An explosive Seattle Seahawks offense entered the week sixth in points per game and second in yards per play. Imagine what they could be putting up without all the turnovers.
Seattle leads the NFL with 20 giveaways this season (one on a post-interception fumble), and its 17.3% of drives ending in a turnover is a league-high.
That dichotomy of scoring versus turnovers is the definition of magic or tragic.
In recent weeks, the deluge has spiraled out of control, with Sam Darnold's four-interception day in Week 11 highlighting the recent giveaway issues.
"It's unacceptable," Darnold said Thursday of the turnovers, via ESPN. "We understand as an offense, we have to be better, I have to be better, protecting the football. We're doing everything that we can in practice and when the game comes to try to take care of the football a little bit better."
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Darnold has accounted for 14 of the Seahawks' 19 offensive turnovers, including 10 interceptions. The 14 turnovers are tied for the league lead (Tua Tagovailoa). He has seven giveaways in the last two games, tops in the NFL.
The Rams discombobulated Darnold with a host of stunts and games to get rushers into his lap. The QB knows he needs to be better at diagnosing those situations without putting the ball in harm's way, starting Sunday at Tennessee.
"Just having a better understanding when the ball's snapped [of] what the coverage is and when a guy is going to come open and when he's not," Darnold said. "When I say 'get stuck on a progression,' I mean just seeing one side of the field and feeling like there's a chance that someone's going to get open over there rather than just moving on and clicking through my progression as I normally do."
The lack of a consistent run game isn't helping Darnold's turnover rate. An inability to be in positive down-and-distance situations has forced the QB into must-pass mode far more than Seattle would like through 10 games.
"Things are going to happen throughout the course of a game," Darnold said. "Obviously, you'd love for those things not to happen, negative plays, but that's football sometimes. For me, I just have to have a mentality of moving onto the next play because there's nothing I can do once I throw an interception or fumble ... so it's about moving on as fast as I can, understanding why I messed up ... and just being able to move on.
"I felt like I did a pretty good job of that in L.A. It obviously didn't go the way I wanted it to and the mistakes kept happening, but I felt like when I did make mistakes, I was able to just move on the way I normally do."
Turnovers will happen. The hope is that they don't come in the hailstorm that has characterized the past few weeks. The issues shouldn't define Darnold's excellent start to the season. If he mitigates those giveaways, this is a Seahawks club that is poised to make a deep playoff run.