RENTON, Wash. — Seahawks special-teams coordinator Jay Harbaugh and long snapper Chris Stoll had no choice this week but to relive what was the worst moment of their young careers in Seattle.

The Seahawks hadn't had a punt or kick blocked since Stoll took over as the snapper in 2023 before Sunday's 29-20 loss to the New York Giants at Lumen Field.

Harbaugh's first four games overseeing the kicking units under first-year coach Mike Macdonald had gone well enough, with the special teams keying a Week 2 win at New England with a late blocked field goal and a kick in overtime to win it.

That changed Sunday with a suddenness that left the Seahawks and 68,306 fans at Lumen Field stunned and Harbaugh and Stoll searching for answers to make sure it doesn't happen again.

With 1:05 left in a game they had trailed the entire second half, the Seahawks' Jason Myers lined up for a 47-yard field goal to try to force a 23-23 tie and possible overtime if the Seahawks could hold off the Giants (who also still had all three timeouts).

Before most knew what happened, the Giants' Isaiah Simmons leapt through a hole created between Stoll and right guard Laken Tomlinson to block the kick, with the ball taking a perfect bounce into the hands of teammate Bryce Ford-Wheaton, who returned it 60 yards for a TD that sealed the win.

"Tough deal to learn from," said Harbaugh, the son of Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh and a special-teams coach at Michigan since 2015 before coming to Seattle. "But you've got to learn from it and move on."

Said Stoll: "They saw something on film and they executed very well and we'll kind of improve our execution going forward."

What neither did was question the ruling of the NFL, which agreed with the on-field officials that the Giants did nothing illegal.

Two aspects of the play at least got to the edge of the rules.

First, just as the ball was snapped, defensive lineman Rakeem Nunez-Roches — who was lined up to the right of Stoll — put his hands on Stoll's back to hold him to the ground (with lineman Dexter Lawrence doing the same to Tomlinson).

Defenders cannot line up over a snapper. But the NFL ruled that Nunez-Roches was lined up appropriately and did not contact Stoll's head or neck, which would have been illegal.

Simmons lined up in a three-point stance and quickly leapt through the hole created by Lawrence and Nunez-Roches, doing so quickly enough to block Myers' attempt. The NFL ruled that since Simmons did not take a running start and did not use a teammate as leverage, he did not break any rules.

"The legality of what they did to me is not a question," Harbaugh said. "And it's not the type of thing, 'Hey, we got screwed' or something like that. It's something that's a rare thing, that takes a very rare athlete to be able to do, and if you have good technique combined with good awareness you can see it happening and stop him. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. It's something that we've addressed and have fixed moving forward."

Indeed, the play was designed during the week with the Giants spotting something on film.

Coach Brian Daboll didn't say what it was, but speculation is it was seeing the manner in which the Seahawks interior OLs went low at the snap — which is common on longer field goals due to the trajectory of the kick — and figuring they could create a crease for someone like Simmons to get through.

The 6-foot-4, 238-pound Simmons is indeed a rare athlete. He was drafted eighth overall by Arizona out of Clemson in 2020 and charting a 39-inch vertical leap at the NFL combine that year.

Simmons plays safety and inside linebacker. What he's rarely done is been on special teams. According to Pro Football Focus, his block on Sunday was only the second time since 2020 he's been on the field-goal block team. Simmons said he practiced the play only once Friday.

That meant there was no film the Seahawks could have studied to prepare for what the Giants had planned.

Simmons' presence on the field maybe could have tipped off the Seahawks that something was happening. But they had just one time out left, something that is a precious commodity that late in the game anyway.

"He's a pretty big guy," Harbaugh said. "Not like he used to be (earlier in his career) when it might be a little more unusual that, 'Hey, there's a DB there.' He's a pretty large individual. So it's the kind of thing, credit to him making a sweet play and the Giants. It's an unfortunate deal. You have to experience that play in that situation to be able to learn from it and get better. But that's the only play we have now."

The lesson, Harbaugh said, is mainly to keep your head up and be more aware.

"Weight distribution to make sure that you're not as easy to be pulled forward, or forward and downwards, and the position of your head and eyes so you can see that happening and be able to react and work," Harbaugh said.

If the blockers do that, Harbaugh said, "what typically happens is the player (on defense) will then get flipped over."

Conversely, "If your eyes are down, it's really difficult to be able to see what's happening in front of you."

Said Stoll: "It's a technique thing with not only me but the guards. If you watch a play, I kind of move whenever I feel pressure. So I felt the pressure on my left, I moved left to kind of see what I could do. ... We need to be able to alert it."

Harbaugh doesn't think it's something a lot of other teams will try saying, "It's really difficult to be able from a standstill be able to jump over a person that big without pushing down on them without the jumper pushing down to leverage himself. That's probably the first thing that makes it not super common."

It was a rare enough play that it was enough to earn Simmons honors Wednesday as the NFC Special Teams Player of the Week.

"It was well-drawn up from them and unfortunate time during the game," Stoll said. "But we'll move on and get better next week."

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