Before Sunday’s game between the New Orleans Saints and the Seattle Seahawks, there had been 11 instances in pro football history in which a player had at least three rushing touchdowns and at least one passing touchdown in the same game. After Sunday’s game between the New Orleans Saints and the Seattle Seahawks, 12 players had achieved that impressive feat.
In New Orleans’ 39-32 win over Seattle, backup quarterback/Wildcat star/tight end Taysom Hill ran nine times for 111 yards, three touchdowns, 86 yards after contact, two forced missed tackles, and a supreme housing of the Seahawks’ problematic defense. Hill also attempted one pass, completing it for a 22-yard touchdown to tight end Adam Troutman.
As Hill had rushed 12 times for 116 yards and two touchdowns in the first four weeks of the 2022 season, that rushing ability should not have come as a surprise to a Seahawks defense that has been bailing water out of the boat all season long.
Still, the Seahawks seemed uniquely unprepared to deal with any of it.
“Taysom Hill had a great football game against us; we did not stop him,” Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll said after the fact. “Our plan for the Wildcat did not work, obviously. He ran for over 100 yards, and that was really the difference for them in a lot of crucial situations. He came through in a big way for them. It wasn’t new, they had done it, but the things we tried to do didn’t get us off the field.”
So, was this about Hill’s greatness as a package runner and passer, or did the Seahawks just blow it? As is generally true, it was a mixture of the things. Let’s get into how it turned out the way it did.
Seattle's run fits continue to be a problem.
“We know what the hell we’ve got to do,” Seahawks edge-rusher Uchenna Nwosu said of Hill’s rushing exploits. “When he comes into the game, they only do one thing, they run the ball, and we didn’t get that done today. We knew what play they were going to run, we didn’t fit it up correctly and he gashed us for a touchdown… Everybody’s got to do a better job collectively, myself included. We’ve just got to fit up things better.”
This showed up on tape. The Saints aren’t throwing anything especially complex at you when Hill’s taking the center snap. This was far more about Seattle’s personnel and technical issues when stopping the run. On this 15 yard Hill scamper with 12:53 left in the first half, it could be said that edge-rusher Darrell Taylor (No. 52) and defensive tackle Quinton Jefferson (No. 57) were just a bit to aggressive to get to the pocket.
i'm not generally a screencap observer, but this seems problematic pic.twitter.com/V3wls99faP
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) October 10, 2022
The Seahawks didn't adjust to obvious looks.
Per Sports Info Solutions, the Seahawks came into the Saints game allowing 5.1 yards per carry, tied for third-worst in the NFL with the Patriots, Giants, and Texans. With at least seven defenders in the box (a stacked box), that drops to 4.2 yards per carry allowed. But against the Saints, no front seemed to matter. Partially because the Seahawks seemed to have no clue how to deal with things shown on tape before.
Which is a problem. Here’s Hill’s 60-yard touchdown run with 5:33 left in the game. From a personnel perspective, there is absolutely no way the Saints could have telegraphed this run any more obviously. The Seahawks countered with a five-man run front, linebackers Jordyn Brooks and Cody Barton flowing to the run strength, and safety Quandre Diggs cheating down as the eighth man. But the Seahawks could have gone with a 12th man, which would have fit the franchise brand, and they wouldn’t have stopped this.
As NOLA.com’s Jeff Duncan points out, this has happened before. Hill’s two-yard touchdown run against the Vikings did indeed come out of the same personnel. Same pulling right guard and backfield tight end also pulling out of motion, same defensive demolition.
This was the exact same play the Saints showed last week, and at the very least. tight end J.P. Holtz motioning from behind Hill to an offset stance should have tipped somebody off. Alas.
Taysom Hill's decisive 60-yard TD run Sunday was run out of the same jumbo jumbo package the Saints debuted against MIN with 7 offensive linemen, 3 tight ends & Hill at QB. SEA had to know it was coming and it didn't matter. Second time Hill has almost gone untouched for the TD. pic.twitter.com/YFGKua8TUr
— Jeff Duncan (@JeffDuncan_) October 10, 2022
Clint Hurtt, Seattle’s defensive coordinator, had this to say on the Wednesday before the Saints game about whether Seattle’s defensive issues have to do with growing pains.
“A lot of it right now is young guys that are playing and that are taking their lumps, but also doing a lot of good things as well. Obviously, to the standard of everyone, coaches, and players themselves included with that, you want everything to be great, don’t give up anything, and shut everything down, but there will be growing pains with young players and the introduction of a new scheme coming into it, so you are going through those things. You can grow through growing pains and not give up 45 points at the end of the day. That is never acceptable, I don’t care who is out there, who is coaching, or whatever the case may be. We have to finish the game in a better fashion.”
One imagines that film time with Coach Hurtt this week will be anything but pleasant.
The Seahawks miss Bobby Wagner.
Linebacker Bobby Wagner put together a future Hall of Fame career in Seattle from 2012 through 2021 as one of the most productive, versatile, and aware linebackers of his (or any other) era. Before the 2022 season, the Seahawks deemed Wagner fungible, deciding to go with the aforementioned brooks and Barton as their primary players at the linebacker position.
This was a mistake. The Seahawks are switching to more 3-4 style fronts, which require different things from linebackers. In this system, linebackers have to flow and be active, but they also have to diagnose and be solid in run fits. Both Barton and Brooks have struggled with this. Both Barton have struggled with pass coverage as well, and this really showed up on Hill’s touchdown pass to tight end Adam Trautman with 36 seconds left in the third quarter. The miscommunication on this play starts with Brooks, and extends to Seattle’s secondary. I do not think that problem would have existed to the same degree had Wagner been one of Seattle’s linebackers.
tfw you decide that bobby wagner is fungible and plan b does not exist pic.twitter.com/donQ7NveZ0
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) October 10, 2022
“I started football games at quarterback, and you know, we’ve won football games with me playing quarterback,” Hill said of this play. “So I think historically, what I’ve been able to do is set up a lot of my QB runs and I think we’ve seen that in how defenses have played me. But certainly it’s nice to get a play like that off the ground and have it go well because they can no longer just key on one thing. So I think looking forward, man that makes it challenging for defenses.”
Certainly makes it harder when nobody is on the same page.
Let's give the Saints some credit here.
As we’ve made it appear that the Saints simply took advantage of a bad defense with no thought on their behalf, let’s give them some credit for the want in which they’ve set Hill up as a weapon — against the Seahawks, and against other teams this season.
“That was a big play,” Hill said of the 60-yard touchdown run against Seattle. “They knew we were going to tun the ball on third-and-short. They were clearly selling out to stop the run. If you get past the first level of defense, then there is no one left. Once I broke through I knew it was a foot race. I think if I was five yards farther back, then I don’t know if I would have gotten in.”
Hill and Saints offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael set Seattle up on the Trautman pass, and that certainly went about as well as expected. Hill wound up with a perfect passer rating on his one pass, which is nice.
“I was going to throw it. We talked at halftime. I think that was the classic we want to run the ball to set up the pass. Pete and I talked at halftime and he said that was one of the first plays we were going to get to me. He dialed it up perfectly.
“When you throw one pass it works out well. That was a combination of Trautman recognizing the right coverage and running the right route. I was expecting a different coverage than we got. I suspect that he was too. He’s a smart football player and ran it perfectly. The rest is history.”
History, indeed. Hill is the 12th person in pro football history to do what he did on Sunday, and the Seahawks are left to sort out their defensive mistakes after a game nobody who has seen the Legion of Boom could have imagined.
