Sports / NFL — The Seahawks vs Chiefs score at Lumen Field on Sunday night was 20-3, and it was not that close. Seattle’s defense held the NFL’s last unbeaten AFC team without a touchdown, never let Kansas City reach the red zone, bottled up former Seahawk Kenneth Walker III in his homecoming, and rode 150 receiving yards from Jaxon Smith-Njigba and 100 rushing yards from Emanuel Wilson to a win that changes the shape of both conferences.
SEATTLE — The Kansas City Chiefs arrived at Lumen Field on Sunday night as the AFC’s last unbeaten team, with the league’s rushing leader in the backfield and a defense allowing 16.6 points a game. They left with three points, 213 total yards and their first loss of the season. The Seattle Seahawks beat them 20-3 in a Sunday Night Football game that was less an upset than a demonstration: Mike Macdonald’s defense decided, series by series, that Patrick Mahomes would not be allowed to rescue this one, and by the time Emanuel Wilson broke a 21-yard touchdown run with 3:47 to play, the only remaining question was whether Kansas City would score a touchdown at all. It did not. The Chiefs never reached the red zone in 60 minutes.
The outline of the night was visible by halftime. Seattle led 10-0, had outgained Kansas City 251 yards to 96, held a 14-5 edge in first downs and had converted seven of nine third downs while the Chiefs converted none of four. Mahomes was 8 of 15 for 68 yards with an interception at the break, and Kansas City had been held scoreless in a half for the first time this season. An Associated Press note at halftime underlined what that usually means: the Chiefs had lost 38 straight games, including the playoffs, when they failed to score before halftime. The second half offered them one field goal, two missed kicks’ worth of regret, and a final possession that died on downs at their own 45-yard line.
How Seattle built the 20-3 win
After a scoreless first quarter, Seattle’s first scoring drive travelled 93 yards from its own 7-yard line. Sam Darnold found Cooper Kupp for 11 yards and Jaxon Smith-Njigba for gains of 10 and 33, and although the Chiefs stiffened at the 6, Jason Myers opened the scoring with a 25-yard field goal. Kansas City’s best early possession followed, and it ended the way the night kept ending: Nick Emmanwori pressured Mahomes on second down, the throw sailed, and safety Ty Okada intercepted it. Seattle turned the turnover into a ten-play, 66-yard touchdown drive. On third-and-9 from the Kansas City 28, Darnold hung in against an all-out blitz and dropped the ball to Smith-Njigba down the left sideline. He was first ruled out at the 1-yard line; the replay showed he had broken the plane, and the touchdown stood for a 10-0 lead with 1:44 left in the half.
Seattle nearly stretched it further before the break — Smith-Njigba set them up at the 3-yard line — but Darnold’s pressured throw from second-and-goal was intercepted in the end zone by Nohl Williams and returned 64 yards, giving Kansas City one snap of hope. Harrison Butker’s 58-yard field goal fell short as the half expired, and the Chiefs’ scoreless half was complete. The third quarter became a field-goal exchange: Myers from 35 yards after a 13-play drive that consumed almost seven minutes, then Butker from 50 for Kansas City’s only points, on a drive kept alive when Mahomes recovered his own fumble after a Derick Hall sack and somehow salvaged the field-goal chance. Trailing 13-3 in the fourth, Kansas City reached field-goal range once more — and Butker missed wide right from 45, his second miss of the night. Seattle answered with the drive that ended the argument: nine plays, 65 yards, 4:46 off the clock, finished by Wilson’s 21-yard touchdown run on third-and-4. Kansas City’s final possession produced three incompletions and a three-yard checkdown to Travis Kelce on fourth-and-10. Seattle took over inside the Kansas City 30, with the Chiefs out of timeouts, and kneeled out the night.
The homecoming that wasn’t: Walker held to 57 yards
The emotional centre of the week was Kenneth Walker III’s return to the stadium he lit up for four seasons. Walker left Seattle in free agency after winning the Super Bowl LX most valuable player award, signed a three-year, $43 million contract with Kansas City, and arrived back at Lumen Field as the NFL’s rushing leader with 665 yards, 760 scrimmage yards and eight scrimmage touchdowns in five games — a start that put him alongside Jim Brown, Eric Dickerson, Marshall Faulk, Emmitt Smith and Priest Holmes in the record books. Seattle’s defense, which knows his cuts better than any unit in football, treated him like a problem it had already solved. Walker finished with 36 rushing yards on 14 carries and 21 receiving yards on four catches: 57 scrimmage yards, no touchdowns, and a longest night of being met in the hole by people who used to block for him. Kansas City’s entire run game produced 50 yards on 16 carries. When a Mahomes offense cannot run, cannot protect its quarterback’s rhythm and cannot find Travis Kelce for more than 44 yards on eight targets, this is what it looks like: 11 first downs, 3-of-11 on third down, and a quarterback sacked, hurried and intercepted on the way to his quietest game of the season, 19 of 33 for 165 yards. It did not help that Mahomes was playing without Rashee Rice, and that Xavier Worthy finished with three catches for 11 yards; but the deeper truth is that Seattle’s front and secondary played the same receivers tight all night and were never punished for it.
Why this matters
Start with the standings, because they moved on Sunday. Kansas City falls to 5-1, and with Minnesota’s 16-10 win over Indianapolis earlier in the day, the 6-0 Vikings are now the NFL’s only unbeaten team. The Chiefs’ aura of inevitability — rebuilt this autumn around Walker after last season’s collapse and Mahomes’ return from a torn ACL — survives one loss, but the margin story changes: Kansas City’s average winning scoreline was built on an offense producing 28 points and 414 yards a game, and Seattle just held that offense to roughly half of both. Every defensive coordinator left on the Chiefs’ schedule now has a fresh, detailed film of the formula: load up on Walker, press Mahomes’ diminished receiver corps, and make Kansas City drive the long field perfectly, because it will not be given a short one.
For Seattle, the significance runs the other way. The defending champions had lost two straight — 32-29 to San Francisco and 17-14 at Denver in five days — and a third defeat, at home, to the conference measuring stick, would have dropped them to 3-4 and turned the season into a chase. Instead they are 4-3, they own the most impressive defensive performance any team has produced this season, and they did it with a patched-together backfield: with Zach Charbonnet ruled out before kickoff, Wilson, a depth signing, carried 24 times for 100 yards and scored the clinching touchdown. Smith-Njigba’s night — nine catches, 150 yards, a touchdown, and 142 yards in the first half alone — pushed his season to 58 catches for 867 yards and eight touchdowns and strengthened a case, building since September, that he is the most productive receiver in the league right now. Darnold, meanwhile, played the game his critics insist he cannot play against elite opposition: 20 of 28, 257 yards, no sacks taken, one bad throw in the end zone and otherwise complete command of a game plan built on third-down efficiency — Seattle converted 11 of 15, the single most lopsided number of the night.
What the numbers actually say
The box score reads like two different sports. Total yards: Seattle 407, Kansas City 213. First downs: 23 to 11. Rushing: 150 yards to 50. Third downs: 11 of 15 against 3 of 11. Time of possession belonged to Seattle by roughly ten minutes, and the Chiefs’ two longest drives of the night ended in a missed field goal and their only score. Perhaps the cleanest statistic is the one that does not appear: zero, Kansas City’s number of red-zone trips. Even the Chiefs’ great escapes failed — a 64-yard interception return before halftime produced no points, and a fumble Mahomes recovered himself in the third quarter produced only a 50-yard field goal. Compare the quarterbacks directly and the story sharpens further. Darnold averaged 9.2 yards per attempt; Mahomes 5.0. Seattle’s two offensive stars outgained Kansas City’s entire offense between them at various points of the evening — Smith-Njigba’s 150 receiving yards and Wilson’s 100 rushing yards totalled 250, more than the Chiefs managed as a team until the final minutes. This was also a game that confounded the kicking ledger: Myers was perfect, two field goals and two extra points, while Butker, one of the most reliable kickers of his generation, went 1 for 3 and left seven points on the field in a game his team lost by 17. Even a perfect Butker night does not change the winner — and that may be the most damning sentence available about Kansas City’s offense.
What happens next
Kansas City’s response comes quickly and in a hard place: the Chiefs visit the Denver Broncos on November 1, in the AFC West, against the defense that beat Seattle ten days ago. How Andy Reid adjusts — whether Walker’s workload is rethought after Seattle showed that a committed front can erase him, and whether the passing game can manufacture the explosive plays that were entirely absent on Sunday — will say more about this team’s ceiling than the 5-0 start did. Seattle, 4-3 and suddenly holding the league’s most persuasive defensive film, stays home to host the Chicago Bears on Monday, November 2, in a game that now looks like a meeting of two teams arriving at the same conclusion from opposite directions: in a season of parity, the side that controls third down controls everything. On Sunday night, that side wore navy and green, and it was not close. For how Kansas City got to 5-0 in the first place, see our recap of the Chiefs’ 22-6 win over the Chargers, when Walker scored twice and none of this seemed possible.
Sources
USA TODAY, live coverage of Chiefs at Seahawks, Sunday Night Football, October 25, 2026. Sportradar official scoring and box-score record, Seattle Seahawks vs Kansas City Chiefs, October 25, 2026. Arrowhead Pride (SB Nation), Chiefs-Seahawks game thread, October 25, 2026. Seahawks Wire, Chiefs Wire and Touchdown Wire (USA TODAY network), October 25, 2026. Associated Press halftime report (Josh Dubow note on Kansas City’s record when scoreless at halftime), October 25, 2026.