Seahawks’ best win yet: DK Metcalf injured yet Ken Walker, defense lead race past Chargers

Quandre Diggs couldn’t help but say he was right.

Because so far, he is.

When the Pro Bowl safety decided to re-sign with the Seahawks in March, it was just six days after the team traded Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos and cut Bobby Wagner. Seattle was panned from Maine to Maui for instantly becoming one of the worst teams in the NFL for 2022. Las Vegas oddsmakers set the Seahawks’ win total for the season at five games.

Geno Smith or Drew Lock replacing Wilson as Seattle’s quarterback? No Wagner, no K.J. Wright, no chance on defense.

Diggs told all with ears he re-signed because he didn’t think the Seahawks would completely fail this year. The winning culture coach Pete Carroll had built in the most successful dozen years in franchise history was too strong for Seattle to suddenly be bottom-feeders, Diggs said then.

Carroll said all spring into summer this was not a rebuilding year.

“Seven weeks in, look where we are,” Carroll said Sunday.

“Who would’ve thunk it?”

That was after the Seahawks dominated the previously AFC West-leading Chargers with Ken Walker running, more big-play defense and even overcame losing star receiver DK Metcalf to a knee injury early in their 37-23 race past Los Angeles at stunned SoFi Stadium.

Now, those ridiculed, written-off Seahawks (4-3) are alone in the first place atop the NFC West heading into Halloween weekend.

BOO!

“Nobody expected that — except us,” Diggs said inside a visiting locker room that was bangin’ bass like it was the Super Bowl time of 2013 again. “It is definitely cool.

“This is a competitive franchise, man. The coaching ... I mean, when I signed back here I told you guys. Pete said it: We are not rebuilding. We are going for it.

“It’s one of the reasons I wanted to re-sign and come back, because I trust in those guys and how they are doing it.”

The sight was as bad as any Seahawk can fathom: Metcalf on the back of a cart, out injured early on the road against a division leader.

Yet these surprising Seahawks are proving one trait above all others: resiliency.

Previously mothballed Marquise Goodwin emerged from the wreckage of Metcalf’s injury with his best game in four years. Rookie Kenneth Walker bettered his 97-yard rushing day in his first career start last week with 168 yards and two more touchdowns, including the clinching one of 74 yards with 7 minutes left.

The defense produced two more turnovers, yet another stop on fourth down and harassed Justin Herbert far more than he’d been affected in a month, sacking him three times and hitting him eight times.

These post-Wilson, present-Smith Seahawks gained first place solo entering next weekend’s home game against the New York Giants (6-1) because San Francisco (3-4) lost at home to Kansas City.

OK, who in the Pacific Northwest had this as part of their Halloween plans?

“It feels great. You know what I mean? It feels really good,” Seahawks safety Ryan Neal.

“Because, let’s just be honest, didn’t nobody think we were going to be sh**.”

Kenneth Walker runs wild

Walker has romped for 353 yards and four touchdowns in three games since lead back Rashaad Penny sustained a season-ending knee injury Oct. 9 early in Seattle’s loss at New Orleans.

Walker’s 265 rushing yards are the most in franchise history in a player’s first two career starts.

Against the Chargers (4-3), Walker produced heaps of his yards on what are becoming trademark jump cuts immediately after hand-offs. The moves freeze defenders into traffic cones. Unblocked runs that should have been 3-yard losses repeatedly became 3-yard, or more, gains solely because of Walker’s moves.

Walker did those jump cuts at Michigan State where he starred through last season. But to have them make elite, NFL defensive linemen, linebackers and defensive backs look like amateurs two weeks in a row?

“I practice it, we practiced it, all the time at practice,” he said. “Just trusting it. We talk about setting up our blocks a lot of the times.

Those howls across the region and country why Carroll and general manager John Schneider drafted Walker out of Michigan State so highly, in the second round, amid the team’s many other needs this spring?

Those are cheers about that decision now.

Suddenly, the Seahawks could have the league’s offensive rookie of the year in Walker. They have a front-runner for that award on defense, rookie interception-maker Tariq Woolen.

“That kid is unbelievable, man,” receiver Tyler Lockett said of Walker outside the Seahawks’ locker room on his way to the team bus and trip home.

“This is, really, why we drafted him.”

The Chargers, the league’s most pass-happy team coming in, threw 51 more times while behind all game. Yet quarterback Justin Herbert and L.A. rarely tested Woolen, who had four interceptions in his previous four games.

Walker didn’t need jump cuts on his 74-yard touchdown that clinched the win in the fourth quarter. He took a pitch from Smith, got two blocks on the edge from his tight ends and simply outran every Charger back to Gill Byrd around right end.

“Man, that guy is special,” Smith said of Walker.

Offensive line coach Andy Dickerson and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, who used to coach in this stadium for the Rams, hugged on the Seahawks’ sideline as Walker was finishing Seattle’s longest touchdown run in six years.

“We try to get to the outside,” Walker said.

“The line blocked how they are supposed to block. That made it much easier for me on the edge. ...

“It was just wide open. So I just ran.”

Geno Smith does it again

Smith completed 20 of 27 passes for 210 yards with two more touchdowns. He had an interception in the first quarter when his pass to Lockett got tipped into the air to Chargers linebacker Kenneth Murray.

For the season, Smith’s first as a starter in the NFL in eight years, the 10-year veteran has 11 touchdown passes again three interceptions. He’s spent most of this season atop the league in passing completion percentage.

Smith, again, said after this latest win he hasn’t worried about his many doubters for years now.

“My life has been great for a long time,” the 32-year-old father said. “I’m just out here just battling with my brothers, and just continuing to work.”

Before the first half Sunday, Goodwin’s only other two-touchdown NFL game in his career that began in 2013: Oct. 15, 2018, for the 49ers at Green Bay.

Late in the second quarter he leaped over Chargers star cornerback J.C. Jackson and pulled Smith’s pass down over him for a 23-yard score. Goodwin, a former U.S. Track Olympian, then did a cool spring and long jump, sticking the landing in imaginary sand, to celebrate his second touchdown of the opening half.

Jackson, the Chargers’ $82 million cornerback, appeared to severely injure his knee on the play. He left the game and field the same way Metcalf had earlier in the second quarter, on the back of a motorized cart.

Three huge catches and an exquisite route by Lockett, the top receiver left after Metcalf’s injury, extended the Seahawks’ 17-play, 10 1/2-minute drive that expended most of the third quarter. But Jake Curhan, the third-string right guard who entered that drive for injured Phil Haynes, got beaten for a sack of Smith by Morgan Fox on third and goal.

That was a four-point play, resulting in Jason Myers’ second field goal and 27-14 lead instead of touchdown and 31-14 entering the final quarter.

Darrell Taylor’s revival

Seattle’s defense entered the previous game against Arizona last in the league in yards and among the worst in allowing points. The pass rush was mostly ineffective. Creating turnovers was a want more than a reality.

Then the Seahawks throttled the Cardinals 19-9.

Sunday’s task was to affect quick-throwing Justin Herbert as much as they had waiting, scrambling Kyler Murray in the Arizona game.

They did.

Darrell Taylor, absent the first five games this season, showed up for the second consecutive game. He sped around the edge and sacked Herbert from behind in the first quarter. The outside linebacker picked up the fumble he created and ran 21 yards to the Chargers 19-yard line.

Taylor got denied a touchdown return when he got tackled by Herbert, the quarterback. Assuredly, he’s going to hear about that from his teammates.

Taylor laughed.

“Listen,” he said, “they’ve been on me about it already.

“It’s all good, though. Sometimes you get caught.”

What’s been behind Taylor going from a disappointing liability, benched three games ago for rookie Boye Mafe at left outside linebacker in Seattle’s 3-4, to a star the last two games?

The Seahawks taking away Arizona’s last week and now Los Angeles’ running games. That’s made both of the last two foes one-dimensional offensively. That plays directly into what Taylor does best, what the Seahawks drafted him in the second round in 2020 to do: rush directly up the field speeding around edges at quarterbacks.

When it is second and third and long because of run stops on early downs, Taylor has one job. And it’s the one he’s best at.

When the Seahawks were last in the NFL stopping the run through four games, Taylor had few obvious passing downs to be a single-minded pass rusher.

“When you stop the run you get to put pressure on the quarterback,” Taylor said.

“That played a big role to us getting to the quarterback, getting the ball, getting picks, all that. That plays a big role.

“Obviously, you see when you don’t stop the run you can’t do what we want to do best, what we do best, actually. So, we’ve been stopping the run, and y’all see what’s been happening.”

More big defensive plays

Taylor’s play set up Myers’ field goal for the 17-0 lead. It was the third big play in three drives by the defense to begin the game.

On Los Angeles’ opening possession, Mafe crashed into Chargers rookie right guard Zion Johnson on fourth and inches at the Seattle 32. Running back Austin Eckler ran directly into Johnson, then Neal for no gain.

Seattle has six stops on seven fourth downs the last two games, against opponents whose field-goal kickers were injured.

Smith, who had thrown an interception on his first drive off a tipped pass intended for Lockett, took that turnover on downs for a score. On third and 14 from the L.A. 20, Smith perfectly lofted a pass to the right side of the end zone onto Goodwin’s hands for his first Seahawks touchdown. It was his first TD catch since last November, for the Chicago Bears.

Neal continued his habit of timely, large plays as an extra safety and sixth, dime defensive back on the next drive. He played medium center field and Herbert never saw him on third and long while throwing an easy interception.

Walker converted that into a 14-0 lead for Seattle with a 12-yard touchdown run.

It was the sixth time in seven games to begin the season the Seahawks defense had forced at least two takeaways.