive’s first play.  The offense marched  70 yards down the field on 11 plays and took a 13-10 lead on Ken Walker’s one-yard run. The Niner’s offense regained the lead on Purdy to Juan Jennings’s three-yard pass play.

 SHORT YARDAGE ISSUES

As has been the case all season, the Seahawks were unable to pick up one yard on two consecutive tries. On 3^rd and 1, Smith’s QB sneak was short, and Zach Charbonnet’s power run over the left guard lacked power and explosiveness to get the yard.  In all honesty, the play never had a chance. The offense turned the ball over downs at the  Nines 37 37-yard line. It looked to be another Seahawks loss when the Niners took over with 3:56 left in the game.

WILL NOT BE DENIED

  A resilient effort by the defense forced a Niners punt.  With  2:38 left in the game and the ball at its own 20-yard line it was there that Smith pulled off another comeback win.

Smith used his feet and his arm to engineer the dramatic comeback. He completed seven of eight passes, scrambled for 16 yards on 2nd and 13, threw an eight-yard dart to Smith-Njigba, and bolted to the left side of Niners for the 13-yard game-winning run on the next play. The game was not pretty and ugly at times, but in the end, the Seahawks found a way to win.

“He was dynamite,” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said after the game. “We talked about, after the pick, just sticking with it, we talk about clearing the next room, just go clear the next room and rock and roll. After he threw the pick, we got the stop on defense, forced a field goal, and we went right back down and scored the touchdown.”