The Seahawks defense dominated the 49ers and thus barely needed to be on the field.
After years of mostly non-competitive losing performances, the Seattle Seahawks turned the tables on the San Francisco 49ers and handed them a humbling loss with the NFC West title on the line. Seattle’s 13-3 win was a kind scoreline given the statistical dominance, but it’s still a win that gave the Seahawks the division title and No. 1 seed in the NFC. The 49ers offense went from scoring 40+ points in consecutive weeks to their worst showing under Kyle Shanahan.
Normally when snap count articles are done, the offense is first and the defense is second. I want to do the defense first because you’ll notice that five players played every snap: Ernest Jones, Julian Love, Nick Emmanwori, Devon Witherspoon, and Ty Okada. They were all on the field for only 42 snaps, the fewest snaps the Seahawks defense faced all season and the fewest snaps played by the Seahawks defense since 1991.
Of course, sometimes a team can have a lot of offensive success without having a lot of snaps. That wasn’t the case on Saturday night. The Seahawks defense held the 49ers to three three-and-outs and a four-and-out, with no drives lasting longer than nine plays. San Francisco was 2/9 on third-down after entering the game as the best in the NFL on third-downs, and both fourth-down attempts fell incomplete.
What also helped the Seahawks defense was the Seahawks offense controlling the damn ball. A rare night of no lost fumbles or interceptions certainly helped, but Seattle was 6/13 on third-down conversions (really, 6/12 given they knelt on the final “conversion”) and posted five drives lasting at least four minutes. Incredibly, their two longest drives combined for 15:38 of game time and resulted in a missed field goal and a turnover on downs. Nevertheless, the Seahawks still had 69 snaps on offense, with everyone on the offensive line except Josh Jones (who had one missed play due to injury), as well as Sam Darnold, going the distance.
Once again, Zach Charbonnet outsnapped Kenneth Walker, although both men were incredibly effective in their respective roles; they had over 200 combined yards of total offense and Charbonnet scored the game’s only touchdown. Jake Bobo and Dareke Young had nine and eight snaps respectively, but ran a grand total of one route apiece. Bobo was used as a blocker almost exclusively, while Young was in a similar spot but was part of the kneeldown group at the end. Cam Akers’ lone offensive snap saw him split out wide as a receiver.
Category: General Sports
