Takeaways from Seahawks 31-10 loss to Bills

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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - OCTOBER 27: Kenneth Walker III #9 of the Seattle Seahawks recovers an errant snap during the second quarter against the Buffalo Bills at Lumen Field on October 27, 2024 in Seattle, Washington. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

SEATTLE - A calamity of errors all across the roster led to a wholly abysmal performance for the Seattle Seahawks in a 31-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday afternoon.

The few things the Seahawks did do well were almost always followed by another gaffe that erased all the progress previously gained. While center Connor Williams may take the brunt of the ire from fans for his two miscues that thwarted potential touchdown opportunities, he was far from the only player to make mistakes.

The end result was a sloppy performance that was by far the worst of Mike Macdonald's fledgling head coaching tenure in Seattle.

It's just the eighth time since 2000 that the Seahawks have lost a game by at least 21 points at home. Twice, it's been the Bills on the opposite end. They also authored a 38-9 victory over the Seahawks in 2004. Only three times in 14 years under head coach Pete Carroll did the Seahawks lose games at home by at least 21 points. A 41-7 loss to the New York Giants in 2010, a 34-12 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in 2011, and a 42-7 loss to the Los Angeles Rams in 2017.

The Seahawks have now lost four of their last five games with serious warts showing in each of the four defeats.

Michael Dickson deserves a nod for a stellar punting afternoon, and Josh Jobe gets kudos as well for his first career interception.

Everything else? Bleh.

This one only truly deserves one area of focus and some notes, so let's get on with it:

– Mistakes everywhere.

Two Connor Williams miscues, a bad roughing the passer penalty against Derick Hall, 11 total penalties on the day, a Geno Smith interception, and more. It was an awful afternoon for the Seahawks that sank any chance of leaving with a win.

"That's the result of a good football team that outplayed us in three phases. And then it gets out of hand when you're doing the things we did today. We didn't help ourselves as well," Macdonald said.

Seattle left as many as 11 points on the board in the first half due to Williams' two errors. They then potentially allowed Buffalo to get tat least four extra points as well due to Hall's roughing the passer penalty on a play that should have seen a penalty in the Seahawks' favor.

"When you talk about all the things that we want to do well, I don't think we did any of those today. So we got to look at ourselves, look in the mirror, and take it from there," Smith said.

Even before the game got truly wonky, the Seahawks were on their heels. Buffalo overcame three offensive penalties on their opening drive, marching 90 yards on the Seattle defense before Keon Coleman's one-arm 2-yard touchdown catch over Riq Woolen. With the penalties, the drive actually covered 110 yards for the Bills offense as they converted four times on third down on the drive.

The Seahawks' offense finally got moving early in the second quarter, marching 89 yards from their own 9-yard line to the Buffalo 2-yard line. That's when everything went awry. Williams sailed a snap on second-and-goal way over Smith's head that led to a loss of 19 yards before an eventual Jason Myers 38-yard field goal.

"I mean, it most definitely starts with me in that snap," Williams said. "I mean, my role is to be reliable and consistent and I wasn't that today. And so it starts with me and I got to fix it."

The rain had started to fall pretty consistently shortly before the play, but Williams wouldn't use that as an excuse.

"There ain't no excuse in a situation like that," he said. "It's got to get to Geno and it's got to get to him in the right place, so that's completely on me."

After Josh Jobe's interception of Allen set the Seahawks up with a prime opportunity to take a lead despite the early mistakes, Seattle again had a goal-to-go play thwarted by a mistake under center. Williams stepped on Smith's foot as he quickly engaged with Buffalo defensive tackle DaQuan Jones after the snap on fourth down from the 1. Smith fell to the ground for a loss of six as the Seahawks.

"I'm going to have to go back and look at film and see what happened, but at the end of the day, I mean, fourth-and-one, you can't allow penetration. You got to set the tone as the line. And so that's on us," Williams said.

With Buffalo holding only a 7-3 lead late in the half despite thoroughly out-gaining Seattle, a defensive mistake led to a late Bills touchdown. The Seahawks defense appeared set to force a field goal late in the first half with an illegal motion call against Buffalo pending to put the Bills into a third-and-12 situation with 30 seconds left. Instead, Derick Hall hit Allen helmet-to-helmet, which negated the penalty on Buffalo and put the Bills at the Seattle 12-yard line instead due to Hall's personal foul call.

Two plays later, Allen hit Dalton Kincaid for a touchdown and suddenly Seattle was staring at a 14-3 deficit.

"It wasn't a smart penalty," Macdonald said. "You know, that's not how we train our guys to attack quarterbacks, and so that wasn't a smart move."

Jarran Reed and Hall had a heated exchange after the penalty, with Reed getting into Hall's face and both players needing to be separated by sideline personnel.

"You know, he loves the game. I love the game. And you know, in that moment, I think things got heated," Hall said. "But you know, he's a leader. He's the leader of our group. And you know, when stuff hits the fans, you have to lean on those guys. And you know, maybe we both could do something a little bit better, but, you know, he wants me to go out, play smart, play fast, play physical. And that was basically his message in that moment."

Added Macdonald: "Look, our guys, they're connected and they have each other's backs, but they are emotional. There's going to be flare-ups and stuff, so it seems like it calmed down."

Smith was intercepted on a well covered screen pass by Buffalo as the ball was tipped by Casey Toohill into the arms of Austin Johnson, and took an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty tossing the football off the helmet of a Buffalo player. And the icing on the performance for Seattle was punt returner Dee Williams slipping trying to make a fair catch. The ball hit him and was recovered by Mack Hollins for another Seahawks turnover.

"You want to be able to build on the good things that we're doing so we can get our program to where we want it to go," Macdonald said. "When you take steps back like today, it's very sobering, frustrating. But this is the NFL. If you don't bring it and have your best against good teams, you're not going to win those games. Our guys know that."

– Stat dump.

The Seahawks were held to just 32 rushing yards on 17 total attempts in the game. Take out Geno Smith's five runs on scrambles and it's 12 carries for 16 yards between Ken Walker III and Zach Charbonnet. This was against a Buffalo defense that came into the game ranked 20th in the league in run defense with 133 yards per game allowed."I would say it's a major concern," Macdonald said. "We’ve got to make it right. If I knew the one answer, I would give that to you right now. Seems like it's a litany of things. We’ve got to go to work on it. Right now, we can't control the tempo of games. We've got to go to work."It's just the second time since 2011 the Seahawks have been held to 32 yards or less on the ground. They managed just 28 yards on 15 carries in last year's loss to the Baltimore Ravens. It's been since 2010 and a 42-24 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs where Seattle has been held to this few yards at home. They managed just 20 yards on 12 carries in that loss to the Chiefs.
The Bills out-gained Seattle by a 445-223 margin. They had 29 first downs to Seattle's 17. James Cook rushed for 111 yards and two touchdowns as part of 164 total rushing yards on the day for the Bills. The Seahawks converted just 1-of-7 chances on third down and lost the time of possession battle by a 38:03-21:57 margin."They came out and fought and beat us," Smith said. "We can say we made mistakes, but they capitalized. Those are things we’ve got to get better at, and we got a big week ahead so the time is now.
New Seahawks linebacker Ernest Jones IV led the team with 15 tackles in his first game with the team. It was the second straight week Jones faced the Bills after seeing them last weekend as a member of the Tennessee Titans."It's just different terminology," Jones said. "Trying to get on the same page with the guys in front of you, behind you. So I mean, that was kind of different, but for me, you know, just come in here, go out there and tackle and do what I can to help."
The Seattle defense finished the game with no sacks, no quarterback hits, and no tackles for loss in 69 snaps against the Bills offense. Boye Mafe had a sack and forced fumble on Josh Allen that was wiped out by Devon Witherspoon's illegal contact penalty, and Hall's hit on Allen also was penalized, wiping out the play.