Were the Seahawks Simply Unlucky Against the Commanders?

If the above numbers don’t do it for you (which is somewhat understandable given Seattle played from behind most of the game), consider this from this Shawn Syed tweet: The Seahawks success rate on offense yesterday was in the 86th percentile, and their defensive success rate was in the 89th percentile. Losing despite that is improbable.

Understanding The Lessons To Learn

All of this data would indicate that the Seahawks were unlucky to lose yesterday. And I won’t dismiss the NFL Deserve-To-Win-O-Meter, who tweeted yesterday that the Seahawks would be expected to win that game 95% of the time. But my concern would be that, if such a lesson is taken to heart, the team won’t learn from what happened yesterday.

And there are things in this game that weren’t just luck. Typically, when a team loses a game where they dominate on the stat sheet, there are three things to look at. One is turnovers, then there are penalties, and finally, special teams. Sure enough, the Seahawks were soundly beaten in two of those categories, and managed to limp to a draw in the third.

Drilling Down

To Seattle’s credit, they had fewer penalties and penalty yards than Washington. However, I’d still argue that eight penalties is too many, and that Washington having a lot of penalties is more understandable due to all the backups they’re playing. Even if you disregard the bogus AJ Finley personal foul in the fourth quarter, it wasn’t a clean game.

Special teams, however, were one-sided in favor of Washington. Both teams hit a 57-yard field goal, but the Seahawks had a kick land outside the landing zone at a crucial moment and were outdone on kick returns. Tress Way also had a much better time punting than Michael Dickson, who had one of the worst games of his career. This needs to get better, fast.

And of course, turnovers were massive . While turnovers, by their nature, tend to be somewhat random and sporadic (which contributes to the luck argument), it must be said that Seattle has been a team that gets beaten badly in the turnover category quite frequently in the Mike Macdonald era. At a certain point, it becomes a pattern, and not random variance.

Figuring It Out

There was some bad luck yesterday. We had an interception bounce off Shy Tuttle’s helmet and into Sonny Styles’s hands, after all. But I would strongly advise against dismissing every element of the loss just because of that. Even if the Seahawks had won yesterday, these problems would still be present, so you may as well control what you can and address them.