SEATTLE – In the same building where this same team started Seattle’s season with a loss, the Seahawks made clear they are ending the year as Super Bowl contenders in a 41-6 evisceration of the visiting San Francisco 49ers in Saturday’s Divisional Game.
Seattle is one more home win away from its fourth Super Bowl appearance after Saturday’s dominant victory. On Jan. 25 they will host the winner of Sunday’s game between the L.A. Rams and the Chicago Bears.
The Seahawks will have an extra day of rest advantage on their opponent by virtue of playing on Saturday. Because the lead was big enough to rest their starters, the key players will be an extra quarter fresher as well.
With a week off earned as the NFC’s top seed, the Seahawks wasted no time scoring enough points to control the game as midyear trade acquisition Rasheed Shaheed took the opening kickoff 95-yards for a touchdown.
Cornerback Devon Witherspoon, one of the defense’s emotional leaders, also led the team with seven hard-hitting tackles, many of them near the line of scrimmage.
The early extended lead allowed the Seahawks to make judicious use of quarterback Sam Darnold, whose oblique injury reported on Thursday caused some pregame jitters for Seahawks fans heading into a game in which their team was heavily favored.
Darnold was used sparingly but efficiently in his three-plus quarters of work, completing 12 of 17 passes for 124 yards and a touchdown.
“I say (Darnold) managed the game as a very high-powered compliment,” head coach Mike Macdonald said. “Throwing on time, taking care of the ball, making plays when we need to. I think there’s some explosives out there maybe we could get to but I thought there was a lot of operations stuff he did that helped us as well.”
Instead it was Kenneth Walker III providing the offense on Saturday. Seattle’s star running back rushed for 116 yards on 19 carries while scoring three touchdowns. His three catches added 29 receiving yards for good measure.
Knowing that unseating the surging Seahawks would be a difficult proposition if their early lead grew, the 49ers went for it on 4th-and-1 from the Seahawks 41-yard line on the ensuing position following Shaheed’s return. The call was an option to the short side of the field and the pitch to Kyle Juzscyzk went out of bounds four yards short of the line to gain.
The 49ers went for it on fourth down against Seattle’s vaunted defense three times. They were never successful.
“(Fourth-down stops) don’t count as takeaways but that’s really what they are,” Macdonald said. “That’s something we started the year kind of slow on fourth downs on defense. To our coaches credit and our players credit we identified it as something we wanted to improve on and worked the problem. The guys come to life on fourth down and it’s pretty cool.”
The Seahawks got a field goal out of that one. Then, with 4:13 left in the first quarter San Francisco seemingly finally had something going when quarterback Brock Purdy’s pass to Jake Tonges went for 11 yards, but Ernest Jones IV stripped the ball before Tonges went down and Julian Love recovered the fumble. Jones also had an interception in the second half.
Jones IV also forced a fumble. DeMarcus Lawrence led the team with two forced fumbles, including a sack.
Darnold was sacked on the first play of the ensuing drive, but the quarterback responded with a 21-yard strike to Cooper Kupp on left sideline from the far hash. Marques Sigle brought the Seahawks to the 8-yard line with a pass interference on a pass to Shaheed that was not going to be caught, and Darnold ended the drive with a touchdown pass to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who came into the game already the team’s all-time single season record holder with 1,793 yards this season.
Smith-Njigba had a relatively quiet game afterwards, finishing with a season-low 19 receiving yards. But he had plenty of teammates to pick up the slack.
Cooper Kupp was Darnold’s favorite target on Saturday, catching five balls for 60 yards.
On a drive that started at their own 4-yard line, the 49ers appeared to get to the Seahawks 23-yard line on a 15-yard third -down pass to Ricky Pearsall. But replays showed the ball hit the turf before Pearsall reeled it in, and the visiting team had to settle for another 3-point dent in the home team’s sizable advantage.
Michael Dickson had put the 49ers’ heels against their own end zone to the drive with a booming 50-yard punt that bounced out at the 4-yard line.
Walker III went seven yards to score with 31 seconds left in the half put the Seahawks up 24-7, outdoing San Francisco’s previous two scoring drives with a high-stepping jaunt into the end zone.
It’s been a season full of injuries for the 49ers and those snakes kept biting them in the playoffs. By the second drive of the second half, both star running back Christian McCaffrey and tight end Jake Tonges were questionable to return because of injuries. At that point McCaffrey was the team’s leading rusher, and Tonges and McCaffrey were the team’s two leading receivers.