Seahawks defense wastes Geno Smith’s career passing day, key decision adds to 27-23 loss

Pete Carroll has his offensive and defensive coordinators coaching differently.

He has his players, new all over the roster and at most positions, playing differently. New schemes on offense and, especially, defense. It’s his first changed defense in 50 years of coaching.

Yet three games into this season of change, Carroll is himself coaching games a lot like these are the 2013 and ‘14 Seahawks.

You remember them, the ones that went to consecutive Super Bowls.

These Seahawks absolutely aren’t those. Their sieve of a defense allowed a converted wide receiver wearing number 84 to rush for a career high 141 yards Sunday. They allowed the previously winless Atlanta Falcons to do much of what they pleased. They wasted the best passing game of 10-year-veteran Geno Smith’s career.

Yet Carroll himself making a decision to kick a field goal in the second half of a tie game — as if his defense was the “Legion of Boom” in 2013 and ‘14 and was going to stop somebody to protect a mere 23-20 lead — contributed mightily to the Seahawks losing 27-23 at sunny Lumen Field in a game they feel they definitely should have won.

The game was tied at 20 with under 4 minutes left in the third quarter. Atlanta had just marched nine plays to the tying score. The Seahawks had responded with 10, crisp on what would be their longest possession of the game.

On third and from the Atlanta 7, offensive coordinator Shane Waldron sent three tight ends to the right. Instead of running lead back Rashaad Penny behind all those bodies, eight men tight on the line, twice in an attempt to extend the drive and score a touchdown, Waldron called a play for Smith to throw a fade pass into the end zone left, to DK Metcalf, opposite the formation’s strength. One on one, Metcalf turned to face the ball as the pass sailed way over him and his defender incomplete.

“Any time you throw to DK, it’s the right decision,” Smith said (he targeted Metcalf a season-high 12 times, nine in the first half alone and for a touchdown)

The usually conservative, kick-it Carroll kept his offense on the field for fourth and 2. But players on the field appeared confused.

The head coach finally called time out to avoid a penalty for delay of game.

During that timeout, Carroll changed his mind and sent out his field-goal unit. Jason Myers made a wholly unsatisfying, short field goal. Seattle led 23-20 instead of 27-20.

No one who had watched more than 60 seconds of this game believed those would be its final points.

They were.

It took the Falcons two plays, runs of 40 and 18 yards by converted wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson, to get Atlanta into range to tie the game. The Falcons did more than that. They took the 27-23 lead just 2:36 after Carroll’s decision, when Drake London spun past late-arriving Seahawks safety Josh Jones to finish an 18-yard pass from Marcus Mariota for the deciding score.

It was the decisive sequence that made Seattle 1-2, instead of 2-1. Since 1990, 54% of NFL teams that began a season 2-1 made the playoffs.

“We were going for it, and that was the mentality. Then we got a little screwed up, and we needed time to talk about it,” Carroll said after the team’s second loss in seven days. “I was hoping we would not be in fourth and whatever that was, 2 1/2 or whatever. I thought we were going to be in a better situation to go for it.”

That suggests Carroll wasn’t in favor of the third-down call, a pass, and instead wanting to run Penny with the heavy formation. “A better situation” than fourth and 2 would have been a yard that the coach figured Penny would have gained on third down.

“They were a little out of whack on the field, because of what happened on the play before,” Carroll said.

With a delay in the snap and extended calls, it looked like Smith changed the play at the line on third down, to the pass.

Asked specifically about that third-down fade pass to Metcalf instead of a run there, Smith said it was called from the sideline. Meaning, from Waldron.

“We were just kind of mixed up there, so probably best to take the points,” said Smith, who set career highs with 32 completions in 44 attempts, and pushing the ball down field far more often Sunday.

“I didn’t get anything mixed up,” Smith said. “We just weren’t ready to run that play at that time.”

That’s sub-optimal, with a game on the line.

Asked if he or any offensive player lobbied Carroll to change his mind back and go for it on fourth down, Smith said directly and quickly, and with unassigned passive voice: “We made the decision to kick the field goal.”

It was one to make with the 2014 Seahawks defense, one Carroll could and did count on to win games.

It wasn’t one to make with this malfunctioning defense.

The end game

Even after all that, the Falcons gifted the Seahawks a final chance.

With 5 1/2 minutes left, the Falcons were running down the clock with the 27-23 lead. Seattle wasn’t stopping them. Then Mariota tried to hold onto and pull back a hand-off to his running back. Seahawks linebacker Uchenna Nwosu recovered the fumble at the Seattle 37.

“I was thinking that we were going to win the game,” said Nwosu, Seattle’s best player on a bad defense so far this season.

“Shoot, that was exactly what we needed: a turnover.”

On fourth and a half yard and 3:44 left, Penny ran for 4 yards behind rookie left tackle Charles Cross. Then Penny took a short pass in the left flat, broke two tackles and ran for what would have been a first down inside the 10 with just over 2 minutes left. But left guard Damien Lewis was called for his second huge holding penalty of the fourth quarter.

Instead of first and goal, Seattle had second and 14 back out at the 34.

“Man, that’s tough. It’s very hard in that situation,” Smith said.

“We’ve got momentum. We are driving. And to have a setback like that...especially that situation with the game on the line, we’ve got to figure it out. ...

“That hurt us. We can’t have that. We can’t have that in those situations.”

Smith got 6 of those lost 10 yards back on a completion to Metcalf. On third and 8 from the Atlanta 28, Smith waited because none of the only three receivers out on the route were open. He got sacked for the second time in the game.

On fourth and 18, Smith rolled to his route. Penny was standing alone at the goal line right sideline waving his arms. Marquise Goodwin had broken open at the goal line. Smith threw late into traffic to Tyler Lockett. Falcons safety Richie Grant intercepted the ball 10 yards up field from where Penny had been alone, with 77 seconds left.

And that’s how the Seahawks are 1-2 instead of 2-1 heading to Detroit (1-2) next weekend.

Shane Waldron, Geno Smith wake up the offense

Everyone from Carroll to general manager John Schneider to the guy with the ball, Smith, said the same thing all week.

“You gotta get the ball in your playmakers’ hands.”

Smith came out doing exactly that — and had to. Since the Seahawks’ problematic defense was giving up huge pass plays and points to Atlanta, Smith had to push the ball down the field to keep Seattle in the track meet of a game.

Seattle’s previously inert offense sparked for 420 yards and a season-high in points. Smith used far more downfield throws, in the 12-20-yard range, to total 325 passing yards and two first-half touchdowns. The yards were the third-most in the former New York Jets starter’s career.

Geno Smith’s fast start

Smith had a season high in passing yards before the first half was finished. He threw for 218 yards in the opening half, completing 18 of 25 passes with two touchdowns, to tight end Will Dissly and to Metcalf.

Metcalf had a season-high nine targets, just in the first half. He finished with five catches — only one after halftime — on 12 targets for 64 yards and the score.

Smith’s two touchdown passes in the first half were two of his better, and more threatening, throws of the early season.

In the first quarter, Smith had pressure on his left, yet stood in the pocket and waited for Dissly to complete his outside fake then route inside. Smith’s throw was a dart lined past the diving linebacker into Dissly’s stride for Seattle’s first touchdown Sunday and a 10-7 lead.

Seattle’s starting offense that hadn’t scored in six quarters entering Sunday had 10 points on its first two drives against the Falcons.

That first-quarter touchdown drive showed off what’s new with Seahawks’ offense this season: All kinds of three tight-end formations, looks and uses.

Smith’s second touchdown throw of the half came after Carroll chose to go for a first down on fourth and 2 from the Atlanta 41-yard line down 17-10 with 4 1/2 minutes left in the second quarter. Smith connected with Marquise Goodwin breaking open right to left across the field for the conversion.

Then Smith threw high up into the end zone to the covered Metcalf. The 6-foot-4 wide receiver with a 40 1/2-inch vertical leap jumped over the defender in the end zone for the 18-yard score. That’s how Seattle re-tied the game at 17 late in the second quarter.

At that point, seven of Smith’s first 16 throws had traveled at least 12 yards in the air. That’s opposite of the 5-to-8-yard dump offs and check downs Smith used in the first two games, when he ranked lowest in the league at 8.3 yards per completion.

Defense shredded

Seattle’s problem continued to be its defense, this time in pass coverage after two weeks of issues in run fits and tackling.

The Falcons had the obvious plan of attacking Seahawks starting left cornerback Michael Jackson. They sent tight end Kyle Pitts plus wide receivers at Jackson all day.

It worked. By the second quarter, Atlanta had 17 points and 183 yards passing on just eight completions by Mariota, who was in his third game replacing departed Falcons icon Matt Ryan.

The problems stopping the run continued for the Seahawks.

Patterson ripped off another 18-yard run to get the Falcons to midfield with 8 minutes left and Seattle trying to get the ball back down 27-23. That gave the 10-year veteran a career-high 128 yards rushing.

But then Mariota gave the Seahawks that gift.

Tyler Lockett out, briefly injured

The Seahawks’ defense got a three and out — finally — allowing the offense to grab the lead just before halftime. Seattle was the last NFL team this season to force a three-plays-and-punt drive by an opposing offense.

Smith and the Seahawks’ offense started the drive to the go-ahead field goal with 3:03 left in the first half. Smith floated a pass into the short left flat that hung up too long to Lockett. That gave Atlanta’s Grant time to break on the ball and hit it and Lockett’s head as the pass finally arrived incomplete.

Lockett left the game and went into the blue medical tent next to Seattle’s bench. During a timeout for the 2-minute warning, an NFL concussion monitor went inside and emerged, apparently satisfied. Lockett then returned to the game and the drive, after missing four plays.

He said he’s had “a crook in my neck” for the last couple weeks. Carroll said it was a nerve issue in Lockett’s neck.

He ran a clear-out route for Metcalf to go underneath him for another third-down conversion on a completion with Smith, 13 yards to the Atlanta 20.

The drive stalled when Smith, with tons of time to look for multiple receivers as Atlanta kept rushing only three and four defenders, threw late and too long for Metcalf on the back line of the end zone on third down. Jason Myers kicked a 31-yard field goal.

The Seahawks gained the 20-17 lead burning all but 5 seconds of the final 3:30 of the first half.

Travis Homer injured

Travis Homer slashed for seven yards on his first carry, into the red zone of the game’s first possession. The usual third-down running back left the game after that play and did not return.

“He has some bruised ribs,” Carroll said.

“Not broken, but some complications when he got hit pretty good.”

Sue Bird raises flag, draws roars

As if in honor of Bird, the score after the first quarter was...10-10.