The first time the Cardinals got the ball, they drove from their own 1-yard line all the way to the Seahawks 10 before settling for a field goal.

The last time the Cardinals had the ball, they drove as far as the Seahawks 2-yard line before a fourth-down pass attempt to Trey McBride was broken up by Nick Emmanwori, all but clinching a 17-3 Seahawks victory.

In between those two drives that saw the Cardinals actually move the ball -- in the case of the final drive, with the help of a questionable pass interference call that negated a Josh Jobe interception -- the Seahawks defense was nearly impossible to move the ball against.

After the Cardinals gained 74 yards on that opening drive, they managed only 109 yards the rest of the game,

After gaining 89 yards on that opening drive, the Cardinals managed just 124 the rest of the way, finishing with 198 in the game. After their initial score, Arizona punted on its next five possessions, aside from the one-play drive to end the half, managing only five first downs over that stretch while the Seahawks took control with 17 unanswered points.

And not only did the dominance between Arizona's two long drives demonstrate how well the Seahawks played, the end results of those two bookend drives also showed an important bit of progress for Seattle's defense, which came into the game with the league's worst red-zone defense, but that unit held Arizona to a field goal and a turnover on downs.

In two meetings this season, the Seahawks held the Cardinals to just two total scores -- a touchdown in their previous meeting and a field goal on Sunday -- and 349 total yards over the course of eight quarters. According to NFL Research, Arizona's 10 points combined in those 2026 matchups against Seattle is tied for the fewest by any team in a season series against a division opponent in the last five seasons.

Sunday's game also marked the sixth time since Mike Macdonald took over in 2024 that the Seahawks have held an opponent to 3 or fewer points, twice as many times as any other team that has accomplished that feat over the past three seasons (Denver and Minnesota have each done it three times), according to ESPN Research.

"I feel like it was just a lot of stuff on us, just being clean, first-series kind of jitters for some guys, just being in the right calls, the right check, just a few mishaps," safety Julian Love said of the Cardinals' opening drive. "So you go to the sideline after that, and the team that we are, the defense that we are, it's like, 'OK, we just gave them 89 yards.' That's kind of the swagger and ego that we have. Then we went out and shut them down the rest of the game."

Making Sunday's dominance all the more impressive is that the Seahawks did it without arguably their best defensive player, Leonard Williams, as well as one of their top outside linebackers in Uchenna Nwosu. Yet, without those two key pieces up front, Seattle was able to hold the Cardinals to a 2.8 yard-per-carry average on the ground while the pass rush produced three sacks. There was also a bit of in-game adversity in terms of some calls that didn't go Seattle's way, including the aforementioned pass interference on Jobe when it appeared McBride simply fell down at the top of his route, taking away in interception, as well as an apparent forced fumble that was recovered by Seattle being blown dead because officials determined McBride, who was still falling forward, had his forward progress stopped, a call that is not reviewable.

The defense responding to those in-game challenges, the injuries, and whatever noise there was coming off a tough outing last week, was, as veteran outside linebacker DeMarcus Lawrence put it, the defense just showing who they are.

"We know who we are, but for y'all and the spectators, it shows y'all that we are who we say we are," said Lawrence, who had a sack as well as a key tackle for loss on the final red-zone possession. "We're some violent -- I ain't going to say the rest -- but we're some violent dogs, OK?"

Aned while Lawrence's tackle for loss in the red zone was a key factor in the final stop, it was another of those "violent dogs" who made the final stop, with Emmanwori breaking up a fourth-down pass attempt to McBride. While it was Emmanwori's only pass break-up in the game, he also had good coverage on several other occasions throughout, including multiple third-down stops in which Gardner Minshew couldn't target the All-Pro tight end because of Emmanwori's coverage. In all, McBride managed only 54 yards on seven catches, with his longest completion, a 19-yarder, coming with Emmanwori not in coverage. Emmanwori also had a pressure and quarterback hit that led to an intentional grounding call on another third-down stop.

"It was a big-time play," Macdonald said of the fourth-down stop. "You know, we put him on McBride and felt confidently he could cover him, and he did, so that was pretty cool… We didn't rush Nick as much this week. Different reasons for why we did that, but just shows you, like, hey, wherever you put your focus, I think he was determined, like a lot of our guys coming off of last week, to put our best foot forward and grow, and he should be proud of himself. He really had a good week of focusing on details and playing his style of ball, but also being detail-oriented and being on his game as well. I'm glad that he had the production to back that up."

Said Love: "He's special, man. You can't pigeonhole him into anything. Whether he's hitting the quarterback, whether he's in coverage, he's just such a problem. It's a mixture of God-gifted, just being so tall, long arms, so fast and strong, but also his mental. It's not easy. It gets really overlooked how smart of a player he is because he's doing so much. Not everyone on our team can be doing that. I can't speak highly enough, he should be talked about in a special sort of way."