He got the ball out on time, with an average time to throw of 2.85 seconds, and he used play-action on a heavy 37 percent of his dropbacks. Smith threw mostly short, over the middle, and to his right (his yards per attempt average was 5.1, according to Next Gen Stats). But Smith’s output in the opening two quarters was enough to get the win and, more importantly, show that he can run the offense the Seahawks wanted to deploy last season when they hired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron away from Sean McVay’s Rams staff. Smith began the game with a fan-base-appropriate 12 straight completions and threw two touchdowns in the first half before the Broncos defense clamped down and held Seattle scoreless after halftime. He completed 82 percent of his passes (23-of-28) for 195 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions. Starting his first Week 1 game in eight years, Geno Smith gave the Seahawks everything they could have hoped for. It gave us a chance to win the game on that play. “We weren’t thinking field goal there, we were thinking it was fourth down and they were still going. “I was surprised that they took Russ out at the end,” Carroll said. He may have to offer further explanation this week, especially given that Pete Carroll said he was never expecting the Broncos to kick in that situation. Hackett confirmed after the game that he never thought about going for it, either before or after the timeout, then said that 64 yards was McManus’s range and that “Brandon gave it his best shot.” But it’s still shocking that even with extra time to reconsider, um, asking a player who’d thrown for 340 yards already to throw for five more instead of asking a kicker to make a career-long kick, Hackett didn’t. At that point there were only 20 seconds left in the game, and McManus actually did have the distance on that kick that didn’t count, if not the location. To underscore how truly befuddling this decision was, Seattle had also used its final timeout to ice McManus, and he missed that attempt, as well. Not to mention across league history, NFL kickers are only 2-of-41 on kicks of 64 yards or longer. McManus is a good kicker who benefits additionally from playing half his games in the Denver altitude, but he’s never made a kick of more than 61 yards-and this game was in Seattle. Models vary, but Football Outsiders’ win probability calculator found that the decision to kick a field goal instead of passing in that situation cost the Broncos nearly 30 percentage points.įrom our win probability calculator, ran this:Ĭomplete insanity.- Aaron Schatz September 13, 2022 Much was made of the partnership between Hackett and Wilson in the leadup to this game, and there’s lots of time left for them to define it this season, but in the moment it counted most on Monday, Hackett’s decision was to Let Russ Look. McManus missed, and the Seahawks went on to win. Following that, Hackett opted to send kicker Brandon McManus out to try a 64-yard field goal instead of keeping the ball in quarterback Russell Wilson’s $245 million hands. With about a minute left in the game and the Broncos trailing by a point, Denver’s offense stayed out on the field for 39 seconds of clock time on fourth-and-5 before Hackett finally called a timeout. Hackett’s worst impression, though, was the last one he gave. And that might have influenced a questionable decision to settle for a field goal midway through the fourth quarter with the Broncos down by four and facing a fourth-and-goal from the 8-yard line. His offense had some embarrassing sequences at the goal line, where it consistently operated out of the shotgun, for whatever reason. The pre-snap operation was particularly messy. His team played sloppily and got flagged 12 times, costing Denver 106 yards. Nathaniel Can’t Hackettīroncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett’s debut could have gone a lot better. The game was predictably weird, given its participants, and gave us a first look at how some new faces look in new places. A wild Week 1 came to a close Monday night when the Seahawks held on to beat the Broncos 17-16 in Russell Wilson’s return to Seattle.
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