Jim Moore: Seahawks fans should send thank-you cards to Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett

For one game at least, Pete Carroll proved he can do it his way, beating Denver and Russell Wilson 17-16 with a recycled quarterback and a defense that snuffed and stuffed the Broncos with three goal-line stands.

Now if the Seahawks could just get Nathaniel Hackett to coach their opponents in the next 16 games, they might go 17-0.

In all the years I’ve watched football games, I’ve never seen one that was bungled as badly by a head coach as the Monday nighter at Lumen Field.

Seahawks fans should send Hackett thank-you cards. Broncos fans should ask for him to be fired. I know that was his first NFL game as a head coach, and maybe others could cut him slack and call it a rookie mistake, but when he’s axed, every story about his dismissal will include a paragraph about his debut in Seattle.

A supposed offensive guru who was going to let Russ cook turned off the stove and took him out of the game, inexplicably thinking his kicker had a better chance to make a 64-yard field goal than Wilson did at picking up a first down on 4th-and-5.

Compounding his stupidity, Hackett mismanaged the clock, allowing the final minute to tick, tick tick away, choosing not to use one of his three timeouts for reasons unknown.

Think about all of this for a second - the Broncos moved up and down the field all night long. The Seahawks’ defense, for as good as it was in the red zone, had given up yardage in chunks. It also had to be fatigued from being on the field for so long.

Throughout his career, Wilson has established a reputation for fourth-quarter comebacks. How fitting, from a Denver perspective, would it have been if he did it again in his first game with the Broncos? And if you’re going to pay a guy $245 million, why wouldn’t you give him the opportunity to win the damn game?

“You get Russell Wilson for those moments,” ESPN’s Ryan Clark said. “If you’re Nathaniel Hackett, you have to give Russell Wilson that chance.”

To his credit, Brandon McManus tweeted after the game: “46-yard line left hash was my line to get to. They got it there. Need to make the kick.”

Very cool thing for the Broncos’ kicker to say, but come on, if he had made it, it would have tied for the second-longest field goal in NFL history. And he was 1-for-8 on kicks of 60 yards or longer in his career. I’m guessing if you gave Wilson eight 4th-and-5 plays, he picks up five or six of them — much better odds.

“He had plenty of distance on that one,” Hackett said, futilely trying to explain his dumb decision. “I thought we were gonna be able to make that one.”

Hey coach, no one else did. Don’t the Broncos have an analytics department? On top of that, don’t they know that the north end of Lumen Field is frequently more difficult for kickers than the south end? And did he realize the game was at sea level instead of a mile high like it would have been in Denver?

Wilson, to no one’s surprise, told reporters: “I don’t think it was the wrong decision.” But I’ll bet when he got home he told Ciara his new coach blundered in a big way.

On the plane ride home, Hackett must have second-guessed his decision and will no doubt face a week of critics calling him the bone-headed Broncos’ coach.

Meanwhile, Carroll must have celebrated not only the win but the way it was manufactured: fundamental football at its finest, taking care of the ball, playing good defense and shining on special teams.

He also got a shockingly standout performance from Geno Smith, who completed his first 13 passes and went 17-for-18 in the first half. Even though he was mediocre at best in the second half, you could still argue that he had a better night than Wilson because his team won.

“They wrote me off, and I didn’t write back,” Smith told ESPN’s Lisa Salters.

Of course it was just one game, but every other team in the NFC West lost in the first week, putting the Seahawks on top of a division that looks wide open early on. Could they stay in the hunt all season long?

Hackett’s buffoonery helped, but based on how they looked against the Broncos, the Seahawks just might turn what was projected to be a forgettable season into a memorable one.

Jim Moore has covered Washington’s sports scene from every angle for multiple news outlets. You can find him on Twitter @cougsgo, and on 950 KJR-AM, where he co-hosts a sports talk show from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays.