Recapping the Week 1 Broncos-Seahawks game

3 takeaways from the Denver Broncos' loss to the Seattle Seahawks as Russell Wilson struggles on return to Lumen Field

Week one of the 2022 NFL season saw the Seattle Seahawks welcome the Denver Broncos in an intriguing matchup. The game saw Russell Wilson make his Broncos debut against his former franchise. Seattle came out victorious at Lumen Field with a scoreline of 17-16.

Here are the three biggest takeaways from the Broncos-Seahawks game:

#1. The Broncos have to work on game management and penalties

In Wilson’s return to Seattle, the script was right there for the new Broncos signal-caller to rip the hearts out of the chests of Seattle fans (similar to what he’s done so many times to opposing fanbases).

They started from their own 22-yard line with four minutes left and down by just a point. After flipping it out to Javonte Williams in the flats (who made a couple of people miss on third-and-14), that set up a fourth-and-five from the Seattle 46. Wilson and the offense are out there and ready to go for it, but Denver let the clock run down to 20 despite having all three timeouts left.

Hackett instead opted for a 64-yard field goal. Considering that’s three yards further than kicker Brandon McManus’ career-long and the farthest somebody has ever hit from in Seattle was 58 yards, the numbers tell you this was the wrong decision. This doesn't even consider the fact that the Broncos just handed Wilson a five-year, 245-million dollar extension to make these game-winning plays for them.

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With that being said, I appreciate coach Hackett reflecting on the situation and flat-out admitting he made the wrong decision. I’m guessing him transitioning from the booth to the sideline, where he’s in the middle of the storm and has to make big calls. They were late getting into plays at times in general and they really hurt themselves with undisciplined play (particularly on defense). That unit alone was flagged seven times for 81 yards and six new first downs. The coaching staff’s decision to sit all their starters in week three of the preseason might have contributed to their sloppy play.

#2. Geno Smith deservedly won the quarterback competition in Seattle

Obviously, this is easy to say about the quarterback of the winning team. Geno Smith took advantage of his opportunities to deliver big throws to his tight-ends for Seattle’s two touchdowns. He lobbed it to a wide-open Will Dissly to start the day after getting away from a blitzer in the backfield for a 38-yard walk-in touchdown. He then hit Colby Parkinson on a seam/fade route for a 25-yard score just ahead of the two-minute warning in the first half. Those two plays made up nearly a third of Smith’s passing total on the day.

It’s not even that Smith made a ton of great plays necessarily, but he understood how to manage this sloppy game (where the visitors were kind of self-destructing with a couple of fumbles at the one-yard line). He knew not to put the ball in harm’s way, like we’ve seen Drew Lock do on several occasions in Denver. His running backs were held to just 62 yards on the ground, but thanks to steady completions on early downs, they were in a lot of third-and-shorts in the first half, going 6-of-11 on the day, while Smith held onto the ball the 10 times he was hit.

#3. Both the offense and defense for Denver looked a little different than expected

A lot was made about the marriage of Nathaniel Hackett’s offensive philosophies and the kind of play-style Russell Wilson has been successful with. The consensus was that they’d cater mostly to the quarterback they gave up so much for. However, it wasn’t all shotgun and attacking vertically outside the numbers.

Instead, we saw all four of their tight-ends play at least 10 snaps, with one of them regularly deployed as a full-back. We saw Wilson dump it off to them in the flats quite a bit, along with Javonte Williams' 12 targets being five more than the next-closest guy. Overall, his intended air yards per attempt of 6.5 and his air yards per completion of 3.8 would both easily be the lowest we’ve seen from him since pro-fooball-reference.com started tracking those. There were some spot routes from Jerry Jeudy and more classic West Coast pass concepts than I envisioned.

Defensively for Denver, I thought we saw a lot more bear fronts and three stand-up linebacker looks. Their newly signed nickelback K’Waun Williams logged less than half the snaps and basically nobody else got any work in the secondary. DC Ejiro Evero went away from the cover-one we saw last season to more classic quarters.

On Seattle’s side, I thought the defense took a lot of the Sean Desai’s input, who also comes from the Vic Fangio coaching tree. I certainly didn’t think we’d see the offense spread it out and let Geno Smith throw the ball as much on early downs as they did.

Check out my piece on the full Week 1 slate at halilsrealfootballtalk.com !