After all the twists and turns that came in a game where Sam Darnold threw four interceptions, the Seattle Seahawks surprisingly had a chance to sneak out of Los Angeles with a win over the Rams.
There’s a better way of looking at Seattle Seahawks’ loss to Rams
Unfortunately for Seattle, it got pinned inside of its own 1-yard line for its final drive in the closing minutes, and the Rams ultimately held on when Jason Myers couldn’t connect on what would have been a career-high-tying 61-yard field goal as time expired.
Darnold’s turnovers were the big point of discussion after the loss, but there were some other things to take away from a down-to-the-wire finish between the NFC West contenders. Here’s a look at a couple of the takeaways Brock and Salk co-hosts Brock Huard and Mike Salk shared Monday morning.
How Macdonald continues to impress
Unlike their past two games, which were blowout wins that were decided by halftime, Seattle’s clash with the Rams came with several important in-game coaching decisions throughout the afternoon.
Some of the decisions came on whether or not to go for it on fourth down, which the Seahawks elected to do once in three opportunities and the Rams did three times in nine chances.
Salk thought Macdonald handled those situations well.
“Mike Macdonald I think is – if he’s not the best in-game decision maker I have watched, he’s right there along with Sean McVay and maybe Bill Belichick in his prime,” Salk said. “I love the way he handles fourth downs. I love it when he decides to punt, when he decides to kick, the way he uses and conserves his timeouts until he needs them. I love his clock management. … I think his decision making on the sideline for a young, second-year coach who’s also, by the way, in charge of calling and coordinating the defense, it’s unbelievable. It continues to blow me away how good he is at it.”
The point of the game where Macdonald’s decision making really stood out to both Salk and Huard was late in the first half when the Seahawks successfully ran out the clock and kicked a field goal on fourth down as time expired.
On that drive, the Seahawks reached a goal-to-go situation with over a minute left on the clock and three timeouts remaining. They let the clock get under 40 seconds before their next snap and waited until the clock got down to 24 seconds to call their first timeout. After a short completion in bounds, Seattle let the clock wind down to 11 seconds before calling another timeout. And an incompletion on third down brought the clock down to 4 seconds, preventing the Rams from having a chance to get the ball back after a short Myers field goal.
“That end-of-the-first-half mechanism to not give them the ball back, knowing you’re gonna get the ball to begin the second half, (that’s) teaching tape,” said Huard, a former NFL quarterback.
Huard also pointed to the way he sees Macdonald interact with his coaches on the sideline as an indicator that he’s locked in to game-management situations.
“I love the shots they have of him when the offense has the ball, and you can see him having little conversations at times standing by (offensive coordinator) Klint (Kubiak) and just saying, hey, four-down territory, or hey, be aware of this,” Huard said. “… The game never speeds up on him.”
A sneaky factor in Seahawks loss
Darnold’s interceptions were undeniably a major component to Seattle’s narrow loss, and the quarterback took accountability for his mistakes during his postgame interview. But his teammates were quick to have his back, including a colorful response given by linebacker Ernest Jones IV about Darnold shouldering the blame postgame.
Jones held himself and the defense accountable for the loss as well, which comes as a bit of a surprise after the stellar performance the defense had.
The Seahawks held the Rams to just 249 yards of offense, which included limiting MVP candidate Matthew Stafford to just 130 yards passing and 4.6 yards per attempt. The 130 passing yards were the second least Stafford has had in 67 games since joining the Rams in 2021.
Jones was clearly defending his quarterback, but as Huard explained, there was also some truth to Jones saying the defense could have done better.
“It reminded me a little bit of the Super Bowl loss to the Patriots … (with) the number of missed tackles and just leaky yards,” Huard said. “And that’s what Ernest Jones was speaking about at the podium.”
The stat that stood out to Huard was yards after contact. Rams rushers averaged 3.86 yards after contact, per Pro Football Focus. Meanwhile, the Seahawks averaged 2.51.
A couple of plays Huard highlighted were when Rams running back Kyren Williams busted a long run after breaking tackles on the Rams’ opening drive, and when Ty Okada failed to make a tackle in the flat on a short TD pass to Colby Parkinson early in the fourth quarter, which served as the decisive score.
Colby Parkinson parks himself into the end zone 🐏
SEAvsLAR on FOX/FOX Onehttps://t.co/HkKw7uXVnt pic.twitter.com/RcoJ9vdruq
— NFL (@NFL) November 16, 2025
Huard also thought the Seahawks didn’t get enough of those extra yards on offense, which helped result in four drives where they had to settle for field goals.
“That yard and a half nearly, over the course of a game where every inch and blade of grass matters, that showed up … in some big moments where they scored and (when) you couldn’t score in the red zone in particular,” Huard said.
Hear Brock and Salk’s full Seahawks takeaways at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Listen to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.
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