INGLEWOOD—Heading into Sunday's matchup, the Seahawks knew both offensively and defensively it would have a tough matchup against the Los Angeles Rams. Before Sunday, the Rams ranked top five in both points scored and points allowed, on average having scored 27.8 points through nine games.
Seattle was able to hold the Rams offense to just 21 points, with 14 of those points coming on short fields after Seahawks turnovers. On the first touchdown, the Rams started at the Seattle three-yard line. And on the third touchdown, Los Angeles started at Seattle's 25-yard line. While both of those touchdowns happened with the Rams being in good position because of interceptions and returns of 31 and 22 yards, respectively, Los Angeles was only able to score once outside of that, not even making it into field goal range throughout the game.
"It just is a testament to our mindset on defense," defensive end Leonard Williams said. "Regardless of where we took the field, we were ready to stop them. We were obviously put into some bad situations at times on defense, starting off in the red zone, and there was just no quit on our defense. We just knew that we were going to go out there and try to stop them."
Williams added, "21 points to a really good offense like that is pretty good. And I think there was only one true touchdown where they really drove the ball on us on defense."
The Rams had just 249 total yards of offense, the second lowest total net yards for Los Angeles this season and had just 12 first downs, their fewest this season. They also went 2-of-11 on third downs.
"That offense has not been behind schedule," head coach Mike Macdonald said. "They haven't had any third downs in the whole year. They're playing at an incredible efficient rate and so I thought our guys did a great job on first and 10 on early downs to get him behind the sticks, especially in the second half."
Part of Seattle's success in holding the Rams to 249 yards of offense was stopping the run and not allowing a 100-yard rusher, which it has not allowed in its last 18 games, good for the second-longest active streak in the NFL.
"I think we came out in the second half and did a better job of stopping the run," Williams said.
He added, "I think we just realized we had to be patient, staying in our gaps. I think their running back does a good enough job. He's a little small, he gets lost back there sometimes. So, I think if you start peeking too much out of your gap in your gap, that's when they were like getting some leaky yards. And then we pretty much just said, you know, trust your teammate, trust that he's going to be where he needs to be, staying in your gap. And I think that helped us a lot."