On a night when the Seahawks pushed revealing their starting quarterback to the brink, Drew Lock came back from one to shock the Eagles.
Having never held a lead and trailing Philadelphia, 17-13, with 1:52 remaining, Lock ran a flawless two-minute drive, throwing on every snap of a 10-play march that went 92 yards for the game-winning score.
“Amazing won’t do it justice,” Lock told ESPN’s Lisa Salters directly after the game about orchestrating the drive. “But amazing also doesn’t do justice what the O-line, what DK (Metcalf) did on that catch, what the receivers did, what Ken Walker, Zach Charbonnet, all game long. The tight ends. It takes a special group to rally around a guy that’s coming into his second game of the year, right? Used to the same thing all year long. Same cadence. Same spin on the ball. Everything. A team like that — not just the offense — the defense to rally around me tonight. That was amazing.”
More amazing still is the flip Lock switched after a somewhat dim performance for the previous 58 minutes. Going into that narrative-turning drive, Lock was accurate, with a 73.9 completion percentage, but it had resulted in just 116 passing yards, and running back Kenneth Walker turning potential losses into big gains had been Seattle’s best hope for production.
And before that, it wasn’t even clear Lock would have a second chance to score his first win in three years at all.
Geno Smith, who missed last week with a groin injury, was still ailing, but the team surprisingly declared him healthy enough to dress.
The question over whether the season-long QB1 would serve as Seattle’s Week 15 QB1 — rather than an emergency option — lingered until roughly 15 minutes before kickoff.
“Oh, there’s a long story going into that one,” Lock said about the QB decision. “But I kept the mentality that I was going to play. Regardless of what was going on, how people were looking and what not. I was just like, ‘You know what, you’re going to go out there and play. So be ready to play.’ Found out when we got here that I was going to get the nod. Roll the dice, baby. Let’s go.”
Long after he got to make his second start as a Seahawk and shortly after his defense stalled Philly’s attempt to milk the game away near midfield, Lock took control at his own 8-yard line.
Following an initial incompletion, he ripped a low throw to Metcalf to move the sticks, followed by two more short gainers and two other incompletions.
Then came a larger strike to Metcalf, this time airdropped between two defenders along the sideline for 34 yards.
Just as Lock came alive, so too did Metcalf, accounting for three of Lock’s first four completions to help the Seahawks to the Eagles’ 29-yard line and accumulating 58 of his 78 receiving yards for the game.
From there, on third-and-10 with 33 seconds remaining, Lock locked in on rookie Jaxon Smith-Njigba streaking past Eagles cornerback James Bradberry down the right sideline and led him perfectly to the end zone for six — JSN’s second game-winning grab this year.
“I’ll remember that play call for the rest of my life,” Lock told Salters. “We’re breaking the huddle. I knew Jax had the one on one. Good reminder from (offensive coordinator) Shane (Waldron) in the headset. I say, ‘Hey, Jax, if you’re one on one, I’m throwing you this pill.’ Sure enough. Gave us a one-on-one look. Corner was soft. Jax hit him with some speed. Back pylon. Back-box throw. Came down with it.”
It was a tremendous toss on a tremendous night for the former second-rounder, and it was backed up by Seahawks safety Julian Love picking off Jalen Hurts for the second time to seal a victory.
When the dust from the excitement clears, tonight’s ultimate result will be that the Seahawks potentially saved their season, ending a four-game skid to climb to the NFC’s No. 8 seed at 7-7.
The comeback will give Smith, who head coach Pete Carroll confirmed is the starter if healthy moving forward, a chance to return and guide the team into the playoffs.
But the immediate story is all about Lock, who came over to Seattle from Denver two years ago in the Russell Wilson trade and lost a subsequent QB competition to Smith.
Lock never found his footing before that in three seasons with the Broncos. He started more than five games for them only once. That was during the 2020 season, when he was the starter for 13 contests and led the league with 15 interceptions.
This was his first game-winning drive since Week 8 of that year, and Seattle’s first time seeing a quarterback go 90-plus yards in under two minutes for a game-winning drive since Week 5 of 2020, per NFL Research.
Regardless of when Smith recovers enough to return to the starting lineup, Lock will have done his squad a great service.
And he’ll have done himself one, too, by proving to the football world what he assuredly still has to offer.
“It’s so hard. It’s so hard to describe the feeling of not playing for so long,” Lock told ESPN. “At least what feels like a really long time for me. And then you sit there, you watch game, you wonder, can I do this still? I haven’t been out there on the field. That’s the human nature of it. You get back out there last week. I’m like, ‘You know what? I’m the man still. I can go do this.’ And then you got another test this week where I didn’t know if I was gonna play or not. Sure enough, I ended up playing. Playing the Eagles tonight. And the boys around me rallied tonight. Gosh, it feels so good. It feels so good. I’m so proud of everybody tonight.”
