The Seahawks lost their starting quarterback six plays into the season and won anyway. That is the whole story of Seattle’s 13-10 win over New England in the NFL Kickoff Game, a Super Bowl LX rematch that turned into a survival test before most people had settled into their seats.
Sam Darnold went down on Seattle’s opening series, sacked by Dre’Mont Jones on third-and-6 from the New England 46. He limped off, got checked in the sideline tent, went to the locker room, was listed as questionable and then downgraded to out before halftime. A hip injury, on the first series, for the defending champions.
Enter Drew Lock, who has spent his career being the answer to a question nobody wanted to ask. He went 16-of-22 for 187 yards and a touchdown, and he did not turn the ball over. That is a backup quarterback performance that wins football games, and it won this one.
The scoring sequence tells you how close New England came. The Patriots built a 10-0 lead and then watched Seattle score 13 unanswered points, capped by a 45-yard touchdown from Lock to Jaxon Smith-Njigba that put the Seahawks ahead for good. Smith-Njigba continues to be the most reliable thing in that offense regardless of who is throwing.
New England’s side of this was a self-inflicted disaster. Drake Maye finished 23-for-33 for 178 yards with a touchdown, three interceptions and 47 yards on the ground. All three picks came on deep attempts, where he went 0-for-4 with three turnovers. The last one came in the end zone and sealed the game.
The Patriots also lost A.J. Brown to a high ankle sprain in the third quarter, which gutted whatever downfield threat they had left. Brown had three catches for 26 yards and drew a 34-yard pass interference penalty that set up rookie tight end Eli Raridon’s touchdown before he went down.
Here is my take on the Seahawks. This was not a good offensive performance, and it does not need to be. Thirteen points and zero giveaways from the quarterback position while the defense harasses a young passer into three interceptions is a perfectly coherent way for a defending champion to open the year. Seattle’s identity is the defense and Smith-Njigba, and both showed up.
The Darnold news got better after the game. An MRI came back clean enough that Mike Macdonald said the team ruled out a fracture, and reporting suggested Darnold dodged a serious problem. He is expected to miss at least Week 2. For a team that spent the night bracing for a lost season, a one-game absence is a gift.
New England, on the other hand, should be more worried than the final score suggests. They led a Super Bowl champion on the road, had the ball with a chance to win and gave it away in the end zone. Losing a three-point game is not the problem. Losing it because your quarterback threw three picks on four deep attempts is the problem, and now he has to solve it without his best receiver for a month.
Seattle is 1-0 with its quarterback expected back soon and a defense that looks every bit as nasty as last year’s. New England is 0-1 with a banged-up receiver room and a list of film-room conversations nobody is going to enjoy. Both teams learned something real in a game that produced 23 total points.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
