SEATTLE (AP) — Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals hardly could have imagined how much they would struggle against the Seattle Seahawks, given that they entered Sunday's game on a four-game winning streak and had averaged 29.3 points over their past three.
The Seahawks' defense, led by first-year coach Mike Macdonald, was hardly impressed with those figures.
Murray was sacked five times and threw a 69-yard pick-6 to Seahawks safety Coby Bryant in the third quarter. Defensive tackle Leonard Williams tormented Murray and the Arizona offensive line, finishing with 2 1/2 sacks, four quarterback hits, three tackles for loss and one pass deflection as the Seahawks won 16-6 to pull even with the Cardinals (6-5) atop the NFC West.
Arizona came in averaging 149.4 rushing yards per game but couldn't run the ball, either. The Cardinals finished with 49 yards on 14 carries, including 8 yards on seven carries by feature back James Conner. That left Murray even more susceptible to the pressure from Williams.
“He’s a good player. I mean, we knew he’s good player coming in,” Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon said. “He’s a premium player for a reason. Hats off to him, he’s always been a good player. We’ve got to look at that — how can we adjust and handle him a little bit better? Because I thought he wrecked the game.”
Arizona's scoring output was a season low.
“We didn’t stay on the field. We just didn’t make it happen,” Murray said. “It was frustrating day, frustrating day offensively, especially the way we’ve been playing, to come out here and kind of lay an egg and just kind really get physically, physically dominated in a sense, like I said, credit to them.”
Murray finished 24 of 37 for 285 yards, but the interception by Bryant overshadowed those numbers. Murray threw the pass while under pressure from Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon.
“I feel like if I don’t do that, then we’re in the game four quarters. Because that’s the way it was trending,” Murray said. “The defense is battling their (butt) off, did everything that we needed for them to do to win the game. Offensively, we got to be better. We didn’t hold up our end of the bargain.”
A second-quarter touchdown reception by Michael Wilson was nullified by a holding penalty on left tackle Paris Johnson Jr.
“There’s a lot of things that feel like the flow of the game just wasn’t our favor,” Wilson said. “And some games go like that, and then we didn’t execute enough to make up for the game sort of not going our way.”
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Shane Lantz, The Associated Press
