Week 9 recap: Seahawks 17, Cardinals 3
Seattle played Arizona without seven players ruled out with injuries, among them Sam Darnold, Leonard Williams, Charles Cross, Quenton Nelson and Rashid Shaheed, and with Drew Lock starting at quarterback on an elbow that had limited him in practice for three weeks. Arizona drove 89 yards on its first possession and kicked a field goal. It did not score again. Seattle scored 17 straight points, all before the fourth quarter, did not turn the ball over or allow a sack, and stopped Arizona’s last drive on fourth down at the 2. Seahawks 17, Cardinals 3, at Lumen Field on Sunday. Seattle is 5-4, Arizona 3-6, and Seattle goes to Las Vegas in six days, with Lock now nursing an oblique injury as well.
How it happened
Seattle went three-and-out to start, and Michael Dickson’s 57-yard punt was downed by Chazz Surratt at the Arizona 1. Arizona went 89 yards from there in 10 plays. On third-and-4 from its 7, Gardner Minshew II threw deep left to Reggie Virgil for 25 yards along the sideline; Mike Macdonald challenged the catch and lost, and the timeout with it. Michael Wilson caught a 17-yard pass, Tyler Allgeier ran 17 yards, and an unnecessary roughness penalty on Ernest Jones IV moved the ball to the Seattle 14. The drive stalled at the 10, and Chad Ryland kicked a 28-yard field goal, 3-0 with 9:23 left in the first quarter.
Seattle’s answer came on its second possession after the field goal: 11 plays and 58 yards, almost all of it Jadarian Price and Zach Charbonnet. Price caught a 15-yard pass, Charbonnet ran for 6, 8 and 6 and caught a 9-yard pass, and an encroachment penalty on Andrew Billings put the ball at the 2. Seattle then lined AJ Barner up under center for direct snaps twice: he gained a yard on the first play of the second quarter, then scored from the 1, 7-3 with 14:23 left in the half.
Arizona punted on its next three drives, and Seattle got the ball back at its 19 with 1:45 left in the half. Lock completed short passes to Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Tory Horton, a 29-yard pass interference penalty on Max Melton moved the ball to the Arizona 25, Smith-Njigba caught an 18-yard pass to the 7, and Lock found Barner over the middle for a 7-yard touchdown with 15 seconds left, upheld on review. Seven plays, 81 yards, 1:30, and 14-3. On Arizona’s only snap before halftime, Dante Fowler Jr. sacked Minshew and knocked the ball loose; Trey McBride recovered it.
Arizona’s first two drives of the second half gained 12 and 13 yards. In between, Seattle went 57 yards in 11 plays and 7:35, through a 20-yard pass interference call on Denzel Burke and two Seattle holding penalties, and Jason Myers kicked a 45-yard field goal for 17-3 with 3:50 left in the third quarter.
Arizona’s last real chance was a 14-play, 76-yard drive in the fourth quarter. Josh Jobe intercepted a deep pass for McBride at the Seattle 37, but he was called for pass interference on the play and the interception was wiped out. From a first-and-goal at the 4, DeMarcus Lawrence dropped Allgeier for a 2-yard loss, Minshew ran 4 yards to the 2, and two passes fell incomplete, the second on fourth down for McBride in the end zone, broken up by Nick Emmanwori with 4:39 left. A Devon Witherspoon unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after the play put Seattle at its 1, and Charbonnet ran 7, 17, 2 and 7 yards while Arizona spent its three timeouts; Barner converted a third-and-1 on another direct snap, and Lock knelt three times to end it.
The numbers
| Seahawks | Cardinals | |
|---|---|---|
| Total yards | 295 | 198 |
| First downs | 21 | 13 |
| Rushing | 33 for 120 | 18 for 50 |
| Passing | 19 of 28, 175 yards | 21 of 30, 166 yards |
| Turnovers | 0 | 0 |
| Sacks | 3 (18 yards) | 0 |
| Third down | 7 of 14 | 4 of 13 |
| Fourth down | 0 of 0 | 1 of 2 |
| Red zone | 2 of 2 | 0 of 2 |
| Penalties | 9 for 83 | 9 for 97 |
| Time of possession | 31:39 | 28:21 |
Lock went 19 of 28 for 175 yards with the touchdown and no interceptions, and ran five times for 16 yards. Smith-Njigba caught seven of 10 targets for 51 yards, and passed 1,000 yards for the season on an 8-yard catch in the first quarter; per the club, he is the third player in franchise history with three straight 1,000-yard seasons, after Steve Largent and Tyler Lockett. Price led the team in receiving, four catches for 54 yards, the first time this season anyone but Smith-Njigba has, per the club, and ran nine times for 24 yards. Charbonnet ran 16 times for 77 yards in his second game back from a torn ACL. Barner ran three times for 3 yards and a touchdown and caught two passes for 7 yards and a touchdown; per the club, he is the first Seahawk since Chris Carson in 2019 with a rushing and a receiving touchdown in the same quarter. Cooper Kupp caught three for 32 and Horton two for 22.
On defense, Julian Love had eight tackles, Witherspoon and Jones seven each, Witherspoon with a tackle for loss, and Derick Hall three tackles for loss. Byron Murphy II, Lawrence and Fowler had the sacks, Fowler’s his first as a Seahawk, and Murphy and Lawrence two tackles for loss apiece. For Arizona, Minshew went 21 of 30 for 166 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions, Allgeier ran 17 times for 46 yards, McBride caught seven for 54 and Wilson six for 60. Andrew Wingard had 12 tackles and Budda Baker 11. The attendance was 68,636.
The passing yards in the table are the quarterbacks’ totals; ESPN’s team passing figure for Arizona, net of the three sacks, is 148. Neither team turned the ball over, so there were no points off turnovers. Arizona’s two red-zone trips were the opening field goal drive and the turnover on downs at the 2. Per the club, it was the sixth time since Macdonald took over in 2024 that Seattle has held an opponent to 3 points or fewer, according to ESPN Research, and Arizona’s 10 points in the two meetings this season are tied for the fewest by any team in a season series against a division opponent in the last five seasons, according to NFL Research.
What decided it
Seattle’s defense, after the first drive. Arizona gained 74 yards from scrimmage on that one, plus 15 on a penalty, and 124 on its other eight. Love on the sideline after the field goal: “So you go to the sideline after that, and the team that we are, the defense that we are, it’s like, ‘OK, we just gave them 89 yards.’ That’s kind of the swagger and ego that we have. Then we went out and shut them down the rest of the game.” Seattle came in with the league’s worst red-zone defense, per the club, and held Arizona without a touchdown on both trips inside the 20.
The goal-line stand is the play Macdonald pointed to. On Emmanwori, matched on McBride: “It was a big-time play. You know, we put him on McBride and felt confidently he could cover him, and he did, so that was pretty cool…” Lawrence: “We know who we are, but for y’all and the spectators, it shows y’all that we are who we say we are.” Seattle also lost two apparent takeaways: the Jobe interception erased by the pass interference call, and a ball Jones knocked loose from McBride in the second quarter that Seattle recovered, which the officials ruled dead because McBride’s forward progress had been stopped, a call that cannot be reviewed, per the club.
On offense, it was not losing it. A week after Darnold was sacked three times, Lock was not sacked at all, with Josh Jones at left tackle and Grey Zabel and Anthony Bradford at guard. Zabel: “We put in a point of emphasis to keep the quarterback clean and give him a clean pocket to throw from.” Seattle converted 7 of 14 third downs, a week after going 1 of 11 against Chicago, and scored touchdowns on both red-zone trips. Macdonald on Lock: “He’s a beast. He just threw it around. Just went after it.” And: “Drew, I don’t know how you can get any tougher.”
Macdonald framed the week around the players filling in: “We said this game was like the power of our 70 with the depth we were going to lean on with the bottom of our roster, and guys did a great job of stepping in, not flinching.” Fowler, in for Uchenna Nwosu: “There wasn’t no dropoff.” Barner: “Glad we were able to get a win at home and get our swagger back.”
Our preview said Seattle 24, Arizona 13, with a lean to the under on 43.5, and both were right. Its test was whether Seattle’s offense showed that Monday’s third downs were one bad night; it converted half of them and did not turn the ball over. Seattle covered as an 8.5-point favorite in our game-morning number and as a 9.5-point favorite in DraftKings’ final number in ESPN’s game data, so it is now 3-4-2 against the spread, and the 20 points went under; the full record is on our odds page.
Injuries, and what comes next
Lock hurt his oblique in the second half; he went to the injury tent after an incomplete third-down pass and came back the next time Seattle had the ball, per the club. Lock: “I was able to finish with it, but we’ll get it looked at and go from there, but not too bad.” Asked if he was confident he could play next week, he said, “Yeah. Yeah.” Macdonald did not know whether Darnold, out with a quadricep injury, will be ready for the Raiders: “I think we’ll probably re-evaluate early in the week. I’m assuming we’re going to probably have to make a decision on who we’re going to get ready and how we’re going to do that. Drew’s situation, we’ll have to evaluate that as well. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s kind of up in the air right now.” Jalen Milroe was the backup on Sunday. Nelson is week-to-week after what Macdonald called a minor knee procedure, per the club. The first practice report for the Raiders game is Wednesday, November 11, on the injury report.
Around the division, San Francisco beat Las Vegas 38-17 and is 7-1, and the Rams won 20-13 at Washington and are 5-4, tied with Seattle. Seattle plays the Raiders at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday, November 15, at 1:05 p.m. Pacific on CBS, then has its bye. As of Monday morning, November 9, at 6:39 a.m. Pacific, DraftKings has Seattle by 3.5 with a total of 43.5, per ESPN’s game data, down from Seattle by 7 when it opened. Our Week 10 preview has the pick, and the game guide has how to watch.