With lame offense, Seahawks lucky to be 1-1

Seattle (1-1) defeated NFC West foe San Francisco 12-9 Sunday thanks to QB Russell Wilson’s 22^nd fourth-quarter comeback and no thanks to the best offensive player at CenturyLink Field, 49ers RB Carlos Hyde, who gained 124 yards on 15 carries and twice set up field goals with long runs.

In the second quarter, Hyde got loose on a 61-yard run that set up Robbie Gould’s 40-yard field goal, cutting Seattle’s lead to 6-3. Just before halftime, Hyde popped a 27-yard run over left tackle that, coupled with a 15-yard facemask on Cliff Avril, greased a 37-yard field goal by Gould, whose kick tied the score 6-6.

“With those runs that I broke, I got to get to the end zone,” said Hyde. “I put it all on my shoulders. I got to get to the end zone there. I can change the game with a touchdown. Next time I break a run like those, I can’t get tackled.  (The two runs) felt good, but it wasn’t enough, so it really doesn’t matter.”

“We made two mistakes in the run game (Hyde’s plays),” said Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. “The guy ran for 60 yards or something on the one carry, and we just made a horrendous error on the play. And then he’s good and fast and he maxed the play out.”

In the Pete Carroll era, only six running backs have a 100-yard rushing game at the Clink, headed by Adrian Peterson’s 182 yards and two TDs for Minnesota in 2012. Of the six – also Jamaal Charles, Mike James, DeMarco Murray and Roy Helu – Hyde is the only one to accomplish the feat twice.

Last September, Hyde ran for 103 yards and scored twice in 37-18 loss to Seattle at CenturyLink.

Hyde’s 124 yards Sunday make him unique in Clink history. He is the only opposing running back with 100-yard rushing games in the facility in consecutive seasons. Hyde is also the first visiting player with 100-yard rushing games in Seattle in back-to-back years since Kansas City’s Priest Holmes had 117 yards at Husky Stadium in 2002 and 197 and two TDs at the Clink (then known as Seahawks Stadium) in 2002.

Hyde accounted for the majority of San Francisco’s 159 rushing yards. Sunday marked the 17^th time in the Carroll era that an opposing team amassed 150 or more yards rushing. The Seahawks lost 11 of the 17, with the following as the only wins:

Seattle, fortunate to be 1-1, would have lost Sunday had not Wilson orchestrated the game-winning drive midway through the fourth quarter. Wilson’s TD pass to Paul Richardson kept the Seahawks from losing consecutive games without a touchdown for the first time since 2001, when they tallied a combined 12 points, all on field goals, against Cleveland and Philadelphia, and for only the fourth time ever.

“When we needed it, he was making plays and the touchdown drive was phenomenal,” Carroll said of Wilson. “That’s what you love about him. That’s who he is. He was right in his element.”

The 1992 team that went 2-14 failed to score a TD in six games, including three in a row from Oct. 4-18, and tallied only 140 points all season, an 8.8 average.

Before Wilson’s pass to Richardson, the Seahawks had gone 20 consecutive drives, at Green Bay and vs. San Francisco, sans a touchdown. That’s not the worst such streak of the Carroll era, but it’s the worst since Wilson started at quarterback. Most consecutive drives without scoring a TD since Carroll has been the head coach (2010):

Through two games, the Seahawks have  537 offensive yards (NFL rank is 26th), including 225 at Green Bay and 312 vs. San Francisco. The Seahawks have run 127 plays. The only other year in franchise history in which the Seahawks had fewer total yards and more offensive plays after two games was 1982, when Seattle had 483 yards on 133 plays in an 0-2 start.