Seahawks’ run defense fails again. Geno Smith’s 2 interceptions cement loss to Carolina

Geno Smith didn’t take long to ponder the question: Are his Seahawks a playoff team?

“We’ve got to prove it. Nothing I can say up here will make us a playoff team,” the quarterback said, after his first two-interception game in eight years.

On defense, it’s worse.

Another losing team that had hard times running on the rest of the league ran all over Seattle again Sunday.

“What the hell’s the problem,” safety Ryan Neal said.

That was one of the more printable sentences he spat out after the Seahawks allowed the previously 4-8 Carolina Panthers to batter them for 224 yards on the ground in a 30-24 victory at Lumen Field.

It wasn’t nearly that close. It was 17-0 and 30-17 before Seattle’s garbage-time touchdown in the final seconds.

“We’ve got to fix this (stuff),” Neal said, his hooded head shaking in disbelief and frustration. “I mean, you saw what happened. And it’s been the same thing the last two (really, four) weeks. And teams see it and they are going to attack it and they are probably going to give us the same thing.”

Damningly, these Seahawks just aren’t tough enough, football’s most elemental trait, on the defensive line and with linebackers.

And now here the come the rugged San Francisco 49ers (9-4). The leaders of the NFC West run at defenses straight downhill, like skiers without skis.

That game is Thursday night at Lumen Field. How can these steamrolled Seahawks (7-6) suddenly find physicality in just four days, late in a season suddenly sideways for Seattle?

“Bow up,” Neal said. “Bow up, let ‘em hang, and go. ...You came up with it. That’s how the game was brought into the world. And you’ve got to turn back into that.

“Guys have got to be willing to do it. You’ve got to be willing to do it, down after down, play after play, for four quarters straight.

“We’ve got to bow up. One way. Period.”

The Panthers aren’t elite. Yet they did Sunday to Seattle what three-win Las Vegas did two weekends ago up and down the same Lumen Field. They steamrolled the Seahawks in the most manly way: by running right at them.

It’s scheme and it’s personnel. Seattle is lacking effectiveness in both.

Shelby Harris missed Sunday’s game badly ill. Fellow veteran defensive lineman Al Woods, the nose tackle to stop the run, got injured in the first half.

“We’ve got a lot of guys who need to step up,” said Quinton Jefferson, a member of that defensive line that got flattened by Carolina.

“We’ve got to answer the call.”

Suddenly, playoff talk is premature, if not foolish.

Seattle (7-6) lost for the third time in four games, all to sub-.500 teams that ran over the Seahawks.

Seattle is back outside the conference playoff race.

How bad was this Sunday for the Seahawks? The New York Giants (7-5-1) got blown out at home by Philadelphia, yet passed Seattle in the NFC for the seventh and final playoff spot.

So Smith is right: After a surprising, 6-3 start in a conference filled with losing teams, the Seahawks have to prove they are worthy of the postseason.

Smith and the offense has to be just about perfect to overcome their defense. Sunday, they were the opposite of that.

Smith completed 21 of 36 passes for 264 yards, with touchdowns to Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf after it was 17-0, then the late one to Goodwin. It was the sixth consecutive game Lockett had a receiving touchdown, a new Seahawks record.

Smith had his first two-interception day since throwing three on Oct. 26, 2014, for the New York Jets at Buffalo. He lost his starting job for seven years after that season.

And Seattle’s running game missing rookie lead back Kenneth Walker and DeeJay Dallas to ankle injuries got just nine carries for 26 yards from Travis Homer, one carry for 2 yards from fourth-stringer Tony Jones — and basically nothing against the NFL’s 25th-ranked rushing defense to affect this game.

After the atrocious starts in all aspects, the Seahawks’ defense righted enough to keep its team in the game. But Seattle’s offense had just 210 total yards deep into the fourth quarter. With two chances to tie the game or take the lead in the third quarter, the Seahawks punted on two consecutive drives.

This Seattle defense won’t hold forever. It didn’t.

Finally, Carolina marched again early in the fourth quarter. Chubba Hubbard ran straight at Seattle, converting third and shorts. Then linebacker Uchenna Nwosu fell over teammate Myles Adams in the Carolina backfield. Rookie Raheem Blackshear ran past them both into the end zone for an 8-yard touchdown and a 27-17 Panthers lead with 6:57 left.

At that point Carolina, the league’s 17th-ranked rushing offense at 116.8 yards per game entering Sunday, had 190 yards on the ground against Seattle.

“Man, a lot of missed tackles,” Nwosu said. “Runs would leak, for 5 yards. We weren’t setting edges. ...Guys were missing tackles. We weren’t getting off blocks, man. It was all-inclusive into this one, man.

“They just ran the ball down us. Hard.

“Dudes have just got to be physical, get off blocks. Got to tackle.”

Coaching matters

Carolina’s coaching kept the Seahawks in the game into the fourth quarter.

Seattle’s defense was giving up more yards rushing, and the Panthers had a first and goal at the 3. Then, offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo called not three but four straight passes. Seahawks cornerback Michael Jackson took away the primary receiver on first down that Sam Darnold threw away. Then: three straight incompletions, when three runs straight at the steamrolled Seahawks almost certainly would have given Carolina a 27-17 lead.

Instead, the Seahawks got a gift turnover on downs to stay behind by only 20-17.

Speaking of coaching:

The Seahawks used two time outs in the third quarter. One was on a misguided challenge by Pete Carroll, apparently given bad information by his assistants in the coaching booth upstairs on a catch on a Panthers pass the receiver held between his legs. The second time out was to avoid a half-the-distance, 2-yard penalty on delay of game following the Panthers screwing up first and goal with four straight passes.

But on a larger level, what’s hugely alarming for Seahawks coaches: Sunday was yet another game the defensive plan they had worked on all week failed. The couldn’t stop the run or the opponent at the beginning, again.

They’ve talked of adjustments in games. They did again the previous week against the Rams. Adjustments helped steady Sunday’s game for Seattle after falling behind 17-0. But those Seahawks plans for the starts of games, whoa.

They’ve been broken.

“You have play the line of scrimmage. You have to get off your blocks. You have to play together,” Carroll said. “It’s always about those fits. It wasn’t good enough.”

How can he and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt scheme to help the lack of physicality defending the run?

“There is stuff,” Carroll said. “I’ve got to do more. I’ve got to do better. I’ve got to help our defense better.

“I’m really disappointed. I’ve been looking at the running game for a long time, you know. There was no new plays. It was the same stuff. We’ve just got to do better.”

Then there’s players executing

The only way the start of the game could have been worse for the Seahawks would have been if they hadn’t taken the field.

Actually, that might have been better than what they produced on it.

The Panthers rolled down the field with runs on 10 of their first 16 plays, mauling a Seattle defense that continued to get manhandled at the line of scrimmage on running plays. The Panthers had a field goal and a Darnold touchdown pass of 13 yards to Shi Smith for a 10-0 lead in those first 16 plays.

Carolina’s touchdown came one play after Smith threw his worst pass this season. On Seattle’s first offensive play, Smith never saw Jaycee Horn peel back up the field in front of Tyler Lockett’s deeper out route. The Panthers cornerback who shadowed DK Metcalf most of Sunday intercepted. It was Smith’s first of two interceptions in the first half.

Smith called it a great play by Horn, which happens in the NFL.

“Obviously, you don’t want to start that way,” Smith said.

“But I feel like we responded well. We had more opportunities late to win it. And we just couldn’t get it done.

“That’s unfortunate. It pains me to even say that.”

Carroll said Smith should have checked the ball down to a receiver in the flat, a shorter and more conservative throw.

“That was not a good play. It was one of his plays that he regrets the most,” Carroll said. “Tried a little too hard on the play. He put the ball in the flat really easily on the first play of the game.”

On the next play, Darnold threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to left-alone Shi Smith for a quick 10-0 lead.

Smith’s other interception came after he and the Seahawks thought they had a free offensive play and the Panthers jumped offsides before a second-quarter snap. Though the play started disjointedly, officials didn’t throw a penalty flag. Smith threw a why-not pass (as the Seahawks coach). It got intercepted, his eighth of the season.

“I saw three of the guys jump offsides,” Smith said. “I don’t know what they (officials) saw, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. ...

“The reason we snapped the ball is because they jumped offside.”

Coin tosses matter

The Seahawks continue winning pregame coin tosses.

Sunday, it helped Seattle back into the game.

The Panthers didn’t guess correctly on the coin toss. Seattle deferred its choice to the take the ball to begin the second half.

Late in the second quarter, a sack by 35-year-old Bruce Irvin, his second since signing back to Seattle off his couch in October, limited another Panthers drive into the red zone to only a field goal and a 20-7 lead.

Then with just over 2 minutes left in the half, Seattle’s offense did exactly what it had to.

Practice-squad call-up Godwin Igwebuike gave the Seahawks a spark. The new returner Sunday took Carolina’s kickoff 4 yards deep out of his own end zone and returned it 50 yards across midfield. Smith then threw a dart onto the chest of in-cutting Metcalf to covert a third and 3. On third and 8, Homer picked up a free-blitzing Panther. That allowed Smith to connect with Goodwin for the first down.

On third and 10 for Seattle with 20 seconds left in the half, Smith threw his best pass of the day, one reminiscent of most of his season. He threw a bullet that had to be hard, onto the covered Metcalf’s hands before any defender could close on him in the middle of the end zone. The 12-yard touchdown, Smith’s 24th scoring pass in 13 games, got the Seahawks to within 20-14.

The drive kept the troubled defense from having to repel a Carolina drive from 3 minutes left in the second quarter until past the Seahawks receiving the second-half kickoff and driving to a field goal.

A 20-7 game became 20-17.

But then the offense whiffed on two consecutive drives. The defense caved.

The Seahawks lost another one they feel they should have won.

“Really disappointed in that because we focused on the areas that we’re looking at; the running game on offense and running game on defense were both focus points for us,” Carroll said.

“We have to get this thing turned, and we’re still on it. Those are our issues going into the fourth quarter of the season right now.”