SEATTLE -- The Seattle Seahawks have white-knuckled their way to enough close wins under Pete Carroll and have been part of too much wackiness in prime-time games to be all that surprised about anything that happened Monday night.
For instance, one of the strangest pick-sixes you'll ever see. Or the Seahawks' nearly blowing a 17-point, fourth-quarter lead.
All's well that ends well with Carroll's Seahawks. Because rarely does it start well. This one started poorly -- an opening-drive touchdown by the Minnesota Vikings and a defensive TD midway through the second quarter -- but ended in a 37-30 victory that puts Seattle in first place in the NFC West.
The Seahawks are 9-1 this season in one-score games, good for the second-best winning percentage in such contests behind only that of the New Orleans Saints (7-0).
The Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers have identical 10-2 records, but Seattle owns the tiebreaker by virtue of its head-to-head win in Santa Clara, California, in Week 10. The rematch is Week 17 at CenturyLink Field.
Buckle up, Seattle. The final four weeks of the regular season could get as wild as it got Monday.
Promising trend: Rashaad Penny has come alive the past two games. A week after his breakout performance in Philadelphia, Penny combined for 107 yards and two touchdowns on 19 touches. Chris Carson had 109 yards and a touchdown on 24 touches. The Seahawks are finally getting some nice production out of Penny, their 2018 first-round pick who spent his first season and a half mostly buried behind Carson.
Promising trend, Part II: The Seahawks are a whopping 29-5-1 in prime-time games since Carroll took over in 2010. That was already the NFL's best winning percentage in that span entering Monday. Their record includes being 19-2 at home. The Seahawks have one more prime-time game on their schedule: at the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday.
QB breakdown: It was hardly the MVP-caliber performance that Russell Wilson has delivered so many times this season, but it was good enough. He finished 21-of-31 for 240 yards, two touchdowns and the interception. That came on a fluke play on which he tried to knock down a pass that was tipped high into the air at the line of scrimmage. Anthony Harris came down with it and returned it 20 yards for a touchdown. It was hardly your garden-variety interception, but it was the fifth pick-six of Wilson's career. Monday marked Wilson's eighth game this season with multiple TD passes, tied for most in the NFL with Dak Prescott.