The Seattle Seahawks finally logged their first shutout since 2015 with a 26–0 win over the Minnesota Vikings, but you wouldn’t have known it listening to quarterback Sam Darnold afterward. He wasn’t celebrating. If anything, the Seahawks’ signal-caller sounded annoyed with himself and the Seattle offense.

“As an offense, I don’t think we necessarily played our best football,” Darnold did not mince his words while pointing fingers at the offense. “But we were able to come out with a win. That’s all that matters. They had some good pressure for us. We just got to look at the tape and see how we can correct some mistakes and be better. It’s stuff that we gotta continue to look at for ourselves. For me, I gotta get the ball out in certain situations.”

For Sam, this was one of those nights where the score didn’t match his comfort level. Darnold cleaned things up in Nashville a week ago, avoiding turnovers altogether, but some of the bad habits resurfaced. He fumbled twice, Cooper Kupp bailed him out on one, and the Vikings pounced on the other.

The two giveaways didn’t come back to haunt Seattle, but they very easily could have against a better opponent. And Minnesota made life uncomfortable early. Brian Flores dialed up heat from the jump, and the Vikings sacked Darnold four times in the first half alone.

To put that in perspective, Sam Darnold had only been sacked 15 times all season heading into the game. Four of those came tonight. The pressure clearly sped him up. Per Next Gen Stats, when Minnesota blitzed, Darnold went 5-of-9 for 29 yards with no touchdowns and two sacks.

It didn’t help that Jaxon Smith-Njigba was taken out of the game almost entirely. He came in leading the league in receiving yards (1,313), and the Vikings held him to two catches on four targets. For this game, the Seahawks’ receiver finished with just 23 yards on the ground.

These nights happen. Even good offenses sputter. The part that mattered was the defense, and that group played like it remembered the standard.

Seattle’s defense put on a show

This was Mike Macdonald’s first shutout as a head coach, and it looked like something pulled straight out of his old Baltimore playbook. Seattle’s defense forced five turnovers, smothered everything Minnesota tried to build, and never allowed the game to breathe in the Vikings’ direction.

They picked off four passes, including a stunning 85-yard pick-six from Ernest Jones. It was an entirely instinctive read on fourth-and-1 where he jumped the Vikings quarterback’s throw and didn’t look back. It blew the game open before halftime and felt like the moment Minnesota’s offense realized the hill was too steep.

Rookie quarterback Max Brosmer never settled in. He spent most of the night dodging bodies and staring down a secondary that kept beating his receivers to the ball. Four sacks, 126 passing yards, and a lot of throws he’d want back. And Sam Darnold knows he owes the defense a cleaner performance than what he gave them.

“It’s unbelievable to have a defense like, just to be consistent. For us as an offense, especially for me personally. I hate putting them in positions where I’m getting a sack fumble and the defenses are covering it, and now, they’re all a sudden down in the red zone,” Darnold said.

“Our defense is able to somehow turn that into six points, and you know to be able to play with and for a defense like that is. You know, it’s unbelievable. I don’t take it for granted one day,” he added.

Nights like this show what the Seahawks can be if the offense ever matches the defense’s level. And if both sides ever hit their stride at the same time, Seattle might be building toward something that sticks with us for a while.