The Seahawks’ 38-17 win over The Giants in Week 10 was a statistical feast. Russell Wilson’s third 100-yard rushing game of the season — discussed in an earlier post — was just one aspect of the game that was out of the ordinary.
Seattle also won the rushing battle by 296 yards — 350-54. There have been only five bigger rushing margins since the 1970 merger.
BIGGEST RUSHING MARGINS IN AN NFL GAME SINCE 1970
| Date | Winner, Yards | Loser, Yards | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12-10-06 | Jaguars, 375 | Colts, 34 | 341 |
| 11-4-7 | Vikings, 378 | Chargers, 42 | 336 |
| 11-30-87 | Raiders, 356 | Seahawks, 37 | 319 |
| 10-5-80 | Cardinals, 330 | Saints, 15 | 315 |
| 11-11-01 | Rams, 337 | Panthers, 31 | 306 |
| 11-9-14 | Seahawks, 350 | Giants, 54 | 296 |
| 11-7-76 | Steelers, 330 | Rams, 34 | 296 |
The first three games are also notable for these reasons:
● The 2006 Colts went on to win the Super Bowl – overcoming their league-worst rushing defense in the process. Quite a trick.
● 296 of the Vikings’ yards were the work of rookie Adrian Peterson, who set a single-game record that still stands.
● Finally, the Raiders got 221 yards from Bo Jackson, who had joined them after the Kansas City Royals’ baseball season was over and was playing in just his fifth NFL game.
The game is mostly remembered, though, for this 91-yard run of Bo’s:
One of the all-timers.
One other thing struck me as I was looking over the Seahawks’ stats Sunday night. Wilson threw two interceptions and no touchdown passes, yet Seattle still won by 21. Bet that hasn’t happened too often, I thought. When I researched it at pro-football-reference.com, I found only three other games like it in the past 16 seasons. In other words, it’s a once-every-1,000-games (or so) occurrence. Pretty rare.
And obviously, that makes sense. In this day and age, with quarterbacks passing so proficiently, you wouldn’t expect a club to win so easily when its QB has a 53.7 rating, as Wilson did (largely because of his two picks and zero TD passes).
