Kenneth Walker III spent the week as the headline. The former Seahawks running back, last season’s Super Bowl MVP in Seattle, came back to Lumen Field as a Chief and as the league’s leading rusher. Then the Seahawks spent three hours making sure nobody would remember any of that.
Seattle beat Kansas City 20-3 on Sunday night, handing the Chiefs their first loss of the season and snapping its own two-game skid. Walker finished with 36 yards on 14 carries. He came in averaging a league-leading 133 per game. That’s a rough night at the office, made worse by the fact that the office used to be his.
Mahomes never sniffed the red zone
The Chiefs managed 213 total yards and 50 on the ground. Patrick Mahomes went 19 of 33 for 165 yards with no touchdowns, an interception to safety Ty Okada and a third-quarter fumble with Kansas City already inside the Seattle 30. Kansas City never got to the red zone at all, which was a first in the Mahomes era. The guy has spent most of a decade making defensive coordinators age in dog years. On Sunday, Mike Macdonald’s group made him look like a backup getting garbage-time reps.
Seattle has now gone 36 straight games without allowing a 100-yard rusher, the longest active streak in the league. Safety Nick Emmanwori told NBC’s Melissa Stark the defense wasn’t sweating Walker: “We haven’t let up a 100-yard rusher in a long time, so we weren’t really worried.”
The Chiefs’ only points came on a 50-yard Harrison Butker field goal in the third quarter. Butker also came up short from 58 as the first half ended and pushed a 45-yarder wide right in the fourth. He has missed 10 field goals since the start of last season. Andy Reid didn’t dress it up: “He’s off a bit. Got to fix it.”
Reid didn’t dress up the rest of it either. He said “all three phases we struggled, so we’ve got to do better,” and added, “So I take full responsibility for this.”
JSN did JSN things
On the other side, Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught 9 passes for 150 yards and a touchdown, 129 of those yards coming in the first half. The reigning Offensive Player of the Year and the league’s leading receiver put Seattle up 10-0 with a 28-yard catch from Sam Darnold with 1:44 left before the break. Emmanwori summed him up this way: “I mean, he is unguardable. Not even almost. He’s unguardable,” he told KIRO 7.
Darnold went 20 of 28 for 257 yards with a touchdown and one bad moment, an interception in the back of the end zone right before halftime that Nohl Williams returned 64 yards. Macdonald still had his back: “He’s a ballplayer, man.”
Jason Myers added field goals from 25 and 35, and Emanuel Wilson put it away with a 21-yard touchdown run with 3:47 left. Wilson finished with 100 yards on 24 carries, so the only 100-yard rusher in the building wore Seattle colors. Smith-Njigba said the Seahawks “saw it as a playoff game,” and they played like it.
One bright spot for Kansas City: Travis Kelce now has 1,104 career receptions, passing Marvin Harrison and Cris Carter for fifth in NFL history. Nice consolation prize. He’d probably trade it for the W.
Seattle is 4-3 and hosts the Bears on Monday, Nov. 2. Chicago fans, you’ve been warned about that defense. The Chiefs head to Denver next Sunday, and somebody in that building needs to find Butker a new tee.
<p><em>Originally published at <a href="https://ballsandbanter.com/nfl/seahawks-smother-mahomes-20-3-and-hand-the-chiefs-their-first-loss-while-kenneth-walkers-homecoming-goes-nowhere/">Balls & Banter</a>.</em></p>
The opinions expressed by contributors and/or content partners are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of LifeZette. Contact us for guidelines on submitting your own commentary.
Join the Discussion
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.