Seahawks hold off Lions, win in overtime on Tyler Lockett TD

DETROIT – Where some might have looked at the Seahawks game Sunday at Detroit in the wake of last week’s blowout loss to the Rams and seen danger, Seattle linebacker Uchenna Nwosu insisted he saw only the chance for a really fun day.

Nwosu had heard the talk all week of what the atmosphere was going to be like in Detroit, with the Lions coming off a big win at Kansas City and returning for their home opener on a weekend they also unveiled a statue for Barry Sanders.

And Nwosu insisted he loved everything he was hearing about the Lions because it made it easy to forget about the Rams.

“No one wants to remember that one,” he said. “This week came and we saw the opportunity to kill their hearts and their momentum and all their hopes and wishes. It was perfect.”

Not that it didn’t take a while.

Seattle scored on its first drive of the game to take a little bit of the juice out of the Ford Field crowd, then scored on its first drive of the second half after Nwosu forced a fumble to tie the game at 14.

After the Lions scored 10 points in the final 3 minutes, 8 seconds, Seattle got the ball first in overtime and never gave it up, driving 75 yards in nine plays, capped by a 6-yard pass from Geno Smith to Tyler Lockett in which Lockett was able to just touch the pylon for a 37-31 OT win.

It was a play that Lockett admitted defied the rules of receivers coach Sanjay Lal, who every Thursday shows his players a video of times when reaching for the pylon turns into a fumble through the end zone and a turnover.

“As soon as I did that I was like, ‘Yep, they are going to say you shouldn’t have reached,’” Lockett said. “But it worked out and we ended up winning.”

The play defined a week when the Seahawks were basically willing to do whatever it took after the blowout loss to the Rams in which they had been outgained 257-12 in the second half.

That led to middle linebacker Bobby Wagner gathering his teammates for an impassioned talk before practice on Wednesday.

“I don’t know what the impact was,” Wagner said. “But just sometimes when you have a young team you’ve got to go through the learning process of letting the good and the bad go because you can’t bring that into next week.”

Certainly, something worked. The Seahawks seemed like a different team from the start.

Smith, who had been held to 112 yards against the Rams, completed his first five passes Sunday for 58 yards to lead Seattle to a touchdown on its first drive.

The offense stalled from there, and the defense gave up two long touchdown drives as Detroit took a 147 lead at halftime (Jason Myers also missed two field goals in the second quarter). No matter.

On the first play of the second half, Nwosu jarred the ball out of the arms of Detroit running back David Montgomery, with Jarran Reed recovering at the 23. Two plays later, Seattle tied the game on Kenneth Walker’s second TD run.

“I just knew it was a run and committed and got the ball out,” Nwosu said.

Said Wagner of that sequence: “I think it changed the game.”

Still, Detroit came right back to take a 21-14 lead, and it was easy to think that maybe, finally, the Lions onslaught so many expected was on.

But the Seahawks drove for a field goal and got their second of two fourth-down stops to take over at the Detroit 45 late in the third quarter. That led to a Smith TD of 3 yards to Lockett and a 24-21 lead.

And then came what appeared the real back breaker as Tre Brown, playing in place of injured Riq Woolen, stepped in front of a Jared Goff pass intended for Jahmyr Gibbs and returned it 40 yards for a TD and a 31-21 lead.

That snapped a streak of 384 straight passes by Goff without an interception, the third longest streak in NFL history.

“Yeah, I need to look at it again, but to me, that was more on the route than it was Goff,” said Detroit coach Dan Campbell. “This is why we work them over and over. You’ve got to be decisive. You can’t do that to your Q.“

This may well be a season when little figures to come easily.

So it was that the Lions drove 75 yards in 10 plays to cut the lead to 31-28 with 3:08 left and stopped the Seahawks when Smith made his one big mistake of the day, attempting to squirm out of a rush and sacked for a 17-yard loss back to the Seattle 3.

Michael Dickson’s punt was returned 17 yards to the 50, and the Lions, with 1:44 left and all three timeouts remaining, seemed on the verge of stealing the win after all.

But the Lions seemed oddly passive, running just two plays over the next 1:12.

Seattle got the stop it needed on a third-and-6 play when Julian Love tackled Gibbs for a gain of just 3, forcing the Lions to kick a field goal as time ran out.

“Here’s what I knew,” Campbell said. “They had two timeouts, and I did not want to give that ball back. That was No. 1. Do not give this ball back. No. 2, can we get down there far enough to score a touchdown? And so, I already had in my mind if we get it to a certain point on fourth down, we will go for it, if not we won’t, so kicked the field goal. I felt like our chances were really good in overtime, and it didn’t work out.”

Indeed, Seattle won the toss when Drew Lock called tails as Seattle had done before the game as well, with Lock figuring that the coin wouldn’t come up heads both times. Smith then calmly led the Seahawks down the field, the key play a 16-yard completion to DK Metcalf on a third-and-6 at the 46.

A 21-yarder to Colby Parkinson got Seattle within easy field goal range. But Seattle wanted to just end it, doing so three plays later when Smith hit Lockett for the game winner on a third-and-2.

“I hope he can just keep playing forever because he just continues to make those spectacular plays,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. “It’s just Tyler.”

The Seahawks celebrated for the first time all year, the music thumping in the locker room, and players lingering long afterward in the locker room soaking it all in. It had been a long week following the face plant against the Rams, and it was tempting to wonder if it was also setting up to be a long season.

But Sunday revealed the Seahawks to be who they thought they were, with a season ahead that may also be what they have hoped it could be.

“We needed this badly,” Carroll said. “We know what happened last week, and we stunk it up in the second half [against the Rams]. And we were ready to show that we can play anybody, anywhere, any time.”