In this strangest of NFL seasons, contenders fall and pretenders rise and pop stars watch and quarterbacks go down and nothing unfolds exactly as expected. So what happened on Monday night in Seattle, of course, made perfect sense. Which is also to say: It made no sense at all. But even then, the game was odd, unexpected and … kinda fun to watch?
Start late in the fourth quarter, with the Eagles ahead, 17–13, and seemingly in control. To say the Seahawks were driving would be a stretch. But Seattle had the ball and was pointed toward the north end zone, the one below the franchise’s beloved Hawks Nest. Weird things seem to happen in that end zone. Among them: Tony Romo’s wild-card playoff game fumble near the goal-line (2007), the Fail Mary (’12) and the improbable comeback completed against Green Bay in the NFC championship (’15).
The rain started falling heavily as hope sunk into the nearby Puget Sound. Just over a minute remained. Quarterback Drew Lock, doubted (for good reasons), discarded (same) and playing for the injured Geno Smith, took a snap and slung an attempt down field, toward the right sideline. DK Metcalf caught it, somehow, the grab so improbable that it seemed like only he knew he had secured the ball. He leapt to his feet and held the ball up as if to say, It’s OK if you want to cheer now.
Fifty-six seconds left. Lock’s throw to Tyler Lockett fell incomplete.
Thirty-six seconds left. Another Lockett target. Another incompletion.
Twenty-eight seconds left. Lock, from shotgun, decided to go deep once more. Again, he went to the right. Only this time, Jaxon Smith-Njigba was the intended target. The rookie wideout was two steps behind cornerback James Bradberry, as he snagged the perfectly placed throw. At that moment, for the first time all night, Lumen Field sounded and felt and looked the way it once did, when more dominant teams turned in performances like that more often. The ground on the upper levels seemed to shake. The decibel meter flashed across the big screens.
“He a great quarterback,” Smith-Njigba said. “I seen it every day.”
Lindsey Wasson/AP
The Seahawks needed a win to save their season, to remain in playoff contention, to have something to play for over the final three weeks. The thing is, the Eagles needed all that, too, except the playoff berth part, which they had already secured. But that meant they also faced significantly higher stakes. Their season was not saved. On the final drive, quarterback Jalen Hurts advanced Philadelphia to midfield in two plays, then tried a deep ball up the right sideline to A.J. Brown.
What happened next was rare. Not that the pass was intercepted, but how. Two Seahawks defenders were there with Brown. One, safety Julian Love, leapt in the air, got both hands on the ball and nearly flew out of bounds before securing an interception. Nearly. Instead, while flying toward the boundary, Love collided with a teammate, cornerback Tre Brown. The impact slowed his momentum just enough for Love to tap his left foot inbounds as his right fell (also inbounds) to the turf. “Exquisite,” coach Pete Carroll fairly described the 20–17 victory half an hour later.
“Nobody flinched,” Smith-Njigba said. “They made it happen.”
Boy, did the Seahawks do that—and precisely at the precipice of their 2023 season. Carroll never contains his excitement much, but late Monday, he didn’t even try. He wore his cap turned backward at the lectern, like Ken Griffey Jr. used to, smiling just as wide. “Wow,” he said. “Beautiful,” he said.
Before kickoff Monday night, anyone describing the NFC playoff picture as muddled risked trafficking in understatement. Three teams—San Francisco, Philadelphia and Dallas—had clinched postseason berths, but all three had also stumbled through significant stretches of this season. As is typical in 2023, narratives swung like Tarzan through the jungle. The 49ers were the favorites! Until they weren’t. Until they were/are again! The Cowboys were unstoppable! Until they went back on the road … only to be mollywhopped by the now-surging Bills. The Eagles were consistent over almost the entire season … the best, most dominant and most clinical among the contenders. Until their defense collapsed and Hurts got sick and, suddenly but not surprisingly, everything was wrong!
All those notions started in the neighborhood of the truth. Each was also overstated. The NFL is a professional sports league designed for these exact swings, for competitive balance/parity and close games—now coming to viewers on every night of the week from every country in the world! (Also not true, yet, but that’s how narrative szn works.)
This year has been particularly strange, with Taylor and the tush push and cameos in the spotlight by quarterbacks who 1. hadn’t won a game as a starting quarterback since before COVID-19 (Jake Browning, Bengals); 2. interned at NASA (Josh Dobbs, Vikings, a revelation, before his benching); 3. were Mr. Irrelevant and 4. were tied, somehow, to the Rams, whether as the quarterback they discarded (Jared Goff, Lions), obtained (Matthew Stafford) or briefly employed (Baker Mayfield, Buccaneers). Those last three guided offenses for franchises currently slotted in the third, seventh and fourth NFC playoff positions, respectively—and only Detroit holds a record better than .500.
All of which set the stage for a Monday Night Football game in Seattle that felt more urgent than it did even a few weeks ago. Dallas’s remaining schedule (at Miami, home against Detroit and at Washington) borders on brutal. Philadelphia’s (two games against the Giants and a home game with Arizona) appears imminently conquerable. San Francisco’s (Baltimore, at Washington and home vs. the Rams) looks difficult. Or not difficult at all, if the 49ers continue to demolish opponents as they have in recent weeks.
The machinations indicate that home-field advantage will be even more important than usual, especially in the top-heavy NFC and especially for Dallas, which can appear to field a home team and an away one that are comprised of entirely different rosters.
The Bills, meanwhile, currently rank ninth in the AFC. They took their turn as the contender-to-beat-all-other-contenders, at least for the week. Buffalo still has to get by the “mighty” Texans, Bengals and Colts to get into the playoffs. Despite another season spent patchworking a defense with a staggering injury list, the midseason firing of offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey and some truly confounding losses, the Bills look as capable as anyone else.
Which brings us back to Philadelphia. Has a 10–4 football team ever been as doubted as the Eagles? Like, in NFL history? Seems possible—and also unlikely. There were reasons—again, founded in truth but significantly overdramatized—for the ever-widening doubts.
Start with the back-to-back losses after the 10–1 start heading into Monday. That’s not a season-ending stretch. But it’s enough to elevate concerns. These weren’t “good” losses, either. Both were ugly, both came against other contenders (San Francisco, Dallas) and both pointed decision makers in Philly toward the same conclusion: they needed to make a change on defense after allowing 75 points in those two weeks of induced confusion. Hence a rare change at defensive play-caller, where Sean Desai was out, suddenly, and, just as suddenly, Matt Patricia and his Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil were in.
If that wasn’t enough drama, Hurts came down with some sort of virus last week, casting his availability in doubt—unless you know him, in which case you never doubted he’d suit up. His symptoms were bad enough that Hurts flew separately from the rest of the Eagles—one team source joked over text message that he was “probably playing it up a little bit to get that PJ flight” followed by a crying-and-laughing emoji. But the same source, in all seriousness, also noted that Hurts responds to such situations in ways that are atypical for others but super typical for him. “He truly believes the stuff he has been through sets him apart to do great things,” the source wrote, before adding. “This will just be another chapter. Just like MJ’s flu game.”
Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports
Everything seemed to be coming up Hawks Nest, further complicating the NFC’s playoff picture. Seattle had won its previous five games against Philadelphia, while nearly doubling the Eagles point total when combined head-to-head (108–57). Its young offensive skill players — Smith-Njigba and running back Zach Charbonnet—were healthy-ish once more. Whispers circulated that Geno Smith might return to the starting lineup from a recent groin injury (he did not). And the last time these teams played on Monday Night Football (2005), the Seahawks bludgeoned the Eagles, 42–0, handing Philadelphia its most lopsided defeat this century.
Even then, on overreaction Monday, the Eagles were still favored by 3.5 points. Hurts did play. Together, in case anyone had conveniently forgotten, both team and quarterback had already beaten Minnesota, Dallas, Miami, Kansas City and Buffalo. This begged an obvious question: why believe the sky was falling when it was actually one cloud?
And yet! There was Hurts, hours before kickoff, stalking into Lumen Field, wearing sunglasses, a typically stoic expression on his face. There was never any realistic doubt. Rain spit and stopped. Former Seahawks wideout Golden Tate raised the 12 flag.
The Eagles took the opening kickoff. Hurts converted his first three passes. He was calm, deliberate, focused—normal, pretty much. For each of Philadelphia’s first two touchdowns, he directed the offense on long, clock-draining, soul-crushing drives.
The first one ended when he looked at his first read, saw that wideout covered, tucked and sprinted toward the corner of the end zone, diving between three defenders who were converging but not quickly enough. It looked like the kind of play that would have ended with some serious bruising even 10 years ago, but each member of the converging trio pulled up before contact.
The second one ended in nearly the same way. This time, a tush push sent Hurts into the end zone. Other than those drives—combined: 27 plays, 150 yards, nearly a full quarter of game clock gone—the game unfolded like a typical winter afternoon locally. Which is to say: dark, gray, bleak and perpetually wet without a downpour. Drew Lock played OK. Hurts played OK.
And then the end of the fourth quarter happened. Carroll said afterward that Smith, if healthy, would start next week. More than that, though, he gushed and smiled and preened and called out “experts.” Anyone who watched that and thought the Seahawks might win the Super Bowl might want to watch the replay. But in this strangest of NFL seasons, anything seems possible.
Proof came, once more, on Monday night.
