Commentary: Seahawks’ Mike Macdonald, staff enter prove-it period after ugly loss

SEATTLE – To conclude an understandably somber seven-minute media session, Mike Macdonald was asked Sunday if the Seattle Seahawks – at their best – can compete with the Buffalo Bills.

“I think everybody on that field knows our best can compete with them,” said the 37-year-old first-year coach. “And, look: Buffalo is a great team. They’ve been doing this thing for a long time. The record speaks for itself. They’ve got great players. That’s a vote of confidence in our guys, in our people.”

I suspect plenty at Lumen Field on Sunday would not say the same.

But for the sake of conversation, let’s concede the larger point. Let’s assume the talent on both teams is essentially equivalent, that their respective ceilings don’t exist in separate stratospheres.

If that’s true, then Sunday’s incineration – Bills 31, Seahawks 10 – should become even more frustrating for fans. Because it’s not simply that these Seahawks don’t have the horses, that they’re a draft or a trade or a signing from paving over their imperfections. It’s not that they were disciplined, prepared, cohesive and physical … but a Super Bowl contender proved too much to overcome.

It’s not the Seahawks’ lack of talent that should make Sunday’s loss so difficult to stomach.

It’s the avalanche of avoidable errors, and what they might mean.

I, for one, predicted the Seahawks to finish 9-8 in Macdonald’s debut season. That prognostication came with a caveat, that Seattle couldn’t compete with teams such as the 49ers when it came to top-end talent. But I believed Macdonald would put his players in positions to succeed – that his schemes would allow a capable core to exude confidence. I believed this team would be detailed and disciplined, that it would do little things well – fitting run gaps, tackling in space, evading penalties.

Through eight games, the Seahawks remain (more or less) on a 9-8 pace.

But Seattle’s expected strengths are worrying weaknesses.

Because it doesn’t take talent to ensure the football cleanly reaches the quarterback. But the Seahawks struggled to do that when it mattered Sunday – as a Connor Williams snap sailed over Geno Smith’s head on second-and-goal from the 3-yard line, yielding a 19-yard loss and a forced field-goal attempt. The Williams-Smith transfer faltered again on the following drive, as Williams stepped on Smith’s foot while the quarterback backpedaled on fourth-and-goal from the 1, causing a self-inflicted sack.

More frustrating than a nonexistent running game, or a backbreaking Smith interception, or Dee Williams losing his footing and flukily fumbling a punt at a rainy Lumen Field?

The Seahawks are failing in the most fundamental ways.

“That’s just huge miscues,” FOX color commentator and future Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady said of the repeated red-zone flops. “You hope you don’t have one of those in the entire season. You have two of them in one day. You’re just not going to overcome it.”

It doesn’t take talent to keep your composure, something the Seahawks failed to do on a self-combusting Sunday. The most obvious offenders were teammates Derick Hall and Jarran Reed, who were forcibly separated on the sideline after Hall single-handedly extended a Buffalo drive with an inexcusable roughing-the-passer penalty.

But there are other obvious examples, as evidenced by Seattle’s 11 penalties.

Take the dizzying six-play sequence to conclude the third quarter – which included a Smith fumble, a holding penalty on right guard Christian Haynes, a false-start penalty on left tackle Charles Cross, a taunting penalty on Smith (who tossed the ball at Bills defensive end Dawuane Smoot), an illegal-formation penalty on right tackle Michael Jerrell … and a merciful Michael Dickson punt to end the madness.

This was not a disciplined, detailed, well-coached team. There’s no arguing otherwise.

Which doesn’t mean it can’t be – that Macdonald’s tenure, only eight games in, is destined for failure. But with a first-time coach, a first-time offensive coordinator (Ryan Grubb), a first-time defensive coordinator (Aden Durde) and a first-time special-teams coordinator (Jay Harbaugh), that inexperienced staff must coax progress. They must prove that these are growing pains, not harbingers of future failures. They must maintain buy-in at a personal inflection point.

I’m not convinced, at their best, that the Seahawks beat the Bills (who committed 13 penalties and were not at their best, either). But Seattle is talented enough to contend in a surprisingly winnable NFC West. Surrounded by the Arizona Cardinals (4-4), San Francisco 49ers (4-4) and Los Angeles Rams (4-4), it might not require top-end talent to capture a division crown.

But it will require the Seahawks – who have lost four of their past five games, each by at least nine points – to be more than they’ve been. It does not take talent, after all, to fit a run gap, to complete a form tackle, to snap the football, to sidestep penalties that extend soul-extinguishing drives.

The Seahawks can, and should, improve in each of those areas. But with Seattle hosting the Rams on Sunday before a bye, this is a prove-it period. It falls on Macdonald, and the staff he assembled, to ensure this team’s lack of talent is not the least of its concerns.