9/17/22
49ers 27, Seahawks 7
(Santa Clara, CA) The Seahawks offense failed to find the endzone and Jimmy Garoppolo relieved the injured quarterback Trey Lance to earn a dominant 27-7 victory for the San Francisco 49ers. The win ended a 4-game winning streak in the series for Seattle.
Last week Geno Smith and the Seahawks offense got off to a fast start against the Broncos, but that was not the case on Sunday as SF scored two early field goals on long drives to take an early lead.
Starting 49ers QB Trey Lance was injured early in the game on a designed run, bringing in Garoppolo for the rest of the game.
Seattle missed some opportunities to score in the 1st half, particularly hurting themselves on a untimely penalty to negate a long gain on a trick play throw to DK Metcalf down the field.
Seahawks got some help by big Niners penalty moments later and a big gain on a throw from Smith to Tyler Lockett. However, a mind boggling offensive play call inside the 10 resulted in the 2nd Seahawks interception of the 1st half when DeeJay Dallas threw a pick on a half back throw. San Fran capitalized on the first TD pass of the season for Garoppolo to increase the lead to 13-0 and added another to push the lead to 20-0 at halftime.
In the 3rd quarter the Seahawks finally got a huge play on a blocked field goal from Tariq Woolen and Michael Jackson took it to the house for the TD to cut the lead to 20-7.
However, the San Fransisco offense continued to control the time of possession and eventually put the dagger in the Hawks with a drive lasting over 7 minutes in the 4th quarter capped of by a Jimmy-G short TD run.
The loss for the Seahawks drops them to 1-1 and the 49ers improve to 1-1
Alex’s takeaways
The big takeaway for me from this game was missed opportunities for the Seahawks amid the offensive struggles. Geno is the QB for the Seahawks because of Pete Carroll’s belief that he can protect the ball, but Seattle’s inability to stay on the field and the 2 turnovers were costly.
The defense had their moments and overall played fine, but miscues hurt them as well (penalty on Cobi Bryant on 3rd down in 2nd half stands out to me) . Linebackers Uchenna Nwosu and Conor Barton stood out defensively. I like Seattle’s chances next week at home against the Falcons, while the Niners face Russell Wilson and the Broncos.
Trey Lance injury
Arguably the biggest story of this game was the injury to 49ers starting QB Trey Lance. I covered Lance when he was at North Dakota State in 2019, and I always felt like he had the talent to be franchise quarterback at the next level due to his pin point accuracy and athletic ability. The one concern I had was that he always liked to run between the tackles and try to run over linebackers and defensive backs, which at the FCS level is one thing but at the NFL is another. You have to feel for the 2nd year player and hope he has a full recovery, but it also makes Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch look like genius for keeping Jimmy-G.