The Seattle Seahawks took care of the game against the Arizona Cardinals and defended their home game with a 16-6 victory over the Red Birds. Seattle's defense was truly stifling, limiting the Cardinals to just two field goals in the crucial NFC West showdown. The only other time Arizona was within striking distance of the points was during the game when they attempted a long field goal to make it a one-score game and hope for a successful onside kick. The field goal missed.
As a result, the Cardinals were only able to reach the end zone once, which was a particularly rare loss for quarterback Kyler Murray. Since being the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, Murray has been the starter when healthy. Typically, Arizona's offense wasn't the problem with Murray under center. But in Week 12, his unit faltered and for the fourth time in his tenure as a starter, the Cardinals failed to score an offensive touchdown.
Why is this historic? Well, since this has happened four times now, the Seahawks were responsible for half of them! One of them was of course the 16:6 win on Sunday. But the other time it happened was in 2022, when Seattle beat Arizona 19-9. Oddly enough, Week 12 of this season capped a somewhat bizarre trilogy of low-scoring, 10-point wins for the Seahawks over the Cardinals at Lumen Field.
- 2024: Seahawks win 16-6
- 2023: Seahawks win 20-10
- 2022: Seahawks win 19-9
The only other times Murray's offense was kept out of the end zone was a 31-9 loss to the Saints in 2019 and a 20-12 loss to the Rams in 2022.
This was an incredible performance by the Seattle defense. We'll find out soon enough if they can repeat that performance when these teams face off in less than two weeks.
