Seahawks Lock in

IMG. NBC Sports

By Bo Crouch ~ Football Talk

SEATTLE — A week ago, the Seahawks needed a backup quarterback to save their season opener.

This week, they need him again.

Seattle heads to Glendale on Sunday to face the Arizona Cardinals with Drew Lock under center instead of Sam Darnold, who is officially out after the hip injury that ended his Week 1 night five plays into the 13-10 win over New England. It's not the way anyone in the building drew up the sequel to a Super Bowl. It's the way the sequel is starting anyway.

How We Got Here

Darnold went down on the Seahawks' first defensive stand of the season, sacked on third down and carted off in obvious pain. He was ruled out by halftime. What followed was, by any honest measure, one of the stranger banner nights in franchise history — a defending champion trailing 10-0 at home, on a short week, with a backup quarterback nobody expected to see.

Drew Lock didn't blink.

He finished 16 of 22 for 187 yards, found Jaxon Smith-Njigba for a 45-yard touchdown to tie the game in the fourth quarter, and watched Josh Jobe seal it with an interception on the final snap. New England quarterback Drake Maye threw three picks in the fourth quarter alone. Seattle walked away 1-0, banged up but unbroken.

The good news arrived two days later. Coach Mike Macdonald said the team got "really, really good news" on Darnold's hip — it's intact, the injury is muscular, not structural — but that hasn't stopped it from costing him this week. Reports out of Seattle put the timeline anywhere from one game to four-to-six weeks, depending on who's talking, though Ian Rapoport has maintained a Week 3 return against Washington is still in play. What's settled is Sunday: Lock starts, with second-year passer Jalen Milroe as the No. 2. Macdonald has been consistent about it all week, telling Seattle Sports 710 as much once the club's first injury report of the week came out.

A Different Kind of Opponent

If Seattle's assuming a soft landing spot for Lock's first career start against the Cardinals, someone should tell Arizona's defense.

The Cardinals aren't walking into State Farm Stadium as the team most projected them to be. Mike LaFleur's first game as a head coach ended in a 26-14 win at SoFi Stadium over the Chargers, who entered as 9.5-point favorites. It was the biggest Week 1 upset in the NFL since 2018, and it made LaFleur the first full-time Cardinals coach to win his debut since Don Coryell in 1973.

Quarterback Jacoby Brissett threw for 277 yards and a touchdown, spreading the ball with newly aggressive pre-snap motion after Arizona ran the league's lowest motion rate in 2025. Tight end Trey McBride caught nine passes for 95 yards and a score. Rookie running back Jeremiyah Love scored Arizona's first touchdown of the season in his NFL debut. And the defense — a unit that was among the league's worst a year ago — held Justin Herbert to 5.1 yards per attempt after halftime, forced two turnovers, and got a blocked punt from Simi Fehoko that flipped the fourth quarter. DraftKings has already moved the Cardinals' season win total up to 5.5 and shortened their playoff odds in response.

None of that erases the gap between these two rosters. But it means Seattle isn't just managing a quarterback change on the road Sunday — it's managing one against a team that just proved it isn't playing along with the script.

What to Watch

Lock will lean on the two players who bailed him out a week ago. Smith-Njigba is coming off a league-leading 2025 season and a $168.6 million extension that says the Seahawks believe he's the offense's engine no matter who's throwing him the ball. Cooper Kupp, the Yakima native who helped close out Super Bowl LX with six catches for 61 yards, gives Lock a second veteran option who already knows this system inside out.

Arizona's secondary, led by cornerback Will Johnson and a healthy Josh Sweat off the edge, will be the Cardinals' answer to Seattle's passing attack. How Lock handles that pressure in his first career start against this particular opponent will say a lot about how many of these next few weeks Seattle can afford to play without its franchise quarterback.

Kickoff is set for 1:25 p.m. PT on FOX.

Seattle is 1-0. So are the Cardinals. Only one of these teams saw that coming.