2024 NFL season, Week 12: What We Learned from Sunday’s games

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Eric Edholm’s takeaways

1. Seahawks defense sets the tone in huge victory. Prior to his defense facing a key fourth-and-1 at the Seattle 40-yard line midway through the third quarter, Mike Macdonald called timeout just to make sure the Seahawks were on the same page, clinging to a 7-3 lead. They were indeed, as the Seahawks flushed Kyler Murray out of the pocket and into an awkward pass. It was picked by Coby Bryant and returned 69 yards for a game-shifting score. That was after the Seahawks had held the Cardinals to five punts and one field goal in their first six drives. Geno Smith made the game interesting with an end zone pick (his third red-zone INT of the year) and a near-interception deep in his own zone after this. But the Seahawks defense clamped down in the red zone with 10 minutes to go and held Arizona out of the end zone. Leonard Williams was dominant up front, with 2.5 sacks, six tackles and a batted pass. The Seahawks have kept their playoff hopes on life support with back-to-back NFC West victories led by their defense.
2. Cardinals’ playoff chances take hit in worst offensive showing of season. The Seahawks erased Arizona’s run game and sacked Murray five times, holding the Cardinals out of the end zone and dealing them a tough road loss. At 6-5, in a crowded division, the Cardinals’ margin for error just shrunk significantly. Murray entered this game as a dark horse MVP candidate for some, but he threw a bad interception on fourth down, just trying to make something happen for a dormant offense. Instead, it was a pick-six the other way, giving the Seahawks the game-clinching score. Murray also had a first-half fumble that was returned for a score called back by review. Arizona’s defense made enough plays to give the Cardinals a shot, but they settled for a fourth-quarter field goal and then let the Seahawks go on an eight-minute drive to bleed the clock.
3. Smith-Njigba becoming Seahawks’ big-play threat. It had been an offensive snoozer most of the first half, but Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught a short screen, broke Roy Lopez’ tackle attempt and zoomed 46 yards to the Arizona 4-yard line just before the two-minute warning. Three plays later, Smith-Njigba caught Geno Smith’s TD pass, and the Seahawks wouldn’t trail again. But they would need Smith-Njigba again on the late field-goal drive, as he caught a big third-down conversion and another grab to help set up Smith’s 18-yard throw to DK Metcalf. Smith was up and down, and his protection was shaky at times. Kenneth Walker III had some big plays after getting hurt in the first half. Metcalf made a few big plays. But JSN came through with the game-changing plays the Seahawks needed in a defensive battle. That’s three straight big performances he has delivered, thrusting the afterburners toward a 1,000-yard season

Next Gen Stats Insight for Cardinals-Seahawks (via NFL Pro): Leonard Williams had a 28.1% pressure rate against the Cardinals in Week 12, his highest pressure rate since at least 2018, totaling nine pressures and 2.5 sacks on 32 pass rushes. Williams had an average pass rush get-off of 0.82 seconds, his sixth-quickest time since 2018, and generated three pressures in under 2.5 seconds. Kyler Murray correspondingly faced pressure on 43.2% of his dropbacks, his highest rate of the season, and completed only four of his 13 attempts for 81 yards and a pick-six.

NFL Research: Jaxon Smith-Njigba has 367 receiving yards over his past three games. That is the second-most by a Seahawks player in any three-game span within a single season in franchise history, only trailing hall of famer Steve Largent in 1984.