The 49ers gave Seattle 17 points off turnovers and took 21 back

Before Sunday, San Francisco's opponents had scored seven points off a 49ers mistake all season: Arizona's touchdown after Siran Neal muffed a punt in Week 3. The 49ers had given the ball away twice in four games. On Sunday they gave it away three times, and Seattle turned the three into 17 points, both of its touchdowns and a field goal.

San Francisco won 32-29 anyway, and the reason is the other side of the ledger. Seattle gave it away four times, the 49ers scored 21 points off those, and the Seahawks never scored a touchdown on a drive that began on their own side of the field. Sunday was the first time this season the 49ers had to win a turnover exchange instead of avoiding one, and what it established is that the defense can win one on its own terms: by where Seattle started, and by how far it was allowed to get.

Seattle scored touchdowns only on drives that started in San Francisco territory#

Seattle's two touchdown drives covered 24 and 23 yards. The first started at the San Francisco 24 after Jacob Cowing muffed Michael Dickson's punt. The second started at the San Francisco 23 after Nehemiah Pritchett intercepted Brock Purdy and returned it 20 yards. Seattle's third score off a 49ers mistake was the 48-yard field goal after Deebo Samuel's fumble at the San Francisco 36; Seattle moved six yards in four plays from there.

Seattle's 12 possessions that began on its own side of the field produced four field goals, two punts, four turnovers, a turnover on downs and the end of the first half. The Seahawks' longest drive by yardage, 61 yards from their own 8, ended in a 49-yard field goal.

Three touchdowns from the 11, the 9 and the 4#

The 49ers' first-half touchdowns were an 18-yard drive, an 11-yard drive and a fumble recovery in the end zone, and all three began with a Seattle possession pinned near its own goal line by a Corliss Waitman punt. Waitman punted five times, and the game book credits him with five inside the 20: Seattle started at its 11, its 18, its 8, its 9 and its 4.

From the 11, Jaden Dugger sacked Sam Darnold on second down and Renardo Green intercepted him on third, at the Seattle 18. Purdy hit Mike Evans for 13 and then for the 2-yard touchdown. From the 9, Emanuel Wilson ran for two yards on first down, Fred Warner knocked the ball loose and Malik Mustapha recovered at the 12 and carried it to the 11. Christian McCaffrey scored on the next snap. From the 4, with 18 seconds left in the half, Gracen Halton met George Holani at the goal line, forced the fumble and fell on it in the end zone.

Seattle's average drive started at its own 33. San Francisco's started at its own 44. Kickoffs did not make that gap; the 49ers' eight drives after a kickoff started on average at their 31 and Seattle's six at its 30. The punts and the turnovers made it.

Green's second interception, on the first pass Seattle threw after halftime, put the 49ers at the Seattle 39 and produced nothing. Eddy Pineiro missed from 52. It was the one takeaway that did not become seven points, and the one that started at the far end of the field.

Five field goals, and three sacks that kept them field goals#

Seattle scored on seven of its 15 possessions. The five that were not touchdowns ended at the San Francisco 31, 32, 25, 30 and 22, and Jason Myers kicked from 49, 50, 43, 48 and 40. He made all five. Seattle was 2 of 3 in the red zone; the one trip that did not produce a touchdown was the fourth-quarter drive that reached the 17.

Three of the 49ers' five sacks are inside those five drives. On the 11-play drive in the second quarter, Seattle had first-and-10 at the San Francisco 21. Halton sacked Darnold for nine yards and Osa Odighizuwa sacked him for seven on the next snap. Third-and-26 from the 37 became a 5-yard run and a 50-yard field goal, and the 49ers led 14-13 instead of trailing. In the fourth quarter, with the score 29-26, Seattle had third-and-5 at the 17. Keion White sacked Darnold for five, Myers kicked from 40 and the game was tied rather than Seattle ahead. Dugger's and Sebastian Valdez's sacks both came with Seattle at its own 18.

That is the shape of this defense through five games, and Sunday was its clearest version. Opponents have scored on 20 drives: eight touchdowns and 12 field goals. They have reached the red zone 14 times and scored touchdowns on seven. The rush that did it on Sunday did it without Nick Bosa for the third straight game. The 49ers were credited with eight quarterback hits, more than in the two previous games without him combined, and five different men had the sacks. Mykel Williams, in his first game since November, played 23 defensive snaps.

The offense scored 11 points on its own possessions#

On the nine possessions that did not start after a Seattle turnover, leaving out the two kneel-downs, the 49ers scored 11 points. The first seven of those possessions produced none: five punts, three of them three-and-outs, then the Pritchett interception, then Samuel's fumble. At halftime the offense had run 27 plays for 112 yards, taken holding penalties on Trent Williams and Dominick Puni and a false start on Connor Colby, and given up three sacks of Purdy, who had not been sacked all season.

The last two of the nine produced all 11. The 12-play, 74-yard drive that took the lead back at 29-26 had Evans for 15, 9, 23 and 28 and Brandin Cooks for the 7-yard touchdown; the 8-play, 43-yard drive took 4:59 off the clock and ended in Pineiro's 44-yard field goal with 1:56 left. Purdy threw 15 passes after halftime, completed 11 for 108 yards and was not sacked. "You could really feel it the way Brock started ripping the ball and just being more aggressive in the fourth," Kyle Shanahan said Monday.

Both drives came after Samuel left with the hamstring injury on his fumble, with 5:06 left in the third quarter. Nothing in the book says the one caused the other. It says the offense had Samuel on the field for 26 snaps and scored nothing on its own possessions in that stretch, and had 34 without him and scored 11. Shanahan said Monday that Samuel will miss some time. The 49ers' 269 yards and 14 first downs were their lowest of the season, and Seattle's defense has now held all five of its opponents under five yards a play. The question the offense carries into Washington is whether Sunday's fourth quarter was the version with four receivers or the exception to it.

What was true at kickoff and is not now#

Purdy had not been sacked in four games. He was sacked three times in the first half, twice by Byron Murphy II, and not again. The 49ers had not scored a touchdown against Seattle since the 2025 opener, across two losses in which they scored nine points. They scored four on Sunday. And the 49ers had given the ball away twice in four games, with seven opponent points to show for it. They gave it away three times in one afternoon and the number is 24.

Seattle came in with five turnovers in four games and left with nine, tied for the fifth most in the league by the Seahawks' own count, seven of them in its two losses. "Way too many giveaways at this point in the season," Mike Macdonald said afterward. Some of Sunday's four were Seattle's: Darnold's first interception was a short throw to Jaxon Smith-Njigba on third-and-10 from his own 11, and Holani was carrying the ball at his own goal line with 18 seconds left in a half. Two of them were San Francisco's. Warner's strip of Wilson was his third forced fumble of the season, and Green's second interception came on a deep ball on second-and-8.

What would change this reading#

It rests on one game, and on an opponent that handed over four possessions. The argument that the defense wins a turnover game by field position and field goals breaks the first time an opponent converts its trips. Arizona did, in Week 3: three touchdowns on five red-zone trips, and the 49ers needed 36 points to win by six. If Washington does the same next Monday night, the 49ers' offense has to carry a game for the first time this season, and it would be carrying it without Samuel.

Washington is 1-3-1 and tied the Giants 27-27 on Sunday. Jayden Daniels threw 25 passes and ran for two touchdowns in that game, the first he has started and finished since Week 1; Marcus Mariota and Athan Kaliakmanis started the games between. Washington's offense scored three touchdowns against Philadelphia in Week 1 and three against the Giants. In the three games in between it scored two, three and one. The 49ers may have Bosa back; Shanahan said Monday that Bosa, Kyle Juszczyk and James Thompson Jr. "all got a chance" and that it will take the week to know.

The last play is the other reason to hold the reading loosely. Cooper Kupp caught a 9-yard pass on fourth-and-10 at midfield with 54 seconds left and was pushed out of bounds by Mustapha at the San Francisco 41, and replay upheld the spot. "I knew it was close, but clearly it was short," Kupp said. The defense that holds opponents to field goals had the game because of a yard.

The Called Shot: Washington's offense scores two or fewer touchdowns against the 49ers at Levi's Stadium on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, counting rushing and passing touchdowns in the scoring summary of the official game book and excluding any return touchdown by the Washington defense or special teams.

Sources: NFL official game book, 49ers at Seahawks, Oct. 11, 2026 (scoring summary, drive chart, individual, team and defensive statistics, play-by-play, playtime percentage); ESPN box scores and drive charts for the 49ers' Weeks 1 through 4 and for Washington's five games; Kyle Shanahan's Oct. 12 conference call, transcript via 49ers Webzone; Mike Macdonald and Cooper Kupp postgame remarks and the Seahawks' Oct. 12 game notes, seahawks.com; 49ers.com roster.